How China plans to beat the U.S. at technology

How China plans to beat the U.S. at technology

President Trump has made technology a key battleground in U.S. relations with China.

He launched an investigation into alleged Chinese theft of U.S. intellectual property earlier this year. But some experts say a bigger concern is Beijing's huge bets on the technologies of the future.

Israel says Hezbollah runs Lebanese army, signaling both are foes

By Dan Williams

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel said on Tuesday that the Hezbollah guerrilla group, its most potent enemy in neighboring Lebanon, had gained control over that country's U.S.-sponsored conventional military, signaling both would be in Israeli gunsights in any future war.

Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman's remarks were a hard tack from more measured recent Israeli estimates that the Lebanese army maintained autonomy even if some of its troops cooperated with the better-armed, Iranian-aligned guerrillas.

Outlining potential threats in Lebanon, where Israel last fought a war against Hezbollah in 2006, Lieberman said in a speech: "We are no longer talking about Hezbollah alone".

"We are talking about Hezbollah and the Lebanese army, and to my regret this is the reality. The Lebanese army has turned into an integral part of Hezbollah's command structure. The Lebanese army has lost its independence and become an inseparable part of the Hezbollah apparatus," Lieberman said.

There was no immediate response from Lebanon, which is formally in a state of war with Israel, nor from the U.S. embassies in Beirut and Tel Aviv.

The Lebanese army has previously said it operates independently from Hezbollah, most recently during an operation against Islamic State militants at the Lebanese-Syrian border, during which the army said there was absolutely no coordination with Hezbollah fighters who attacked IS from the Syrian side.

"ONE THEATER"

Hosting Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri in July for aid talks, U.S. President Donald Trump praised Beirut's efforts to stem the spread of Islamic State and pledged continued help from Washington.

"America's assistance can help ensure that the Lebanese army is the only defender Lebanon needs,” Trump said.

The Pentagon said Washington has provided Lebanon with more than $1.5 billion in military assistance since 2006, and that U.S. special forces have been providing "training and support" for the Lebanese army since 2011.

"Strengthening the LAF (Lebanese Armed Forces) also advances a range of U.S. interests in the Middle East that includes not only countering the spread of ISIS (Islamic State) and other violent extremists but also stemming the influence of Iran and Hezbollah in the region," Pentagon spokesman Eric Pahon said.

While welcoming U.S. action against Islamic State, Israel sees Iran, Hezbollah and their allies as the greater threat and worries about their entrenchment in Syria as they help President Bashar al-Assad beat back a more than six-year-old rebellion.

Lieberman said Israel sought to avoid going to war again on its northern front, which, he predicted, would include Syria.

"In anything that transpires, it will be one theater, Syria and Lebanon together, Hezbollah, the Assad regime and all of the Assad regime’s collaborators," he said.

(Writing by Dan Williams; Additional reporting by Tom Perry in Beirut and Idrees Ali in Washington; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

North Korea seen moving missiles from development center: South Korean broadcaster

SEOUL (Reuters) - Several North Korean missiles were recently spotted moved from a rocket facility in the capital Pyongyang, South Korea's Korean Broadcasting System (KBS) reported late Friday amid speculation that the North was preparing to take more provocative actions.

The report cited an unnamed intelligence source saying South Korean and U.S. intelligence officials detected missiles being transported away from North Korea's Missile Research and Development Facility at Sanum-dong in the northern part of Pyongyang.

The report did not say when or where they had been moved.

The missiles could be either intermediate range Hwasong-12 or intercontinental ballistic Hwasong-14 missiles, according to the report, though the missile facility at Sanum-dong has been dedicated to the production of intercontinental ballistic missiles.

A source from South Korea's defense ministry said he could not confirm details of the report or whether there has been any unusual activities in the area mentioned.

South Korean official have voiced concerns that North Korea could conduct more provocative acts near the anniversary of the founding of its communist party on Oct. 10, or possibly when China holds its Communist Party Congress on Oct. 18.

Amid heightened tensions on the Korean Peninsula, South Korea and U.S. forces recently held their first joint short range air defense training exercise in South Korea, according to a statement released by the U.S. Pacific Command on Friday.

The statement did not give the date of the exercise, but said the next exercise is scheduled to take place over the next few months as the two forces become more familiar with each other's capabilities.

