BREAKING.🚨
FBI Director Christopher Wray has announced that Chinese government-linked hackers have infiltrated U.S. critical infrastructure.
“The PRC [People’s Republic of China] has made it clear that it considers every sector that makes our society run as fair game in its bid to dominate on the world stage, and that its plan is to land low blows against civilian infrastructure to try to induce panic and break America’s will to resist,” he said in Nashville.
The threat is partially “driven by the CCP’s aspirations to wealth and power,” Wray said, adding that China wants to “seize economic development in the areas most critical to tomorrow’s economy,” even if doing so requires theft.
The Chinese government has tried to steal “intellectual property, technology, and research” from nearly every industry in the U.S. economy, he noted.
But the CCP also wants to prevent the United States from being able to get in the way of a potential future “crisis between China and Taiwan by 2027,” he said. Americans are starting to feel the effects of this sprint, he said, pointing to “cyber intrusions and criminal activity” as early deterrence efforts by the CCP.
The FBI worries that China will soon attack critical infrastructure, since “these vital sectors—everything from water treatment facilities and energy grids to transportation and information technology—form the backbone of our society.”
“The fact is, the PRC’s targeting of our critical infrastructure is both broad and unrelenting,” he said. And, he added, the immense size—and expanding nature—of the CCP’s hacking program isn’t just aimed at stealing American intellectual property. “It’s using that mass, those numbers, to give itself the ability to physically wreak havoc on our critical infrastructure at a time of its choosing,” he said.
This risk isn’t new, he added. CCP-sponsored cyber actors "prepositioned” themselves to potentially mount cyber offenses against American energy companies in 2011—targeting 23 different pipeline operators.
The FBI warning comes amid the Biden administration allowing hundreds of Chinese nationals to unlawfully enter the United States, while handing out tens of thousands of visas to Chinese nationals, raising fears of "sleeper cells" positioning to attack the United States.