China wants our stuff. They want our intellectual property; they want our proprietary technology; they want our agricultural secrets and lab learnings —they want everything!
While speaking with business leaders in London, FBI Director Christopher Wray said “the Chinese government is set on stealing your technology—whatever it is that makes your industry tick—and using it to undercut your business and dominate your market.”
Despite Wray’s warning and similar words of caution from those within the intelligence community, we’re still hearing about the CCP infiltrating high levels of government, educational institutions, and some of our most powerful companies and financial institutions.
And apparently, CIA Director William Burns buddied up with them, as well.
According to a report from The Daily Caller, “Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns formerly headed an influential D.C. think tank while it employed undisclosed Chinese Communist Party (CCP) members as well as individuals with Chinese government ties.”
“During Burns’ tenure as president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace from February 2015 to November 2021, the think tank employed at least 20 policy experts whom the [Daily Caller] has identified as CCP members.”
Wray issued a warning in July 2020 that the CCP seeks to “influence our policymakers” and “manipulate our public opinion” by exploiting the “openness” of our society.
They don’t make the best candidates for positions with access to sensitive information.
“It’s pretty much a fatal cul-de-sac that [Burns] finds himself in,” Steve Yates, former deputy national security adviser to the vice president, told the Daily Caller.
“Either he appears to have allowed government-linked experts from a hostile power to affiliate with an organization boasting many former and future U.S. appointees or he didn’t know or bother to check — a remarkable lapse in operational security for a highly-cleared former U.S. official and pretty disqualifying for a director of Central Intelligence,” said Yates.
“If you can’t track who was in your think tank, running a much larger intelligence agency is the wrong line of work.”
“If any Communist Party members have easy access to any sensitive information whatsoever, they’re certain to get a visit from Chinese intelligence,” said Yates. “They will have no choice but to gather and disclose on a regular basis going forward.”
Remember when Wray warned the CCP was digging up seeds from American farmers’ fields?
“We’ve even caught people affiliated with Chinese companies out in the U.S. heartland, sneaking into fields to dig up proprietary, genetically modified seeds, which would have cost them nearly a decade and billions in research to develop themselves.”
The CCP isn’t messing around —our leaders need to be more diligent about checking the backgrounds of the people they hire.
[h/t The Daily Caller]
