China targets US military members in overseas spy operations, former CIA station chief warns
A former CIA station chief says China has U.S. military service members and government employees in the "crosshairs" of its overseas spy operations.
Jian Zhao and Li Tian, both active-duty Army soldiers, were arrested in early March after allegedly selling "Top Secret" information to individuals based in China, according to the Department of Justice. Zhao and Tian were both indicted by federal grand juries in Washington and Oregon.
Federal prosecutors allege Tian sold sensitive military information to former soldier Ruoyu Duan, who would allegedly receive money from individuals residing in China. Tian then allegedly received tens of thousands of dollars for selling the sensitive information.
Included in the alleged documents Tian sold was a Google Drive link containing classified documents about the Stryker combat vehicle. Tian also allegedly sent additional sensitive data on U.S. weapons systems.
Bombshell Report Suggests 'Chinese Spies' Infiltrating Prestigious Us University: 'Widespread Campaign'
Prosecutors said the incidents highlight efforts by China to use "cut-outs," known as people trusted by Chinese intelligence services, to gather sensitive information that could help the Chinese government. Those "cut-outs" then recruit individuals with access to or knowledge of U.S. government information, which includes current and former government officials.
Read On The Fox News App
According to the court documents, security video showed Tian allegedly brought his personal cellphone into a classified area of Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington in May 2024, printed a classified document and left with it. He would allegedly return over three hours later with the document. Prosecutors also alleged that Tian took screenshots of sensitive information on several occasions.
In a connected case at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Zhao allegedly sold classified information to an unnamed co-conspirator. According to federal prosecutors, Zhao received at least $15,000 for the documents. Zhao allegedly sold 20 military hard drives to an individual in China, some containing a "Secret" label.
Zaho allegedly conspired to sell information related to the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System as well as information related to U.S. military readiness if there was a war with China.
"While bribery and corruption have thrived under China's Communist Party, this behavior cannot be tolerated with our service members who are entrusted with sensitive military information, including national defense information," said FBI Director Kash Patel on the charges.
Former CIA station chief Dan Hoffman told Fox News Digital he thinks U.S. military service members as well as government employees are being targeted to take part in these spy operations.
Former Us Army Intelligence Analyst Sentenced For Selling Sensitive Documents To Chinese National
"I think anybody who serves in the U.S. government is in the crosshairs. And China will do it," Hoffman said. "Sometimes they'll run their recruitment operations posing as someone else. So maybe somebody doesn't want to go spy for China, but they might pretend to be somebody else. Or they might contact you on social media, on LinkedIn or some other site and pose as someone not so nefarious when in fact they are."
Hoffman said gaining intel from the U.S. military is one of the Chinese government's "highest requirements."
"They want to recruit U.S. military because there's a probability we might go to war with China, and not just U.S. military, but NATO members as well, and throughout Asia. So they've got a massive intelligence apparatus," he said.
China isn't just targeting the U.S. military. It's targeting many other aspects of American society as well, including academia.
Five former University of Michigan students were charged in October 2024 after they were allegedly caught spying on a National Guard training center for the Chinese government during a training session with the Taiwanese military.
The former University of Michigan students were confronted by a Utah National Guard sergeant major in August 2023 near a lake at Camp Grayling in Michigan.
Michael Sobolik, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute focusing on U.S. and China relations, told Fox News Digital the Chinese Communist Party "will exercise whatever tactics they feel they need to by hook or crook to get our military secrets," adding China is "shameless."
"This is a tactic that China is exercising in the new Cold War that we're locked in with the Chinese Communist Party. And one of the things that is really striking is the low price that a lot of Americans are willing to sell their patriotism for and their allegiance for. Some of these people didn't get that much money to sell some really sensitive military secrets over to the Chinese Communist Party," Sobolik said.
Fox News' Michael Dorgan contributed to this report.Original article source: China targets US military members in overseas spy operations, former CIA station chief warns
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Epoch Times
41 minutes ago
- Epoch Times
14 People Charged in $25 Million COVID Relief, Small Business Loan Fraud Scheme
Fourteen people were arrested on May 28 for allegedly being involved in a scheme to fraudulently obtain over $25 million in COVID-19 relief funds and federally guaranteed small business loans, according to the Department of Justice (DOJ). The individuals are among the 18 people charged in connection with the case. Four who have not yet been arrested are currently believed to be in Armenia, the DOJ said in a
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
When College Graduates Face Reality
This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning. 'History found you.' In 2020, Caitlin Flanagan told recent college graduates that their dreams were interrupted in much the same way her father's dreams had once been interrupted. In 1941, he was a new student at Amherst College, 'and he thought it was paradise,' Caitlin wrote. Then the Pearl Harbor bombing happened, and he and his college peers enlisted in the Army the very next day. History found both of these generations and left them with a whole lot of plans deferred, but perhaps also something great—'As very young people you know something powerful: that you have been tested, and you did not falter,' Caitlin wrote. 'You kept going.' Caitlin's essay is one of a series of commencement speeches The Atlantic commissioned in 2020 for students who would not be able to attend their graduation. In them, writers spoke to young people growing up in the shadow of loss, who were watching as humanity as a whole was tested. While 2025 isn't the same topsy-turvy reality as 2020, students still face a core uncertainty about what comes next. Below is a collection of honest, not-always-rosy, but often hopeful advice for the graduate in your life. On Graduating You Thought You Were Free, but History Found You By Caitlin Flanagan The 2020 commencement speech you'll never hear Read the article. I Didn't Get to Graduate Either By Bridget Phetasy In May 1998, I should have been finishing my first year at an Ivy League college. Instead, I was in a state-funded halfway house in Minneapolis trying to recover from a heroin addiction. Read the article. A Commencement Address Too Honest to Deliver in Person By David Brooks I couldn't say these things during a traditional ceremony, but these aren't traditional times. Read the article. Still Curious? 'I didn't have any graduation wisdom. So I asked 19 smart people instead.' Joe Pinsker relayed what a novelist, a therapist, a Buddhist teacher, and others had to say to the class of 2020. The long goodbye to college: Any recent graduate will tell you that their head felt heaviest after the cap came off, Amogh Dimri writes. Other Diversions The Nobel Prize winner who thinks we have the universe all wrong How to look at Paul Gauguin The curse of Ayn Rand's heir P.S. I recently asked readers to share a photo of something that sparks their sense of awe in the world. 'Sunrise symmetry: a reminder of the order that exists in this chaotic world,' Courtney C., 74 , from Bermuda Run, North Carolina, writes. I'll continue to feature your responses in the coming weeks. — Isabel Article originally published at The Atlantic
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Starmer's enslavement to woke ideology is a gift to the new axis of evil
When wokeness in Britain went from being a loony Left preoccupation to a way of life, hot on the heels of America's wokeward tack in 2020, only fools, villains and villainous fools insisted that nothing much was happening – apart from a bit of long overdue fairness. Of course, they said, the old Right-wing cis white straight men and women were squealing about the embrace by the virtuous of 'social justice' and 'equity,' but that didn't mean there was a real culture war afoot. It was obvious to me from the start of the woke era, however, that this was not 'just' a culture war but a real one, in a truly modern sense, with real consequences that would be felt far beyond a few workplaces or university seminar rooms. The vaulting from the seminar room into the world of the ideology linking 'white privilege' to empire to colonialism to the immovable fact of white British guilt has led to poisonous politics on the Left, a troubling reaction on the populist Right, and a ruling class who make decisions with our money, our personal safety and the security of the country based on it. If people have been injured or died already thanks to wokeness – for instance in the failure to confidently and properly police Islamist terror suspects or BAME (Black, Asian and minority ethnic knife crime), or in the body-destroying treatments handed out by LGBTQ+ allies to kids who said they were trans in the gender movement that followed Black Lives Matter – then much more is set to come. One of the most flagrant case studies in how the woke mindset can be physically dangerous is Starmer's Chagos islands agreement. The 'deal' is to hand the British territory to Mauritius, and lease back the land on the island of Diego Garcia, on which sits a strategically vital, Anglo-American military base. The lease costs £30 billion, and will be paid over 99 years. The Government's strange argument for the deal was that it would prevent the security risks that could come from instability due to international lawfare on this last 'colonial' outpost of Britain's. Starmer, somehow, did not think that it was more of a security concern that Chinese influence in Mauritius is malign and growing: China has now announced that Mauritius will be joining its power-grabbing Belt and Road initiative. Indeed, Starmer's comments about the handover in a press conference were very odd. He said with confidence that only Britain's enemies were against it. 