After reviewing the CIA's priorities, Director William Burns recently announced the establishment of a China Mission Center in the spy agency. Current and former U.S. intelligence officials recently talked about the challenges posed by China’s large-scale espionage campaign against the U.S. Ian Morton/NPR hide caption

After reviewing the CIA's priorities, Director William Burns recently announced the establishment of a China Mission Center in the spy agency. Current and former U.S. intelligence officials talked about the challenges posed by China’s large-scale espionage activities against the U.S. at a recent meeting.

It is very rare for American spies to gather at the conference and talk publicly about the most pressing national security threats.

Cynthia Saddy, a retired CIA officer, said: “I have to tell everyone that after 27 years of secret service, it’s so strange to see your photo and resume suddenly appear.” When she was on the island of Georgia When talking to a ballroom crowded with current and former intelligence officials at a resort in, a huge screen showed her photos and important positions in the agency, including the chief of staff of the Bureau of Operations.

A former CIA director, Michael Hayden, participated in the crypto briefing threat meeting in a virtual manner and helped set the tone because he shared his advice to the current CIA director, William Burns. "First, you must go to China. Second, you must go to China. Third, you must go to China. He said,'Okay, I get it,'" Hayden recalled. For decades, the US intelligence community has been following the Soviet Union. Then the top priority is Middle East terrorism. Now, the intelligence community says that a new era has begun.

"I call it entering the third era of intelligence," Sugordon said. In a series of high-level jobs, she provided intelligence briefings to five of the past six presidents, and then retired as the chief deputy director of the National Intelligence Agency in 2019.

"We kind of woke up from the counter-terrorism coma and realized that the world has become digital and we are not focusing on everything we need to do," she said. "The rise of China occurred in those years, and now you see that we are talking about great power competition."

In September, Chinese President Xi Jinping walked past the guard of honor in Beijing. The U.S. intelligence community and other parts of the national security agency are increasingly concerned about China as a major competitor of the United States. Andy Wong/Associated Press hide caption

In September, Chinese President Xi Jinping walked past the guard of honor in Beijing. The U.S. intelligence community and other parts of the national security agency are increasingly concerned about China as a major competitor of the United States.

Burns, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, a CIA center dedicated to China, seems to have accepted all these suggestions. After reviewing the CIA's priorities, his first major move was announcing the establishment of the China Mission Center to focus more on countries that are regarded as the main competitors of the United States. David Cohen, no. The CIA official No. 2 told the meeting that this means more resources will be invested in China, different departments of the agency will coordinate their work in China more closely, and Burns will hold a weekly weekly event specifically for China. Meeting.

"We gradually realized that we need to strengthen and synchronize our efforts in China," he said.

The competition between China and the United States in many areas is heating up, and Chinese leader Xi Jinping is increasingly talking about his country’s growing global influence and his views on the decline of the United States.

The US intelligence community wants to know what Xi Jinping thinks of Taiwan, where tensions have been increasing. China’s recent hypersonic missile test seems to have taken the United States by surprise. There is also continuous competition for cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence. Critics say this continuous warning about China’s threats could become a self-fulfilling prophecy, exacerbating tensions with Beijing, and causing the United States to ignore other potential flashpoints from Russia to Iran to North Korea. David Cohen gave this response: "I want to quickly add that we are the Central Intelligence Agency. We are not the Chinese Intelligence Agency."

Nevertheless, this meeting vividly demonstrated how the American intelligence community turned to China.

China’s large-scale intelligence operations focus on technology. Current and former officials say that no country—even the Soviet Union at its peak—is as comprehensive as China to monitor the United States.

"They have more people than we thought. They will collect as much data as possible, put it in a big data pool, and then use artificial intelligence, use machines to process and then target us," the former CIA chief of staff pulls Lee Pfeiffer said. "I mean, it's scary." China pursues traditional espionage targets—government and military secrets. But Beijing wants more than that. China is unique in its comprehensive and systematic approach to collecting cutting-edge technologies from American companies and universities.

So how should the United States protect itself? "Our system is really built to fight against nation-states. It focuses on illegal things, direct military applications. What we are seeing now, especially the focus of academia and business," Anna said Puglisi, one A former intelligence officer with a focus on China. She now works at the Security and Emerging Technology Center at Georgetown University. "This is a very, very different threat from what we have faced in the past." She said that academia is particularly sharing spirit and is generally unwilling to impose restrictions.

"We did receive a lot of resistance in this regard, because (scholars) would say,'Well, this is open research,'" she said. "It's true. We don't want to stop it. But the point is that our scholars should choose when to share their information and when not."

Before the new coronavirus pandemic reduced the number of people, China had more than 300,000 students in American universities, far more than any other country. Many people study and participate in important research in high-tech fields. Bill Evanina (Bill Evanina), who has led a number of government investigations into intellectual property theft, said that the United States should not close its doors to top students from China and elsewhere. However, he believes that universities need to better understand the risks. After leaving the government this year, he set up a company to help schools protect themselves in the STEM field. He said: "What we have to focus on is only a small group of people, the postgraduate STEM world, where (the Chinese government) is seeking research and intelligence to help their military and academia."

A target that is difficult to monitor

Another key point is that because of its tight internal security and ubiquitous surveillance, China has become a well-known and difficult target for the United States to monitor. Paul Kolbe, a former CIA official and now in charge of the intelligence project at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University, said that the United States may want to collect more intelligence about China, but it is difficult to do so. "You can't tap the switch and suddenly have stable Chinese assets, which greatly penetrates the government," Corbe said. "You must train officials who understand language and culture, so that you can build the deep trust relationship required for agency action."

US intelligence agencies underwent a thorough reform after the 9/11 attacks. Institutions that had been facing the Soviet Union and Russia for decades suddenly found themselves in need of Arabic speakers with a deep understanding of Islamic extremism. So where does the CIA recruit these new officers? The ideal candidate should be fluent in Mandarin, possess an advanced degree in artificial intelligence, and be willing to work for the government. "So it's quite a unicorn, right? It's not easy, but they are there," said Cynthia Strand, who retired last year after 35 years at the CIA. She now works for a private company called Primer, which uses artificial intelligence to classify large amounts of data, find specific information, then aggregate it and translate it from Mandarin to English.

"Imagine if you have a large group of excellent interns," Strand said. "You want to put them on tasks where they can grind their teeth and learn, and leave higher mental work to people who have been trained and practiced for a long time." She said that human intelligence is still vital, but technology continues to move forward. . "No one, no one, no matter how good they are, can consume and understand the amount of data available. Machines can do this very well," Strand added.

She said this is just an example of how technology redefines spying for a new era—an era that will continue to exist.

Greg Myre is a national security reporter for NPR. Follow him @gregmyre1.