Leading Counter-Intelligence Official States China is Ramping Up its Attempts to Influence Biden and His Team.

The Director of the United States National Counterintelligence and Security Center (NCSC), William R. Evanina, has stated that the Chinese Communist Party has already begun ramping up their attempts to influence Biden and his team. In his speech at the fifth annual Aspen Cyber Summit, Evanina stated that he and his team were anticipating an attack, but this recent operation was an attack "on steroids". He went on to state:

"We've also seen an uptick, which was planned and we predicted, that China would now revector their influence campaigns to the new administration".

In his speech, he states that the Chinese Communist Party were seeking to influence the development of the Covid-19 vaccines as well as the recent election. Evanina goes on to reiterate that even those associated with those working for Biden have been targeted:

"And when I say that, that malign foreign influence, that diplomatic influence plus, or on steroids, we're starting to see that play across the country to not only the folks starting in the new administration, but those who are around those folks in the new administration.”

He states then goes on to outline his method to counter this attempted subversion:

"So that's one area we're going to be very keen on making sure the new administration understands that influence, what it looks like, what it tastes like, what it feels like when you see it".

Director of the United States National Counterintelligence and Security Center, William R. Evanina.

Also in attendance, Chief of the Justice Department's National Security Division, John Demers. Demers stated that hundreds of researchers with personal ties to the Chinese Communist Party’s military had been identified by the FBI over the summer. Demers explains that the FBI’s successful identification of these researchers originated in the discovery of five or six Chinese researchers that had deliberately concealed their links to the People’s Liberation Army. He goes on to state:

"Those five or six arrests were just the tip of the iceberg and honestly the size of the iceberg was one that I don't know that we or other folks realised how large it was"

Following up on the arrest of this small group of individuals, the FBI conducted a dozen interviews with other Chinese nationals. Following this, over 1000 People's Liberation Army affiliated researchers fled the country. Demers states that "only the Chinese have the resources and ability and will" to conduct such widescale political and economic espionage. This follows recent press releases detailing widescale corporate espionage conducted by the Chinese Communist party. In the medical field, 90% of cases involving intellectual property theft have involved china[1]. In September, thousands of Chinese students had their Visas revoked over concerns of further espionage. In retaliation, the Chinese Communist Party stated that the United States was racially discriminating against the Chinese, which Demers dismissed. Following these discoveries, current Sino-American relations are at their lowest point in recent history.

1 - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/06/china-technology-theft-fbi-biggest-threat