(Reporting by Heekyong Yang; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore and Richard Pullin)

Russia Just Pulled Off a Massive Nuclear Weapons Drill (That America Can't Match)

Russia Just Pulled Off a Massive Nuclear Weapons Drill (That America Can't Match)

While all eyes are focused on North Korea, Russia recently conducted a massive drill of its road mobile intercontinental ballistic missile force. The drills involved all of the major Russian mobile ICBMs including the Topol, Topol-M and the Yars.

“Today, missile regiments of the Topol, Topol-M and Yars missile systems have carried out a night march. The regiments are located in five regions from the Tver region to Altai Krai,” the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement.

“More than 600 piece of hardware including launchers, were operated to ensure combat patrol en-route.”

The drill appears to be a full scope exercise complete with adversary forces attempting to attack the launch vehicles and contaminated terrain.

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“Countersabotage formations are drilling tasks to detect, block and eliminate mock insurgents. The formations are operating the Typhoon-M Combat anti-sabotage vehicles equipped with drones,” the statement reads.

“It is planned to train passing through a mock contaminated terrain. At the end of the exercise, the troops are to drill simulated launching of missiles.”

The Russians conduct massive nuclear wargames such as this one to test the readiness of their strategic deterrent.

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“Looks like a routine drill of the road-mobile force,” Pavel Podvig, director of the Russian Nuclear Forces Project, told The National Interest.

The exercise is very large, however, analysts noted.

“It certainly looks like wholesale or close to that,” former Soviet nuclear negotiator Nikolai Sokov, now a senior fellow at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey told The National Interest.

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“There used to be a limit on exercises of mobile ICBMs in START I—no more than 50 percent—but such limit no longer exists in New START, if I remember correctly. Seems to me this could be the largest exercise of road mobiles, but it would really require data on all bases individually, not the general language in the announcement. 600 vehicles seems, though, too low for the wholesale thing.”

The Kremlin’s road-mobile ballistic missiles are arguably one of the country's most survivable legs of its strategic nuclear forces—able to disappear into Russia's vast landmass. Unlike the United States, where its submarine-based deterrent reigns supreme, Russia’s sub-based deterrent is somewhat hampered by its lack of warm water ports and constrains having operate inside heavily defended bastions.

The Kremlin considers its strategic nuclear deterrent as the paramount guarantor of its sovereignty. As such Russia places a huge emphasis on its strategic nuclear forces. This particular exercise comes on the heels of Russia’s Zapad-17 exercises in Belarus, but it not out of the ordinary.

Dave Majumdar is the defense editor for The National Interest. You can follow him on Twitter: @Davemajumdar.

Image: Creative Commons. 

Why Did 2 Russian Nuclear Submarines Start Firing Torpedoes at Each Other?

Alarik Fritz, a senior analyst with the Center for Naval Analyses who served as Foggo’s advisor, said at the time that Russian submarines are some of the most dangerous threats the U.S. Navy faces anywhere on Earth. “The submarine force that they have is essentially their capital ships,” Fitz said. “They’re a concern for us and they’re highly capable—and they’re a very agile tool of the Russian military.”

Back in May, the Russian nuclear-powered attack submarine Obninsk fired a torpedo against one of Moscow’s newest nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines, Yuri Dolgoruky.

The massive Project 955 Borei missile boat in turn launched a torpedo back at Obninsk, a smaller Project 671RTMK Schuka-class vessel more commonly known as a Victor III in NATO parlance. But unlike in the Tom Clancy’s classic novel The Hunt for Red October, Dolgoruky’s skipper was not planning to defect to the United States along with his crew; rather the torpedo duel was part of a Russian naval exercise.

"The crews of the strategic missile cruiser Yuri Dolgoruky and the multipurpose nuclear submarine Obninsk performed this exercise in a duel option," the Russian Northern Fleet’s press office told the TASS news agency.

According to TASS, the torpedo shootout was conducted using inert weapons with each vessel launching one weapon. The two torpedoes were later recovered after the exercise.

The present day Russian Navy, which is a shadow of the once mighty Soviet fleet, has focused most of its limited resources on its still powerful submarine fleet. Senior U.S. Navy commanders have said that in recent months, the Russian undersea force has been the most active it has been since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.

