Government spying dates back over 6,000 years ago to early Mesopotamia, where history informs us that institutions and people devoted to their ruling regimes worked in secret to preserve and protect rulers using spy tradecraft. In China, written records from the fifth century mention spying in the Indus Valley. Perhaps, one of the best know texts from that era is Sun Tzu’s comprehensive military treatise, The Art of War. Although technology has changed over the millennium, espionage remains a tool that is used to illicitly acquire information from other nation-states and today, the private sector. Beijing runs one of the most complex spy networks in the world, not simply to protect itself from foreign attack, but also as an economic tool to steal and reverse engineer advanced technologies available only in the West. China also employs an extensive electronic intelligence network to surveille and gather information overseas. It has “many schools of small fish in the sea,” according to one Chinese official formerly stationed in Washington, DC. He compared Chinese spies to small grains of sand on a beach. Individually there is not much to see. “Many grains of sand [do] form a beachhead.”
Beijing has a long history of successfully using good tradecraft to recruit spies in the United States. One former FBI official estimated that there may be over 10,000 spies in the DC area, many of them working for China. This week Philip Lenczycki, an investigative reporter and China Watcher in Washington, DC exposed yet another case of concern to US officials. It is at least the second time a Democrat from California has been closely connected to a Chinese intelligence operation. In 2018, it was US Senator Diane Feinstein’s staffer. This week the China connection is linked to Rep. Judy Chu.
For at least 12 years, Chu has been involved with a Chinese front organization and remains listed as its honorary president. The All America Chinese Youth Federation (AACYF) has an innocent sounding name. Like the Confucius Institutes run by communist China inside the US, the name does not give away the true purpose of its operation. Chu helped the group by opening the Silicon Valley high technology corridor to Beijing. “During Chu’s tenure at AACYF, its leadership has included multiple individuals who’ve belonged to China-based organizations that allegedly operate as front groups for a Chinese intelligence service,” says Lenczycki. AACYF’s leadership is purported to include individuals who belonged to organizations allegedly serving a Chinese government agency tasked with overseeing and coordinating CCP influence operations in North America.
As early as 2013, Congresswoman Chu led events held by the organization, including at a Silicon Valley
technology summit where she served as “chairman.” Five of AACYF’s leaders who’ve served at the non-profit during Chu’s tenure have “belonged to organizations allegedly serving a Chinese government agency tasked with overseeing and coordinating CCP influence operations,” says Lenczycki. “The so-called United Front Work Department (UFWD) has been identified by government agencies, legislative bodies and experts as a central organ of CCP influence efforts, and experts also say UFWD works in concert with Chinese intelligence operatives,” he adds.
Recently Rep. Chu voted against the formation of the House Select Committee tasked with examining Chinese influence in the United States. She defended her action by claiming the initiative to examine communist China’s influence operations in the country could lead to violence. According to California Rep. Mike Garcia, Congress is interested only in “combatting the CCP, not the Chinese people.” The Resolution passed 365-65 with strong bipartisan support.
The United States is a very open society. During the Soviet era KGB agents, posing as Soviet media, held 24-hour, unescorted passes that allowed them to walk freely around the US Department of State and eat lunch in the Main State building cafeteria among US diplomats. President Reagan’s Administration put an end to it. Today, it is the Chinese who are running rampant throughout our institutions. They have been caught working inside the intelligence community for the CIA, FBI, and other areas since the US opened relations with China in 1979.
In 2018 it was revealed that Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA) had a Chinese spy on her staff for 20 years as her personal driver. During that time, she served on the US Senate Intelligence Committee. Her staffer reported through the Chinese Consulate in San Francisco to the Chinese Ministry of State Security. A top Justice Department official at the time said, “Focusing on his driver function alone, in Mafia families, the boss’s driver was among the most trusted men in the crew, because among other things he heard everything that was discussed in the car.” It appears China had access to a top official’s conversations, documents, home, and office. A former top CIA clandestine officer in 2018 said that the Chinese probably had the driver put down an audio device in her home or offices and target the Senator and those around her who showed vulnerabilities. He said that Beijing “would have had a field day.”
Only three years before the Feinstein case broke, a cyberattack by China into the US Office of Personnel Management’s database resulted in the loss of the security forms for many thousands of cleared executive branch officials. Chinese spies in Washington at the FBI and the State Department obtained information on CIA sources inside China. It is believed to have resulted in the deaths of dozens of individuals in Beijing. The challenges reach inside the White House itself. There are calls for the President and his family to be investigated for their financial connections to China. An open and friendly society is important to the American people, but it should not mean the United States will allow China to walk through our institutions and undermine national security.
Daria Novak served in the U.S. State Dept.
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