'In favour are all of our allies: the US, Nato, Five Eyes, India. Against it: Russia, China, Iran.' Yet days after it went through, China was celebrating. Beijing's ambassador to Mauritius, Huang Shifang, told guests at the Chinese embassy in Mauritius's capital of Port Louis that China sent 'massive congratulations' to Mauritius on the deal, and that China 'fully supports' Mauritius's attempt to 'safeguard national sovereignty'. It's hard to think of a more cynical, almost joyously so, use of this terminology. China, after all, is a country obsessed with taking by force the democratic, independent Taiwan (Mauritius, China has made clear, supports its doctrine that Taiwan is already part of China); repressing free speech in Hong Kong, where it operates a subtle reign of terror, and subjecting its Uyghur Muslim population in Xinjiang to sadistic treatment in internment camps. And now it gets to set about enjoying all manner of devious proximity to our all-important Eastern base. So yes, Britain's Chagos deal makes delicious sense to China, but makes no sense for us. Unless, of course, you are Starmer and his inner circle, and you're enslaved to the twin ideologies of post-colonialism and 'international law' – which lands you in the awkward and unfortunate position, as we have seen, of ending up in agreement with China on core values like self-determination. It's a mess. All this Chinese gloating disguised as proper appreciation for nations' rights to freedom from colonial shackles serves as a useful reminder of just how suspicious such language has become. Yes, it is mass-peddled by august 'international' bodies, NGOs, courts and the UN. But these have all been corrupted by those with sinister anti-Western agendas. Indeed, the intranational bodies charged with pursuing a kinder world order with 'human rights' pursued through law always seem to favour those who care least about those obligations. It was telling when Lord Hermer, Starmer's attorney general, compared those in favour of withdrawal from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) to the Nazi philosopher and jurist Carl Schmitt, when what membership of the ECHR really means, in practice, is having to treat terrorists and foreign mass murderers with the utmost consideration. The greatest, longest-running example of the hijacking of a world organisation is the UN, which has been faking outrage at violations of 'international law' to endanger and ostracise Israel for decades. As Natasha Hausdorff, the international lawyer known for pointing out the legal flaws in the numerous evil smears levelled at Israel, notes : 'Armies of NGOs [have fed] the United Nations system and international bodies like the ICC and ICJ' so that 'pseudo-legal language permeates public discourse about Israel. This has now broken into public consciousness, but it has been building in the NGO world and UN world for a long time.' The once honourable ICJ – the International Court of Justice – was seized by South Africa to bring a case against Benjamin Netanyahu as a war criminal even as Israel sacrificed soldiers fighting Hamas in Gaza, resulting in an arrest warrant for the Israeli PM which Britain refuses to reject. As the famous American lawyer and Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz says of the ICJ: 'It's not international, it's not a court and it doesn't do justice.' The bloc that still determines the balance of power and the fate of countries – just – is the Western one. And we are now in great peril, due to being gullible and ill-informed, anti-Semitic, terror-appeasing and morally confused. Our cultures swallowed whole by Leftist cultural theories that were meant to never leave academia – those of post-structuralism and post-colonialism – and under their influence we turn our faces towards the lies pouring from the Eastern axis of 'resistance' – with lethal consequences. The international human rights community in all its respectable clout gives this evil nonsense the stamp of approval. Older people just about remember when international law meant something. Some saw first-hand the real genocide of the mid-20th century, others spectacular bloodshed under monsters and in the course of war. Some of us just remember hearing about those times and events, from parents and grandparents. To us, the souring of organisations like the ECHR, ICC, ICJ, UN – the whole concept of 'international law' itself – is bitter and clear. The rising generation, though, those who have taken up en masse the garbage of third-rate academic theories about coloniser and oppressor, who misuse terms including racism, apartheid, genocide, settler-colonialism, fascism and even capitalism, seem to genuinely think these corrupted organisations are the end of the moral and geopolitical rainbow. That reference to their motions and cases and objections and votes must end all arguments; that the old animating force behind international courts for human rights and justice was just a relic of a racist age, and now we know better. In some ways we do. But those who still chase after 'international' legitimacy are barking up the wrong tree – either accidentally or, like China, on purpose. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