“If you look across the design of the Russian Federation Navy, where they have put their resources and their research and development efforts has primarily been in the undersea domain and in the submarine force,” Vice Adm. James G. Foggo III, who at the time was simultaneously commander of the U.S. Navy’s 6th Fleet, Joint Force Maritime Component Commander Europe and NATO’s Naval Striking and Support Forces NATO, told The National Interest last year.

Alarik Fritz, a senior analyst with the Center for Naval Analyses who served as Foggo’s advisor, said at the time that Russian submarines are some of the most dangerous threats the U.S. Navy faces anywhere on Earth. “The submarine force that they have is essentially their capital ships,” Fitz said. “They’re a concern for us and they’re highly capable—and they’re a very agile tool of the Russian military.”

Dave Majumdar is the defense editor for The National Interest. You can follow him on Twitter: @davemajumdar.

This first appeared in May. 

Image: Reuters. 

Ex-CIA Director Hayden: Russia election meddling was ‘most successful covert operation in history’

Michael Hayden, a former director of the NSA and the CIA, on Friday called Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election the “most successful covert influence operation in history.”

“Frankly, [the Russian meddling] is the most successful covert operation in history,” Hayden told a national security panel in response to a question from moderator Yahoo News Chief Investigative Correspondent Michael Isikoff. Hayden said the original cyberattack on the Democratic National Committee was not that surprising — and even from an intelligence perspective, impressive.

“I just have to admit as a former director of NSA, [Russia’s hack and theft of email] is honorable state espionage,” Hayden said to audience laughter, speaking at the Aspen Security Conference.

Isikoff interjected, asking if the Russian dissemination of the emails through WikiLeaks should still be considered “honorable state espionage.”

“If we as NSA could have an insight into … Russia through the same techniques, game on,” Hayden said. “But now you make the great distinction: What the Russians then did with the information. And then that turned [it] into what we call a covert influence operation.”

Hayden argued that the release of stolen Democratic emails on WikiLeaks was the Kremlin’s egregious act, not the hacks to obtain the information.

“This is, at its heart, not a cyber issue. At its heart, this is a Russia issue,” Hayden said. “The cyber-thing was a preliminary action in order to get some raw materials, … but that’s not what made this different. That’s not what made this egregious.”

Isikoff asked why the U.S. government has yet to clearly delineate a “red line” when it comes to cybersecurity violations from other countries even though the cyberthreat has existed for years.

Former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, also on the panel, responded that the Defense Department had issued a guideline which said attacks warrant a response if they result in loss of life or serious economic damage.

“The truth is the technology and the techniques that can be used have actually evolved more rapidly than our thinking about it,” Chertoff said. “The value of norms would be it would start to create a basis for law-abiding countries to know when they can respond to a cyber act as if it were an act of war.”

The U.S. lacks a standard of proof, which makes it difficult to prove who’s responsible for a cyber attack, Chertoff said.

“If we confront the Russians, their response is, ‘Well, you don’t have 100 percent proof, so we reject it,’” Chertoff said. “We have to establish a consensus about how much is enough.”

Isikoff then pivoted to discuss the Syrian refugee crisis, which he said has resulted in 4.9 million refugees in Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey, noting that former FBI agent Ali Soufan called it “the greatest humanitarian disaster of our lifetime.”

National Counterterrorism Center Director Nick Rasmussen, another panel participant, said he wouldn’t want to draw “a straight line” connection between someone being displaced by the Syrian civil war and that person becoming a potential recruit for terrorists.

But Rasmussen said that Soufan’s description still holds. “First and foremost, it’s a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions, but it does have a long-term security piece to it that we’re going to be managing for a number of years,” he said.

The counterterrorism expert also said the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah poses a threat to the U.S. The Iranian-backed organization is recognized by the intelligence community as one of the most capable terrorist groups in the world, with access to technology and state sponsorship, he said.

But FBI arrests of individuals with ties to Hezbollah in the U.S. suggests that there’s a presence of Hezbollah operatives in the homeland, Rasmussen said.

“We’ve known they look to lay infrastructure in all parts of the world to give itself options, to develop a playbook,” Rasmussen said.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced legislation in the House and Senate on Thursday that would increase sanctions on Hezbollah for its actions in Syria and near the Israeli border.

 

South Korea's new government proposes military talks with North Korea

By Christine Kim

SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea on Monday proposed military talks with North Korea, the first formal overture to Pyongyang by the government of President Moon Jae-in, to discuss ways to avoid hostile acts near the heavily militarized border.

