Politics

Authored by Eva Fu, Catherine Yang via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

For years, Beijing has been deepening its hold on America, drawing intelligence from the U.S. government while silencing critics with the help of agents embedded in U.S. society.

The United States is now hitting back—and seeing results, according to experts.

In early September, prosecutors arrested Linda Sun, former aide to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, accusing her of acting on behalf of Beijing in exchange for gifts and payouts valued in millions of dollars to her family.

There has also been a marked increase in the rate of convictions or pleas in recent months. The Justice Department has brought forth dozens of CCP-directed espionage and foreign agent cases in the past four years, resulting in at least 13 convictions or pleas, with more than half of those taking place this year—including three in the past month. an Epoch Times review of the court records show.

On Aug. 6, a Chinese American scholar posing as a pro-democracy activist was convicted by a jury for spying on dissidents for the CCP.

On Aug. 13, a U.S. army intelligence analyst from Texas pleaded guilty to selling military secrets to the CCP.

On Aug. 23, a software engineer who worked two decades at Verizon pleaded guilty to gathering intelligence on countless dissidents and organizations targeted by the CCP since 2012.

Case documents reveal a broad range of criminal actions taken by agents, often different from what most may imagine to be spying. Beyond industrial espionage and covert influence campaigns, the regime has directed hacker rings, including a group that was charged and sanctioned this year for waging a 14-year campaign on the United States.

“I feel that our nation must take every opportunity to stop these threats,” Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), chair of the cybersecurity subcommittee for the House Armed Services Committee, told The Epoch Times, noting that the U.S. intelligence community has identified Beijing as the number one threat to the United States.

Bacon has experienced Chinese espionage attempts firsthand. Last year, he was hacked by CCP-linked hackers who also broke into email systems of State and Commerce department officials and dozens of other groups.

“Can we ever say that whatever actions we are taking are enough? I don’t believe so as the threats are increasing in frequency, sophistication, and national security impact,” Bacon said.

Who Are the Spies?

The CCP has long targeted people of Chinese descent—of whom there are more than 60 million people outside China—as potential assets in its intelligence operations.

Among those charged by the DOJ in the foreign agent cases are officials of the CCP’s top intelligence gathering agency Ministry of State Security (MSS), Chinese citizens traveling to the United States under false pretenses, hackers residing in Asian countries; as well as asylees, permanent residents, and U.S. citizens of Chinese descent.

Some reside in the United States while dozens of others charged are known to reside in China, and will now face arrest if they ever set foot on American soil.

There are also many who are U.S. citizens that aren’t of Chinese descent. They include active military members, former law enforcement, and experts in competitive fields.

The CCP engages in what experts such as Casey Fleming, chair and CEO of risk consultancy BlackOps Partners, describe as “unrestricted warfare,” meaning there are no legal, ethical, or moral lines it will not cross to pursue its objectives. It capitalizes on one’s baser instincts—greed, pride, lust, shame—to recruit assets.

“Number one, it’s money. Number two, it’s ego. Number three, it’s blackmail,” Fleming, who advises the DOJ, FBI, and Congress on the CCP threat, told The Epoch Times.

In May, two New Yorkers pleaded guilty in an indictment that charged seven, including MSS officials in China, for trying to coerce an American family to go back to China to be imprisoned by the CCP.

The defendant had harassed the Chinese man with bogus lawsuits and told the victim it “really is a drop in the bucket for a country to spend $1 billion” to achieve what the CCP ordered, promising “endless misery” for the victim, he said. “It is definitely true that all of your relatives will be involved.”

In January, a former U.S. Navy sailor was sentenced to 27 months for giving sensitive military information to the CCP over the course of almost two years, in return for about $14,000.

“I mean, he’s paying me so I was like, okay, I’ll just do whatever he says,” the sailor told the FBI in an interview, describing the job as “easy money.”

Several other cases involving former military members include an indicted Navy sailor and army soldier, and a former U.S. army helicopter pilot who pleaded guilty.

Last month, Sgt. Korbein Schultz, an army intelligence analyst with the First Battalion of the 506th Infantry Regiment at Fort Campbell, pleaded guilty to sending military secrets to a CCP agent, receiving $42,000 in return.

Beginning around June 2022, Schultz began sending sensitive military files to an unnamed conspirator working for the CCP.  Schultz received payment up to $1,000 per document in return.

A month into the partnership, Schultz told the conspirator he would like to turn the relationship into a long term one, according to the indictment. He provided materials including details about U.S. precision rockets, their performance, and how they would be used. He also shared manuals and technical data of several US aircraft, documents referencing the Chinese military, and documents related to the U.S. military forces in the Indo-Pacific.

The conspirator asked for information of higher levels of classification as the partnership progressed and promised higher payments for more exclusive information.

“I hope so! I need to get my other BMW back!” Schultz wrote in response to the promise of higher pay. He told the conspirator he wished he could be “Jason Bourne,” and brought up the idea of moving to Hong Kong so he could work for the conspirator in person.

Four months into the partnership, the conspirator raised the suggestion of recruiting another service member who had access to higher classified information, and Schultz set out to do so over the next few months.

In another case, two men who pleaded guilty in July to acting as CCP agents had tried to bribe an IRS agent to target Falun Gong practitioners. Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual practice with five meditative exercises and teaches the principles truth, compassion, and tolerance. Since 1999, the CCP has sought to “eradicate” the practice in a whole-of-state approach.

Unbeknownst to the two men, the IRS agent was an undercover FBI agent, who took the $5,000 bribe and offer of $50,000 total as evidence in their case. In a recorded call, one of the two men, John Chen, said the money came from Chinese authorities, who were “very generous” when it came to their goal to “topple” Falun Gong.

Insider Threat

Fleming says some “insider threats” were planted in companies and the military decades ago, pointing to the former Verizon software engineer who had been sending the CCP data on Chinese dissidents in America since at least 2012 as an example, and companies are now beginning to recognize the long term effort with these high profile cases.

Some recruits are attracted by the money, others prestige. “They’ve done that to Harvard professors and so on: ‘We’re going to let you set up a sister lab in China … and you’ll be the head of the lab,‘” Fleming said as an example. “’You’re so smart and accomplished. We‘d like you to do a white paper.’”

Fleming said he receives a few of these offers a year himself. The most recent one, from Hong Kong, came just months ago. He promptly deleted it. “I know what’s going on, but many people don’t, and they take $7,500 to do a white paper,” Fleming said.

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