Following the Trump administration’s successful capture of Nicolás Maduro, much has been written about the Venezuelan leader’s cooperation with China, from intelligence sharing to military access and technology transfers in the Western Hemisphere, and why the Trump administration was right to act against him.
But while many policy analysts focus on China’s influence abroad, many have paid far less attention to how easily the Chinese Communist Party can access sensitive information here at home, often because we fail to enforce our own rules governing electronic devices inside secure facilities.
Ken Calvert, the Chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, points out that when the U.S. won the Cold War, it was clear we had the most powerful military on earth, and it looked like no one else could catch up.
However, in just 30 years, China has nearly done so. The country has built the second-largest economy in the world and is using that economic power to fund a military buildup that is faster and more sophisticated than anything we have seen before.
China’s rise has not come from innovation alone. Both economically and militarily, it has been built on the systematic theft of U.S. commercial and defense secrets.
Developing designs, gathering data, building production systems, and creating intellectual property is expensive and time-consuming. A country can move much faster if it can “borrow” that work from others and focus only on production. That is what China has done for decades, and its ability to do so has only increased over the last ten years with digital technology, especially cell phones.
Twenty years ago, espionage centered on stealing a handful of documents. Today it involves the theft and transmission of massive files, complete weapons manuals, and thousands of photographs of U.S. military equipment in use on American bases and ships, making it far easier for China to jump directly to production.
In 2025 alone, there were at least ten public cases of individuals charged or convicted of spying for China using their cell phones. Those cases are only the tip of the iceberg. Many more are resolved quietly when classified material is involved, to avoid exposing sensitive information in open court.
As cell phones become more powerful and ubiquitous, enforcement against their presence in sensitive facilities has not kept pace. Many government locations display signs stating, “No unauthorized electronic devices allowed.”
Unfortunately, those policies are often treated the same way speed limits are treated on America’s highways: respected only when enforcement is visible. In facilities without real enforcement mechanisms, people bring in phones with impunity, assuming it is acceptable because they lack malicious intent. Few consider that their devices could be compromised or that widespread noncompliance provides cover for someone who does have hostile intent.
According to retired CIA executive Rodney Alto, fewer than 10 percent of intelligence community facilities that prohibit electronic devices have any mechanism to detect them. Where detection systems do exist, experience shows that people still attempt to bring in unauthorized devices, proving that facilities without protection are likely admitting thousands of compromising devices without ever knowing it.
This helps explain how China has been able to catch up so quickly. As the United States develops new weapons and defense systems, China learns from stolen copies of our work and races to keep pace.
This must be corrected — and now.
China’s military modernization is accelerating as its claims against Taiwan intensify. Taiwan produces nearly all of the world’s most advanced semiconductor chips, supplying companies such as NVIDIA, Intel, IBM, and others, placing the center of advanced computing just 115 miles from mainland China.
At the same time, the United States is preparing the largest buildup of military intellectual property in history. Programs such as Golden Dome, the Columbia-class submarine, the B-21 Raider, nuclear triad modernization, and hypersonic weapons rely on technologies that do not yet exist. That gives us a rare opportunity to protect these secrets before they are created, and before they can be stolen.
We know extraordinary technologies are coming. Now is the time to enforce a government-wide ban on unauthorized electronic devices in sensitive facilities, backed by mandatory detection systems, real penalties for violations, and sustained oversight by Congress. It’s the only way to make sure we don’t continue to build China’s blueprints for them.
Fred Fleitz is a former Chief of Staff to the Trump National Security Council and a former CIA analyst. He is currently Vice Chair of the America First Policy Institute Center for American Security.