There was no immediate response by the North to the proposal for talks later this week. The two sides technically remain at war but Moon, who came to power in May, has pledged to engage the North in dialogue as well as bring pressure to impede its nuclear and missile programs.

The offer comes after the North claimed to have conducted the first test of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) earlier this month, and said it had mastered the technology to mount a nuclear warhead on the missile. South Korea and the United States, its main ally, dispute the claim.

"Talks and cooperation between the two Koreas to ease tension and bring about peace on the Korean peninsula will be instrumental for pushing forth a mutual, virtuous cycle for inter-Korea relations and North Korea's nuclear problem," the South's Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon told a news briefing.

The South Korean defense ministry proposed talks with the North on July 21 at Tongilgak to stop all activities that fuel tension at the military demarcation line.

Tongilgak is a North Korean building at the Panmunjom truce village on the border used for previous inter-Korea talks. The last such talks were held in December 2015.

Cho also urged the restoration of military and government hotlines across the border, which had been cut by the North last year in response to the South imposing economic sanctions after a nuclear test by Pyongyang. In all, the North has conducted five nuclear tests and numerous missile tests.

The South also proposed separate talks by the rival states' Red Cross organizations to resume a humanitarian project to reunite families separated during the 1950-53 Korean War in closely supervised events held over a few days.

The South Korean Red Cross suggested talks be held on Aug. 1, with possible reunions over the Korean thanksgiving Chuseok holiday, which falls in October this year.

The last such reunions were held in October 2015 during the government of Moon's predecessor under a futile push for reconciliation following a sharp increase in tension over border incidents involving a landmine blast and artillery fire.

BEIJING IN FAVOR

China, which has close ties to Pyongyang despite Beijing's anger over North Korea's missile and nuclear tests, welcomed the proposal, saying cooperation and reconciliation between the two Koreas was good for everyone and could help ease tensions.

"We hope that North and South Korea can work hard to go in a positive direction and create conditions to break the deadlock and resume dialogue and consultation," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang told a daily news briefing.

The proposals come after Moon said at the G20 summit in Hamburg earlier this month that he was in favor of dialogue with the North despite the "nuclear provocation" of its latest missile test.

When Moon visited Washington after being elected president, he and U.S. President Donald Trump said they were open to renewed dialogue with North Korea but only under circumstances that would lead to Pyongyang giving up its weapons programs.

"The fact that we wish to take on a leading role in resolving this (North Korean) issue has already been understood at the summit with the United States and the Group of 20 summit meetings," Cho said on Monday.

In the proposal for talks, South Korea did not elaborate on the meaning of hostile military activities, which varies between the two Koreas. South Korea usually refers to loudspeaker propaganda broadcasts by both sides, while the North wants a halt to routine joint U.S.-South Korea military drills.

Moon suggested earlier this month hostile military activities at the border be ended on July 27, the anniversary of the 1953 armistice agreement that ended the Korean War. Since no truce was agreed, the two sides remain technically at war.

When asked if South Korea was willing to "be flexible" on military drills with the United States should North Korea be open to talks, Cho said the government had not discussed the matter specifically.

Pyongyang has repeatedly said it refuses to engage in all talks with the South unless Seoul turns over 12 waitresses who defected to the South last year after leaving a restaurant run by the North in China.

North Korea says the South abducted the 12 waitresses and the restaurant manager and has demanded their return, but the South has said the group decided to defect of its own free will. Cho said this matter is not included on the talks agenda.

In an act to rein in the North, the United States is preparing new sanctions on Chinese banks and firms doing business with Pyongyang possibly within weeks, two senior U.S. officials said last week.

(Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard in BEIJING; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)

 

Russia, mulling expulsions, says too many U.S. spies work in Moscow

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia said on Friday that too many American spies operated in Moscow under diplomatic cover and said it might expel some of them to retaliate against the United States over Washington's expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats last year.

The warning, delivered by Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, reflects rising frustration in Moscow over the Trump administration's refusal to hand back two Russian diplomatic compounds which were seized at the same time as some of Russia's diplomats were sent home last year.

Barack Obama, U.S. president at the time, ordered the expulsion of 35 suspected Russian spies in December, along with the seizure of the two diplomatic compounds, over what he said was the hacking of U.S. political groups during the 2016 presidential election, something Russia has flatly denied.

President Vladimir Putin decided not to retaliate immediately at the time, saying he would wait to see what the new administration of Donald Trump would do.

Zakharova complained on Friday that U.S. officials were not issuing visas to Russian diplomats to allow Moscow to replace the expelled employees and get its embassy back up to full strength. 

"We have a way of responding," she told a news briefing. "The number of staff at the U.S. embassy in Moscow exceeds the number of our embassy employees in Washington by a big margin. One of our options, apart from a tit-for-tat expulsion of Americans, would be to even out the numbers."

If there was no movement in the U.S.-Russia dispute soon, she said Moscow would have to reluctantly retaliate and suggested U.S. spies working in Russia would be among those to be expelled.

"There are too many employees of the CIA and the Pentagon's espionage unit working under the roof of the American diplomatic mission whose activity does not correspond at all with their status," said Zakharova. 

Russia would also move to deny U.S. diplomats use of a dacha compound and a warehouse in Moscow, she made clear.

Separately, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin had not yet taken any decision on retaliation. He said Russia rejected the idea of linking the dispute to other issues.

Peskov was responding to comments made to CNN by Sebastian Gorka, a Trump adviser, that appeared to link the compounds' return to Russia's behavior in Syria.

Zakharova said time for Washington to act "was running out."

"We don't want to resort to extreme measures. (But) if it's the only way to make our American partners understand we will have to act."

Asked when Moscow might retaliate, she suggested a lot would depend on the outcome of a meeting in Washington on Monday between Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov and U.S. Undersecretary of State Thomas Shannon.

Russia expected U.S. officials to use the meeting to set out "detailed proposals" on the matter, she said.

"There is no precise deadline. Everything depends on the reaction of the U.S. side, its concrete actions, and on the results of the consultations which will now take place in Washington."

 

China’s Intelligence Networks in United States Include 25,000 Spies

Beijing's spy networks in the United States include up to 25,000 Chinese intelligence officers and more than 15,000 recruited agents who have stepped up offensive spying activities since 2012, according to a Chinese dissident with close ties to Beijing's military and intelligence establishment.

Guo Wengui, a billionaire businessman who broke with the regime several months ago, said in an interview that he has close ties to the Ministry of State Security (MSS), the civilian intelligence service, and the military spy service of the People's Liberation Army (PLA).

"I know the Chinese spy system very, very well," Guo said, speaking through an interpreter, in his first American interview. "I have information about very minute details about how it operates."

Guo said he learned about Chinese spy activities from Ma Jian, a former MSS vice minister, and Ji Shengde, former PLA military intelligence chief.

Ma was director of MSS's No. 8 Bureau, in charge of counterintelligence against foreign targets—including diplomats, businessmen, and reporters—until he was swept up in a Beijing power struggle in December 2015. He was expelled from the Communist Party and imprisoned in January.

Guo said Ma was imprisoned because he had uncovered details of corruption by China's highest-ranking anti-corruption official, Wang Qishan.

Ma said in a video made public by the Chinese government several weeks ago that he worked with Guo in assisting Chinese national security.

Regarding, Ji, the military spy chief, Guo said he had close ties to him and turned down requests from Ji to work as a smuggler for 2PLA, as the military spy agency was known.

Ji was implicated in the 1990s scandal involving Chinese funding of Bill Clinton's presidential re-election campaign. In China, he was given a suspended death sentence by a military court in 2000 on charges of bribery and illegal fundraising.

Ji lives in China and his wife currently resides in Los Angeles, and Guo said he paid money to Ji for 25 years as part of China's use of businesses to support intelligence activities.

"I know Ma Jian had been working state security system for over 30 years," he said. "And he was responsible for sending out spies as well as for counter espionage, also vis a vis the U.S. So, Ma Jian knows everything about the United States."

Guo is a Chinese real estate investor who fled China in 2015. He currently resides in New York City and since January has become a target of a major Chinese government campaign to silence him.

In May, two senior Chinese security officials traveled to the United States as part of a bid to pressure Guo into keeping silent, and not disclosing secrets about corruption among senior Chinese officials, as well as details of the intelligence activities.

