Tag: Central Intelligence Agency

Chinese Threat Requires a Broader Spying Mission, C.I.A. Deputy Director Says

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The United States is engaging in a broader range of espionage against China, including Chinese companies, to address the country’s status as both a military and an economic threat, the deputy C.I.A. director, Michael Ellis, said on Tuesday. During a rare public speaking appearance, Mr. Ellis said the nature of intelligence collection by the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies had evolved considerably since they were created during the Cold War to spy on the Soviet Union. Unlike past geopolitical rivals, China “poses a fundamentally different kind of threat to us…

Fauci, in Private Diary, Reflected on Covid’s Origins and His Own Fame

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The world was just awakening to the novel coronavirus, and a full-fledged pandemic was still in the future, when Dr. Anthony S. Fauci jotted a note in his diary on Jan. 26, 2020, musing about whether the virus might have originated in an open-air “wet market,” where live animals were sold, in Wuhan, China. “Now we know the market was not the source, it was the amplifier,” Dr. Fauci, then the government’s top infectious disease expert, wrote. “Having said that, somewhere the virus jumped from animals to humans.” Those private…

Top Pentagon Official Worked Closely With C.I.A. Officer Later Found With Gold Bars

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David J. Rush, the former C.I.A. officer found last month with $40 million in gold bars in his home and now under F.B.I. investigation, had powerful friends in government. It turns out that one of them, Stephen A. Feinberg, the deputy secretary of defense, even contacted the C.I.A. earlier this year asking to work more closely with him. Before the C.I.A. fired Mr. Rush, he and Mr. Feinberg worked together on a highly classified program focused on spying on China, according to the current and former officials. Mr. Feinberg reached…

How China May Have Sought to Recruit a House Aide to Spy on the U.S.

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When a man identifying himself as Chris Chen reached out this winter to an aide on a House committee focused on threats from China, he came armed with a lucrative offer. The staff member, Mr. Chen proposed, could earn $10,000 or more by barely lifting a finger. All he would need to do is agree to phone calls every other week to share information about the committee’s work and U.S. foreign policy about China. Insights into U.S. trade or national-security issues, including the Trump administration’s plans for Venezuela in the…

How Did the C.I.A. Lose a Nuclear Device in the Himalayas?

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The mission demanded the utmost secrecy. A team of American climbers, handpicked by the C.I.A. for their mountaineering skills — and their willingness to keep their mouths shut — were fighting their way up one of the highest mountains in the Himalayas. Step by step, they trudged up the razor-toothed ridge, the wind slamming their faces, their crampons clinging precariously to the ice. One misplaced foot, one careless slip, and it was a 2,000-foot drop, straight down. Just below the peak, the Americans and their Indian comrades got everything ready:…

Chinese Spy Agency Rising to Challenge the C.I.A.

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The Chinese spies wanted more. In meetings during the pandemic with Chinese technology contractors, they complained that surveillance cameras tracking foreign diplomats, military officers and intelligence operatives in Beijing’s embassy district fell short of their needs. The spies asked for an artificial intelligence program that would create instant dossiers on every person of interest in the area and analyze their behavior patterns. They proposed feeding the A.I. program information from databases and scores of cameras that would include car license plates, cellphone data, contacts and more. The A.I.-generated profiles would…

Warnings Emerge Over Emirati A.I. Firm G42’s Ties to China

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When the secretive national security adviser of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed, visited the White House in June, his American counterpart, Jake Sullivan, raised a delicate issue: G42, an artificial intelligence firm controlled by the sheikh that American officials believe is hiding the extent of its work with China. In public, the company has announced its staggering growth with a steady cadence of news releases. They have included agreements with European pharmaceutical giants like AstraZeneca and a $100 million deal with a Silicon Valley firm to build…

In Risky Hunt for Secrets, U.S. and China Expand Global Spy Operations

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As China’s spy balloon drifted across the continental United States in February, American intelligence agencies learned that President Xi Jinping of China had become enraged with senior Chinese military generals. The spy agencies had been trying to understand what Mr. Xi knew and what actions he would take as the balloon, originally aimed at U.S. military bases in Guam and Hawaii, was blown off course. Mr. Xi was not opposed to risky spying operations against the United States, but American intelligence agencies concluded that the People’s Liberation Army had kept…

China to Its People: Spies Are Everywhere, Help Us Catch Them

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Beijing sees forces bent on weakening it everywhere: embedded in multinational companies, infiltrating social media, circling naïve students. And it wants its people to see them, too. Chinese universities require faculty to take courses on protecting state secrets, even in departments like veterinary medicine. A kindergarten in the eastern city of Tianjin organized a meeting to teach staffers how to “understand and use” China’s anti-espionage law. China’s Ministry of State Security, a usually covert department that oversees the secret police and intelligence services, has even opened its first social media…

Intelligence Agencies Remain Divided Over Covid Lab Leak Theory

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Intelligence agencies do not believe the case of three workers from a laboratory in Wuhan, China, who became ill in 2019 can help shed light on whether the Covid-19 pandemic originated from an accidental lab leak, according to a report made public Friday. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a long-awaited declassified report, which included spy agencies’ findings on the so-called lab leak theory, but the material is unlikely to satisfy many people who have been wrestling with the unanswered questions on the origins of the Covid…