The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has witnessed a 1300 per cent jump in China-linked economic espionage cases over the past decade, the Pentagon said in a report released on Wednesday.
The Pentagon's report titled Military and Security Development Involving the People's Republic of China, 2021, said that the FBI in 2020 opened a new China-related counterintelligence case about every 10 hours.
Christopher Wray, FBI Director, had stated that "of the nearly 5,000 active FBI counterintelligence cases currently underway (in 2020), almost half are related to China," according to a report.
"Multiple US criminal indictments since 2015 involve Chinese nationals, naturalized US citizens or permanent resident aliens from the PRC, and the US citizens, procuring and exporting controlled items to China, according to a US Department of Justice summary of major U.S. export enforcement, economic espionage, and sanctions-related criminal cases," it said.
China's efforts to acquire sensitive, dual-use or military-grade equipment included radiation-hardened integrated circuits, monolithic microwave integrated circuits, accelerometers, gyroscopes, naval and marine technologies, syntactic foam trade secrets, space communications, military communication jamming equipment and others, the report read.
In September 2020, a Chinese national in the US pled guilty to conspiring to fraudulently export maritime raiding craft and engines to China. The US military uses these vessels and multi-fuel engines because they can be launched from a submerged submarine, or dropped into the ocean by an aircraft. No comparable engine is manufactured in China.
In June 2020, a Chinese national in the US was sentenced to 36 months in federal custody for attempting to send to China an export controlled radio, which is designated as a defence article due to its certification by the National Security Agency for top-secret wire and data communications, the report added.
( With inputs from ANI )
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