The two officials, Sun Lijun, vice minister of the Public Security Ministry, and an aide, Liu Yanpang, also tried to convince Trump administration officials to forcibly repatriate Guo back to China amid claims of corruption.

Liu was arrested by the FBI for violating visa rules and his cell phone and laptop computer were confiscated before the Chinese official was allowed to leave the United States.

The Chinese officials, during meetings in Washington and New York and by phone, threatened Guo, his family, and business associates and said that if he remained silent, the government would release assets of Guo's that are frozen in China worth an estimated $17 billion.

Over the past several months Guo, who also uses the name Miles Kwok, began posting lengthy videos on Twitter and YouTube disclosing what he knows about Chinese corruption and intelligence activities.

One of the more explosive disclosures during an interview involve Wang, current head of the Chinese government's anti-corruption campaign and a member of the Chinese Communist Party Politburo Standing Committee, the collective dictatorship that rules China.

According to Guo, Wang secretly invested in California real estate since the late 1980s and has turned $30 million in purchases of 111 properties into an estimated $2 to $3 billion today.

Guo says he plans to detail Wang’s U.S. investments in a video to be published next week. The residences include homes and apartments in Washington and Bethesda in the east, and in California in Los Angeles, San Jose, Cupertino, Sunnyvale, Palo Alto, San Carlos, and San Francisco. The video also shows a series of mansions owned by Wang family members in Saratoga, Calif. In total the residences cost $12 million and are worth some $30 million today.

Wang, according to Guo, is the official who took over as the top leader overseeing China's financial sector from Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji, who stepped down in 2003.

One neighborhood in California of 14 houses owned by Wang or his relatives has been fitted with special underground silos that are used to store jewelry and documents, Guo said.

"If the FBI could go in there and get those documents, then they can negotiate with the Chinese government," he said.

Guo said he plans to disclose additional details of alleged corruption by four other Chinese leaders, including Meng Jianzhu, a member of the Politburo but not the Standing Committee, and He Guoqiang, a retired official who was in charge of police and the courts.

"In the future I will report on another two current sitting members of the Politburo Standing Committee, as well as two previous members of the Standing Committee," he said.

Regarding a report in the journal Foreign Affairs that the businessman represents a leadership faction in Beijing, Guo denied the report. He said he began speaking out as part of long-planned effort to bring democratic reform to China.

"What I want to do is change the whole system. That's what I want," he said.

Guo said Chinese police killed his brother and in 1989, when China called out troops to put down unarmed pro-democracy protesters in Beijing's Tiananmen Square, he was jailed for 22 months.

"I've prepared all that time until now," he said. "I want to change the Chinese government. Absolutely, the Chinese government is the mafia."

Guo said that Chinese intelligence operations in the United States sharply increased after the 2012 Communist Party Congress that brought current leader Xi Jinping to power.

"Before 2012, cumulatively China had around 10,000 to 20,000 agents working in the United States," he said. "These agents had been sent to work in the United States over a 50 year period of time, and they were working in a defensive mode."

According to the businessman, defensive intelligence was mainly focused on learning about the United States. The operations then shifted in 2012 to "offensive" spying, he said.

"By offensive [operations], I mean to be ready to destroy the U.S. in ways they can," Guo said.

China's budget for intelligence gathering before 2012 was around $600 million annually.

Around 2012, a decision was made by Chinese leaders to dispatch another 5,000 spies to the United States. "Some of them were sent as students, some as businessmen, and some as immigrants, but all together, 5,000," Guo said.

"In addition to that, they developed between 15,000 to 18,000 other spies, and these are not directly sent but these are developed within the United States."

The recruited agents are not limited to Asians and Chinese-Americans but include all ethnic groups, including Hispanics, Blacks, and Caucasians.

"And now the budget is between $3 billion to $4 billion annually, and this is information up to one month ago," he said.

Guo said American counterintelligence agencies face several problems, mainly a lack of knowledge about Chinese intelligence agencies.

"You don't know which organizations in China are responsible for sending these spies, how they are managed, and to what purpose," he said. "And the U.S. adopts a very legalistic perspective to look at the question of spying. Yet, for China their methods are not what the United States understands."

"These spies, when they come to the United States, they could sleep around, they could put poison in your glass of wine to kill you; completely unscrupulous," he said.

FBI spokesman Matthew Bertron declined to comment. A Chinese Embassy spokesman did not respond to emails seeking comment.

Chinese intelligence officers sent to the United States are controlled by the MSS by keeping all their family members and relatives hostage.

China's intelligence targets included several strategic areas of the United States.

"The first is to obtain military weapons-related technology. This is priority No. 1," Guo said.

Second, Chinese intelligence is engaged in "buying" senior U.S. officials personally, and a third objective is buying family members of American political or business elites "with a view to getting intelligence and to make big business deals in China's favor," he said.

A fourth priority is penetrating the American internet system and critical infrastructure by implanting malicious software.

"And they have successfully penetrated all the major defense weapons suppliers of the U.S. government," Guo said, adding that "the scale of their operations is mind boggling."

Guo said Ma, the MSS vice minister, told him that a major shift by the Chinese was expanding the scope of agent recruitment from Asians to mainstream ethnic groups.

"This is where the biggest danger lies," he said. "It's clear the situation is getting more and more dangerous now. The United States has the best weapons in its arsenal, such as laser weapons, etc. Yet, the Chinese spy system has penetrated into the bloodstream of American defense establishment with their viruses and everything else."

"The United States is bleeding and is unaware that sooner or later the United States will run out of blood," Guo said.

Also, the United States is overly reliant on technical spying while China has an asymmetrical advantage in using its tens of thousands of human spies.

China also is working to subvert the United States by working together with rogue regimes, such as those in North Korea and Iran.

"So in a fight between rogues and a gentleman, the rogues will always win," he said, "because the gentlemen fight a civilized war. The rogues do not fight a civilized war."

Guo said he first visited the United States in 1983 when he was 13 and made numerous visits since then.

"I love my nation. I love my country, but I hate the Communist Party," he said.

Guo has not defected to the United States and holds several foreign passports. His information could provide a windfall of data for the U.S. government policymakers and intelligence analysts.

For example, on North Korea, Guo said he frequently visited North Korea and has known every member of the ruling Kim Jong Un family.

"All the trade conducted between North Korea and China has been conducted by the relatives of the ruling families," he said, noting that the U.S. insistence in relying on the Chinese government to deal with North Korea is "madness."

In Hong Kong, the MSS dispatched an additional 3,000 intelligence officers to the former British colony after the May 2013 incident involving former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who fled to Hong Kong after stealing some 1.7 million secret agency documents.

The MSS agents were dispatched by Ma Jian after the spy service learned the U.S. Consulate in Hong Kong was hosting some 2,600 American agents.

"The office they work for is the Hong Kong Security Department," Guo said, noting that before that time "it was more hit and miss approach" to spying.

"They upped that until now they have 10,000 agents operating in Hong Kong alone."

Guo said Americans need to understand that China is not ruled by a normal government.

"You should look at it as a mafia-like organization," he said.

Second, to understand China, Americans need to study the relatives of the ruling elite in China.

"Once you get to know the interests of these powerful individuals and also the family members, then you get to understand how the regime operates," he said.

Guo hopes the United States will wake up to the threat posed by China's communist system and its plans to subvert the U.S.-led international order.

"If this relationship is not managed well, I think the whole of humanity will confront major problems," he said. "The current approach adopted by the American ruling elite is tantamount to suicide."

Guo warned of the dangers of a world dominated by the current anti-democratic Chinese system.

"If we do not have the United States exercising some kind of control over the world system, the world will turn into a place where men eat men," he said.

Michelle Van Cleave, former national counterintelligence executive during the George W. Bush administration, said China has been preparing for a major escalation of espionage and influence operations against the Untied States.

"Remember their cyber theft of some 22 million personnel files from the Office of Personnel Management?" she said. "The Chinese now have a detailed roster of most if not all American contractors and government employees who have access to classified information, plus a roster of their friends, colleagues, or coworkers who may be useful conduits or potential assets in their own right."

Van Cleave said the OPM data likely will be used by Chinese intelligence to coerce, blackmail, or recruit new sources for an already extensive espionage infrastructure.

"Cyber and human espionage go hand in hand—and the Chinese excel at both," she said. "We urgently need a better understanding of what they are doing and how they are doing it—and a strategy to stop them—because China’s intelligence operations in the U.S. are poised to get much worse."

Former FBI counterspy I.C. Smith said the large number of MSS officers could be a reasonable estimate if the figure includes Chinese who work informally for the service such as students, permanent resident aliens, visitors, and others.

