Three takeaways on China’s spies in the Navy
Tom Rogan
Video Embed
This week, the FBI arrested two Navy sailors whom the Justice Department accuses of spying for China. Both men were paid by China for their efforts. These arrests are a reminder of the vast ambition, scale, and threat Beijing poses in terms of espionage.
The first case involves Jinchao Wei, a sailor who was assigned to the USS Essex amphibious assault ship. Wei is accused of communicating with a Chinese intelligence officer, who directed him to delete “records of their conversations and using encrypted methods of communication,” starting in February 2022.
BIDEN AND REPUBLICANS DUKE IT OUT TO DEFINE THE ECONOMY
Wei is said to have “described defensive weapons of the Essex” and provided his Chinese handler with technical manuals, including on damage control systems, power, steering, and flight deck operations. This information would be of use to the People’s Liberation Army both in terms of boosting its institutional knowledge of how the U.S. Navy operates in combat and advancing the PLA’s tactics for engaging with vessels such as the Essex. Seeing as a war with China is likely before 2030, this is not a small concern.
The second case involves Petty Officer Wenheng Zhao. Zhao is accused of communicating with a Chinese intelligence officer between August 2021 and May 2023. That officer, almost certainly from China’s Ministry of State Security or the People’s Liberation Army, pretended to be a maritime commerce specialist. This cover was likely designed not to convince Zhao that he wasn’t dealing with a Chinese spy, but to afford him a thin psychological pretense to that effect: making it slightly easier for him to betray the Navy and the nation. This is an interesting example of how, when it comes to recruiting an agent, sometimes an intelligence service needs to dangle both a bit of money and a bit of “here’s how you can pretend you can sleep comfortably at night” mythology.
Regardless, Zhao’s spying was deadly serious, as it included his photographs of “electrical diagrams and blueprints for a radar system stationed on a U.S. military base in Okinawa.” It is no secret why China would be interested in U.S. radar facilities on Okinawa. It is because those facilities would be crucial to the island’s defense in the event of PLA missile and air attacks during any future war over Taiwan. The island would also serve as a key forward operating base for U.S. and Japanese air forces engaged in Taiwan’s defense.
Three further points stand out from these arrests.
First, both sailors are ethnic Chinese. As John Schindler notes, Beijing often leverages Chinese heritage to recruit intelligence agents. It does so by leveraging a variety of inducements for and pressures on family members back in China. Beijing also opens its wallet. It is not known how and where these two sailors were recruited, but it would be interesting to know whether either has made visits to China or proximate locales in recent years.
Second, the sailors were engaged in espionage for long periods before they were arrested. While the FBI may have allowed this espionage, believing the damage caused by the sailors was outweighed by the afforded FBI’s insight into Chinese espionage efforts, it’s also possible that this spying was only recently detected. If so, it’s likely the National Security Agency played a role here. The NSA has a number of sensitive efforts designed to identify Chinese signals intelligence operations targeting the U.S. mainland.
That leads to point three. The head of the Justice Department’s national security division, Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen, is now patting himself on the back. Olsen says these arrests prove that “the Department of Justice will continue to use every tool in our arsenal to counter threats from China and to deter those who aid them in breaking our laws and threatening our national security.”
Unfortunately, and against the FBI’s adamant advice, Olsen helped eliminate a key tool for dealing with China’s threat — namely, the Justice Department’s now-ended “China Initiative” to identify Chinese espionage officers, agents, and efforts at U.S. academic institutions. Supporting the Biden administration’s misguided public relations stunt in ending the China Initiative, Olsen absurdly also suggested that future incidences of deception by academics who lie about taking money from China might be treated as civil rather than criminal matters. That’s hardly a way to “deter those who aid” Chinese spying. Indeed, the Biden administration’s approach is downright dangerous.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
The top line, however, is a familiar one. From the Netherlands to Taiwan to the United Kingdom to even China’s “no limits partner,” Russia, Beijing’s intelligence apparatus poses an extraordinary threat — one that is truly unparalleled in terms of its human and cyber intelligence efforts. China has the data and the ambition to detect vulnerable targets and then exploit them ruthlessly. Within 20 years, this unparalleled descriptor may also apply to China’s space-based intelligence capabilities.
Put simply, the arrest of these two sailors is the tip of a very large iceberg.