Espionage - Page 3

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) told the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee on Thursday that more than 500 federally funded scientists are currently under investigation for possible ties to China and other foreign powers.

BEIJING (AP) — A second Canadian citizen held for more than two years on spying charges in apparent retaliation for Canada’s arrest of a senior executive of the telecoms giant Huawei went on trial in Beijing on Monday.

Elon Musk responded to concerns that Tesla cars might be used for espionage at the China Development Forum Saturday.

The trial of a Canadian businessman accused of spying in China ended in no verdict on Friday after a court appearance that lasted just under two hours.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said he will vote “no” on President Joe Biden’s nomination of Gov. Gina Raimondo (D-RI) to lead the Department of Commerce.

The November killing of the mastermind behind the Iranian nuclear program was carried out using a one-ton gun smuggled into Iran in separate pieces by the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, according to a report by The Jewish Chronicle on Wednesday.

Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security (NDS) arrested ten Chinese nationals who were allegedly operating a “terror cell in the capital city of Kabul,” according to a Christmas Day report from the Hindustan Times.

(AFP) — An Australian-British academic released after two years imprisoned in Iran on spying charges returned to Australia on Friday, local media reported.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) on Monday published a year-end review of the “China Initiative,” a program launched in 2018 to detect and counter “national security threats posed by the policies and practices of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) government.”

The Clarion Project’s new documentary Covert Cash: What American Universities Don’t Want You to Know About Their Foreign Funding tracks the large sums of money flowing into American schools from “corrupt regimes who actively work against American interests” and boast human rights records that “clash with every American value we hold sacred.” Prominent among those troubling sources of funding is Communist China.

Chinese state television on Monday aired a “confession” from a Taiwanese academic named Cheng Yu-chin who said he engaged in espionage activities against the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told the New York Post on Thursday that the recent arrest of a New York City police officer on charges of spying for the Chinese government was just the tip of the iceberg, with more arrests likely on the way.

Hostile foreign actors, violent extremists, and domestic criminals are taking advantage of the “unique and unprecedented” impact the Chinese coronavirus pandemic is having on the FBI workforce to wreak havoc in the U.S. on several fronts, the bureau’s director Christopher Wary warned Thursday.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) mouthpiece Global Times on Wednesday accused Australia’s government of “McCarthyism” amid a recent crackdown by Canberra on Chinese agents in Australia suspected of espionage.

The U.S. State Department announced on Wednesday it has revoked over 1,000 visas for Chinese nationals due to national security concerns.

A former Army Green Beret allegedly committed espionage, conspiring with Russia’s foreign intelligence arm, the GRU, and giving them national defense information between 1996 and 2011, prosecutors said Friday.

An investigation by Taiwanese cybersecurity firm CyCraft revealed that Chinese hackers began waging an intense campaign of espionage against the Taiwanese semiconductor industry in 2018.

The government of Taiwan revealed Thursday that it has charged three men — all of whom worked for Taiwanese lawmakers — with espionage, accusing them of attempting to steal President Tsai Ing-wen’s medical records.

China’s state-run Global Times on Wednesday condemned the United States for its “reckless and dangerous” shuttering of the Chinese consulate in Houston, Texas, and promised Beijing’s retaliation would bring “real pain” to America.

The FBI is accusing the Chinese consulate in San Francisco, California, of harboring a fugitive University of California, Davis, researcher charged with visa fraud for lying about her connections to the Chinese military.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) on Tuesday unsealed an 11-count indictment against two Chinese nationals accused of running a global hacking campaign for both personal gain and the benefit of the Chinese state. American companies researching vaccines for the Wuhan coronavirus were among the hundreds of entities they allegedly targeted for data theft.

The police and fire departments in Houston, Texas, responded on Tuesday night to reports of a blaze at the Consulate General of China.

In the latest of a series of unexplained disasters in Iran, an explosion was reported Sunday at a power station near the central province of Isfahan.

Russian spies have targeted U.S., U.K., and Canadian organizations trying to develop a vaccine for the Chinese coronavirus, according to British security officials.

TEHRAN, Iran — Iran has executed a former employee of the defense ministry who was convicted of spying on behalf of the Central Intelligence Agency, the country’s judiciary said Tuesday. It was the second such execution in the past month.

TEL AVIV —  A senior Hamas military commander has defected to Israel after it was discovered he was collaborating with the Jewish state as a spy, the Saudi al-Arabiya channel reported.

German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer has revealed that an Egyptian spy worked in the offices of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert for years, possibly collecting information on Egyptian opposition groups.

JERUSALEM — Israel’s Defense Ministry announced the successful launch of a new spy satellite early on Monday that would help the country monitor Iran’s nuclear activity as its foreign minister hinted that Israel may have been behind a fire that damaged an Iranian nuclear site last week.

Harkening back to the rhetoric of Mao Zedong during the Cultural Revolution, China’s ambassador in London has called on Chinese university students studying in the United Kingdom to “serve your motherland”, amid growing concern about the influence of Beijing on Western campuses.

A Chinese citizen that completed a portion of a doctoral program at an unnamed Californa university was convicted of stealing American trade secrets on Friday. The DOJ charged the man with conspiring to steal trade secrets from multiple American companies and hand them over “for the benefit of the Chinese government.”

China’s state-run Global Times published a lengthy report on Sunday describing “vigorous countermeasures” supposedly taken by Chinese intelligence against a years-long espionage campaign waged by Australia.

Former Google CEO and Clinton lackey Eric Schmidt argued recently that Chinese students provide a vital benefit to the United States’ National Security interests. The Chinese government has come under scrutiny over the past year for using Chinese researchers at American universities to steal taxpayer-funded research.

The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) recently announced that it dismissed or lost to resignations 54 of its scientists amid the ongoing Trump administration probe to weed out suspected Chinese spies from universities and laboratories across the United States.

Russian scientist Valery Mitko, president of the Arctic Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg, was charged with treason on Monday for allegedly passing state secrets to China.

Two Indian officials went missing in Pakistan on Monday morning, raising fears they had been covertly arrested by Pakistani security and would be charged with espionage. When Pakistani media reported seven hours later that the two had been arrested on suspicion of a hit-and-run driving incident, the Indian government filed a strong protest, and it was quickly decided that the duo would be returned to India.

A Moscow court found former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan guilty of espionage and sentenced him to 16 years in prison on Monday in what the U.S. Ambassador to Russia described as a “mockery of justice.”