> I hope you don't work for a company or know anyone who works for a company or government that China might want to influence, steal secrets from, sabotage,
Why are we pretending that the US don't do those things?
In Australia there is the Surveillance Legislation Amendment (Identify and Disrupt) Act 2021. It is speculated that it was passed to plug a capability gap in data collection for Five-Eyes/USA.
as a USian I hope that we do? As a planet of nation-states, China does not have the best interests of US citizens in mind long term, and it would be super neat if they dont usurp Taiwan and subject all of its citizens to its particular brand of totalistic authoritarianism.
The US does not have the best interests of US citizens in mind. It, currently, has the best interests of a select few absurdly wealthy people's interests in mind.
Which, coincidentally, usually happen to be the exact opposite of the best interests of US citizens. Um... oops.
Glad you pointed out such a huge difference with China. The US has an 80 year history of what it'll do. That might not be perfect behavior, but ... frankly I cannot name a single state that has the power the US currently has and behaved even half as well. That includes European countries, who were quite happy to "resolve wars" in other parts of the world ... and then they didn't leave and took over the entire economy, the government, and including levying taxes and stealing resources. Even fucking tiny Belgium abused their position when they got the chance. Hell, Luxembourg, smaller than most New York boroughs, helped them do it (and got paid handsomely for it)
But China ... China is far worse. Tibet, Xinjang, Taiwan, Pakistan, Phillippines, ... all are under attack. Oh, and perhaps relevant: China admitted to direct support of Russia's attack on Ukraine merely because of the small effect it has on naval power in the Pacific [1].
And let's just stop pretending here. Historically, modern European countries behaved exceptionally well (as most states just outright enslaved, as in "work yourself to death or we'll kill you right now" of whoever came under their control). China behaved pretty bad (e.g. killing millions of their own people for political optics. Enslaving people in Xinjang), but frankly not exceptionally bad. The Ottomans did worse (all caliphates did). The Persians did (although they deserve credit for stopping ... at least until the current government). The historical norm of behavior of states is incredibly, incredibly bad. And China has made it very clear they're not changing their old ways, in fact, they've made it very clear they're moving backwards, not forwards. They are moving towards having the state in control of everyone who lives anywhere China has power, on a literal, individual level. What apartment they live in. What they study. What they do. What they watch on TV, on their cellphones, ... This is not even remotely comparable to the worst dreams Trump has ever had.
Sorry to point out the obvious but China is the dystopia, not the US, and the US has a long way down before it gets anywhere close to CCP behavior.
I’ve never seen evidence that US agents attempted to infiltrate Chinese companies to steal their secrets, meanwhile just one recent example is the FBI catching Chinese espionage on camera trying to steal glass trade secrets from Corning, also see the Google employee who tried to steal AI secrets, a while ago it was the Coca-Cola can lining formula
One way to look at the world is if there's no punishment, there was never any crime. It's pretty clear the US has been doing economic spying for at least more than 3 decades [0]. One famous incident I'm aware of was the CIA spying on Thomson-CSF and delivering the intelligence to Raytheon who were competitors in a contract bid. [1]
The thing about defense contractors like Boeing and Raytheon is that if they do receive information from the CIA or NSA, they're not gonna talk about it for fear of losing the existing contracts they have, or losing bids in the future.
I would agree that spying on China is harder than say spying on France. But I wouldn't say it's impossible. The US just has to work 10 times as hard. I would also say that because of the regime, any Chinese turncoats would be have much less loose lips.
Snowden leaks -> NSA operation shotgiant infiltrated Huawei network for years. PRC ministers around then been quoted saying US had thoroughly infiltrated PRC networks. I'm pretty sure it was admitted as much in PLA Science of Military Strategy in 2010s. PRC just doesn't like publicizing how compromised they were until recently, now cybersecurity firms like QH360 regularly report on US cyber infiltration efforts.
James Mulvenon, leading expert on PRC cyber who was one of the loudest sirens 10 years ago also basically said there was mutual offensive attacks - something like "We hack them, they hack us". The distinction Americans and Mulvenon like to make back then was PRC civil military fusion = PRC can economically weaponize hacking, i.e. PRC can pass hacked blueprints to companies XYZ to develop vs US can't because NSA can't pick winners. Which is fair (unless it comes to stuff like Airbus vs Boeing or other strategic industries). But that's just sour grapes for admitting that PRC has a better system for industrial espionage.
Anecdotal, in PRC in the mid 90s, had dinner where diasphora Chinese at western telco was complaining about how PRC started hacking their networks, someone else at dinner worked for domestic telco (trying to poach), and used to technician in PLA sigint unit, complained about how US penetrated most of Chinese networks and lamenting how they were w decades behind in cyber.
us industrialization back in the early days of the country was largely based on illegal IP theft from british factories. thats just how it is when you're behind and trying to catch up
Why are we pretending that the US don't do those things?