The Chinese regime is ’the defining threat of our generation,’ Wray said.
FBI Director Christopher Wray told “60 Minutes” on Jan. 12, with a week to go before his resignation on Jan. 20, that he believes that the Chinese communist regime is the greatest threat to the United States.
Last month, Wray confirmed that he would be stepping down as director of the federal law enforcement agency, while President-elect Donald Trump named former U.S. intelligence official Kash Patel to lead the bureau.
“Well, the greatest long-term threat facing our country, in my view, is represented by the People’s Republic of China, the Chinese government, which I consider to be the defining threat of our generation,” Wray told the CBS News program.
Over the past several years, Wray has repeatedly stressed that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has long been working on its ability to take out U.S. infrastructure. He’s also said China’s hacking program is more significant and larger than that of any other nation.
“China’s cyber program is by far and away the world’s largest—bigger than that of every major nation combined and has stolen more of Americans’ personal and corporate data than that of every nation, big or small, combined,” he said.
Wray said that Chinese malign actors have been “pre-positioning on American civilian critical infrastructure” in order to “lie in wait on those networks to be in a position to wreak havoc and can inflict real-world harm at a time and place of their choosing.”
In recent months, U.S. officials have warned about a China-linked hacking group known as “Salt Typhoon” that has burrowed its way into major U.S. telecommunications companies, prompting federal officials to warn Americans and officials to not use unencrypted messaging platforms.
When asked about whether CCP-linked groups have placed malware inside U.S. critical infrastructure, Wray said: “That’s correct.
“Things like water treatment plants. We’re talking about transportation systems. We’re talking about targeting of our energy sector, the electric grid, natural gas pipelines. And recently we’ve seen targeting of our telecommunications systems.”
And for “some people,” these groups “have collected their content, the actual communications of those people,” he said.