"China is no friend of ours and is never going to be a responsible member of the world community as long as the CCP is in power," Smith said.

"It's a reprehensible, morally and criminally corrupt police state run by a powerful elite whose every waking hour is to figure out how to capitalize on their positions and remain in power," he said.

 

New Study Warns Aircraft Carriers May Be Obsolete (Thanks to Russia and China)

  

 

 

 

Inexpensive Russian and Chinese weapons, such as cyberwar and antiship missiles, threaten the West’s reliance on expensive arms such as aircraft carriers.

“China and Russia appear to have focused many (but not all) their efforts on being able to put at risk the key Western assets that are large, few in number and expensive,” reads a recent study by the Royal United Services Institute, a British military think tank.

“Western governments have become acutely aware of the problems of this financial imbalance in the counterinsurgency context, when they found themselves using weapons costing $70,000, sometimes fired from aircraft that cost $30,000 an hour to fly, to destroy a Toyota pick-up vehicle that might be optimistically valued at $10,000,” the report went on. “Missiles costing (much) less than half a million pounds [$642,000] a unit could at least disable a British aircraft carrier that costs more than £3 billion [$3.9 billion]. Indeed, a salvo of ten such missiles would cost less than $5 million.”

The British report is in response to America’s Third Offset Strategy, the Pentagon’s search for ways to maintain U.S. military superiority amid the rise of asymmetric warfare. The ability of a missile or a computer virus to destroy or disable expensive Cold War–era weapons like aircraft carriers or tanks, or the satellites and computer networks that support them, has left U.S. planners grappling with how to devise new capabilities while rendering older weapons less vulnerable.

But what makes the RUSI report particularly interesting is the nation that authored it. With one-twelfth the defense budget of the United States, Britain can’t afford to lavish money on numerous projects like their cousins across the pond do. So, by necessity, the British study offers a particularly clear-eyed view of the situation.

For example, RUSI points out that the current situation should come as no surprise. The United States fielded stealth aircraft and cruise missiles more than twenty-five years ago. “It would be naive to expect that Russia and China are not where leading NATO states were three decades ago.”

Nor can the West count on technological superiority. American and British armed forces are configured to fight overseas, in expeditionary forces or in support of or allies. In contrast, Russia and China have chosen to focus on fighting near their home borders, such as eastern Europe or the South China Sea. “Thus, although the US spends much more on defence technology development than its potential adversaries, its better technology does not necessarily translate to proportionate military advantage in a specific theatre,” RUSI notes.

The RUSI study suggests that Britain—and implicitly the United States—adopt a four-pronged approach it calls Tolerate, Treat, Transform and Terminate. The first three refer to maintaining the capability of current weapons, upgrading current weapons to meet future threats and developing entirely new technologies.

However, the last option—what RUSI calls Terminate—is the most explosive. It essentially means getting rid of weapons that can no longer perform effectively in combat, yet can’t or are too expensive to upgrade. “The judgement here will be whether it is the most cost-effective means to deliver that effect, or whether a less sophisticated capability might be more appropriate,” RUSI says. “Second, while desirable, the capability could be rapidly reconstituted should the need arise.”

The RUSI report carefully refrains from naming specific weapons that might need to be eliminated. But given the study’s conclusion that Russian and Chinese weapons now threaten Western reliance on a small number of sophisticated and irreplaceable platforms, the large aircraft carriers beloved by the U.S. Navy would seem to be at the top of the list.

This option “is understandably the most difficult, requiring an alignment of stakeholder interests and decisive action,” RUSI admits. It’s also easier for Britain than the United States: the British are unlikely to confront an adversary such as Russia or China alone, without Western and especially U.S. forces that can provide capabilities that Britain can’t. It’s the Americans who need to be able to provide the muscle and the lift.

Nonetheless, perhaps it takes a former great power like Britain, fading gracefully from center stage in the global arena, to admit reality.

Michael Peck is a contributing writer for the National Interest. He can be found on Twitter and Facebook.

Image: ATLANTIC OCEAN (July 6, 2017) Sailors conduct pre-flight checks on an F/A-18E Super Hornet assigned to the Gunslingers of Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 105 on the flight deck aboard the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN 69)(Ike). Ike is underway during the sustainment phase of the Optimized Fleet Response Plan (OFRP).