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March 22, 2024

The U.S. House of Representatives recently passed a bill that would force TikTok’s Chinese owner to either sell the video app or have it banned in the United States.

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Although there is a debate over the details and approach of the law itself, the bill represents growing concerns over just how far the tentacles of Chinese spying reach.

Indeed, these tentacles are expanding well beyond TikTok through the complex and expanding sea of international economic cooperation, advancing technologies and intelligence gathering methods, intensive military integration with foreign partners, and the role of independent firms with valuable information. As a result, significant risks to U.S. intelligence have been identified in foreign bases where U.S. military technologies are used, at home through critical threats to U.S. infrastructure and technologies, and, most recently, through U.S. contracting firms with links to the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

PRC Military and Infrastructure Expansion

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Over the past decade, the U.S. government has become more and more attentive to the threats posed by the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) extension of its technology and infrastructure across the world, particularly as the PRC has proliferated its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) into states that are security partners with the U.S. At the same time, the Biden administration continues to implement its National Security Strategy of ‘integrated deterrence’ against China and is building deeper security relationships with global partners. Many of these partner states are adopting PRC technologies, military infrastructure, and civilian infrastructure, which the government believes present risks to U.S. intelligence and security. 

The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD), for example, has stated that the use of PRC Fifth Generation (5G) technologies by U.S. allies would “create security risks for DOD operations overseas that rely on networks with Chinese components in the supply chain.” Similarly, regarding CCP military equipment, General Michael Erik Kurilla stated in a U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee Hearing on USCENTCOM that the CCP’s expanding sales of arms and equipment in the region complicates partnership and cooperation with U.S. forces, noting, ‘…if there is Chinese equipment there, we are not going to be able to integrate it with U.S. equipment.’ PRC military infrastructure projects, such as ports and military bases, also raise red flags for U.S. security cooperation. 

As a result, both the Biden and Trump administrations have attempted to sanction the use of certain PRC technologies and infrastructure by U.S. partners that pose intelligence and security hazards. For example, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency raised concerns about major Chinese investment in Israel, in particular the Haifa port, and eventually led the Israeli navy to take special actions to protect its platforms from spying. In 2021, CIA Director Bill Burns told Prime Minister Naftali Bennett the U.S. was concerned about Chinese investments in Israel, particularly in the tech sector and on major infrastructure projects, and pushed for the creation of an Israeli advisory mechanism to address the national security aspects of foreign investment (the Advisory Committee for National Security Affairs in Foreign Investment). The government has even pressured Britain to divest from Huawei in its 5G networks, in part to protect U.S. personnel and proprietary defense information in future deployments to British bases, and has resisted arms cooperation between U.S. allies and China and Russia.

PRC Hacking and Threats to U.S. Infrastructure

Security and intelligence vulnerabilities are also continuing to emerge at home. In 2023, Microsoft disclosed that a China-based hacking group, which they call “Storm- 0558,” is focused on “gaining access to email systems for intelligence collection” and has breached an unidentified number of email accounts linked to around 25 organizations, including some related to individual consumer accounts and government agencies in Western Europe and the U.S. More recently, U.S. officials and industry security officials told The Washington Post that the Chinese military is ramping up its ability to disrupt key American infrastructure, including power and water utilities as well as communications and transportation systems by burrowing into the computer systems of these entities.

Earlier this year, the U.S. and international cybersecurity authorities issued a joint Cybersecurity Advisory (CSA) following the discovery of a cluster of activity of interest associated with a PRC state-sponsored cyber actor, Volt Typhoon. Volt Typhoon, which has traditionally focused on espionage and information gathering, has been developing capabilities that could disrupt critical infrastructure in areas that include communications, manufacturing, utilities, transportation, construction, maritime, government, information technology, and education. According to the Executive Director of the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), Brandon Wales: