Espionage, sanctions, cyberattacks: China and the US clash behind the scenes

Avoid unnecessary confrontations with China, large or small, that could interfere with Trump’s effort to achieve rapprochement with the United States’ greatest military, economic and technological competitor.

In recent weeks, the Treasury Department has imposed new sanctions to Chinese companies that it claims provided location data to Iran, enabling attacks on bases across the Middle East that caused billions of dollars in damage to U.S. facilities.

The White House has accused China of stealing artificial intelligence models from American technology companies.

And just this week, federal prosecutors announced they had charged a California mayor with illegally working for Beijing.

Action has been taken against medium-sized oil importers in China for secretly purchasing Iranian oil.

The only major step the administration delayed was final approval of a $13 billion military aid package for Taiwandesigned by the White House but will not be implemented until Trump returns.

This gives the Chinese president time Xi Jinping to express your objections.

It is unclear why there has been such a sudden rush of measures against China, beyond the fact that the Trump administration has been in office for almost a year and a half.

That’s enough time for Trump’s appointed anti-China hawks, of whom there are many, to gather evidence and prepare a case.

Sometimes that means forcing the president to see evidence of Chinese-led actions designed to undermine the United States or its allies, even if his first instinct is to explain the “good relationship” he has with Xi and apparently suggest that all could be forgiven.

Indeed, Trump struck a largely conciliatory tone Thursday, telling Xi that he is “a great leader” and that “it’s an honor to be your friend.”

For his part, Xi warned Trump that “conflicts” could arise between the two superpowers over the Taiwan issue.

Some experts noted that the Trump administration was unlikely to try to gain an advantage over China during this week’s talks with its series of crackdowns, as many of them were nothing more than accusations that Beijing strongly denies.

Instead, senior officials may be taking the opportunity to highlight tensions with China over Iran, cybersecurity and artificial intelligence, and to remind the president that Beijing, in addition to posing the greatest geopolitical threat to the United States, has not decided to adopt a conciliatory attitude.

As reported this week The New York TimesChinese companies, for example, have been negotiating arms sales with Iran, planning to ship them through other countries to conceal the origin of the military aid.

But the war with Iran is just the latest cause for concern for U.S. national security officials.

Chinese hackers continue to breach American government and corporate systems with few consequences.

The FBI recently identified who it believed were Chinese hackers within a database it maintains of its internal surveillance warrants.

This discovery was especially alarming because Beijing appeared to be capitalizing on its previous success in infiltrating the internal FBI networks to do it again.

“I see this as a strategy by hardline officials to put pressure on areas where they think the door is most open right before the summit,” said Elizabeth Economy, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford and a former China adviser at the Commerce Department during the Biden administration.

In many ways, Trump himself could be as important as the Chinese, he added.

“These are all areas that the president has given a high priority.”

In late April, amid growing concern in both Washington and Silicon Valley about the threats posed by advances in artificial intelligence, the White House released a memo written by Michael Kratsios, the president’s science and technology adviser, accusing China of “exploiting American expertise and innovation.” stealing proprietary AI technology to build your own models.

“Foreign entities, primarily based in China, are carrying out deliberate, industrial-scale campaigns to optimize cutting-edge AI systems,” Kratsios wrote.

The term “optimization” is used to describe training smaller AI models from larger, more expensive ones to achieve similar capabilities.

Likewise, last month, a US cybersecurity bulletin, issued in collaboration with security agencies in Britain, Japan and other allied countries, highlighted the constantly evolving tactics of Chinese state-sponsored cybercriminals, who use vast networks of compromised devices to carry out cyber espionage and attack vulnerable critical infrastructure systems.

This alert followed a long period in which U.S. agencies rarely highlighted Chinese cyber threats, even as Chinese cybercriminals again breached a sensitive internal FBI network that stores information about the agency’s surveillance targets.

In another example in late March, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued an order to prohibit the import of new consumer routers manufactured abroad, citing cybersecurity risks, although it exempted existing routers.

Some of the best-selling routers in the United States are made in China, including those produced by TP-Linkthe largest manufacturer of routers for consumers and small businesses in the US.

The measures against TP-Link, a company established in China but with a subsidiary in California responsible for international operations, had been the subject of debate among US officials from various agencies, but had been suspended for many months until the issuance of the FCC order.

And on Friday, the State Department imposed sanctions on several Chinese companies for providing satellite images to Iran that it said aided Iranian attacks on U.S. forces in the Middle East.

On Monday, federal prosecutors announced that they had charged Eileen Wang, the mayor of Arcadia, California, with acting as an illegal agent of the Chinese government.

A plea agreement, which was made public, indicated that Wang would plead guilty to the charge.

“This plea agreement is the latest success in our resolve to defend the homeland against China’s attempts to corrupt our institutions,” said Bill Essayli, First Assistant United States Attorney for the Central District of California.

The filing of the charges, just days before the summit, may have been a coincidence, but it was hard to ignore.

The escalation of measures around China came after months in which U.S. officials in the Trump administration downplayed the rivalry, to the point that the National Defense Strategy released in January took a more conciliatory tone toward pursuing “respectful relations with China.”

The White House guidelines to avoid unnecessary pre-travel confrontations, outlined by Trump administration officials, represent standard advice before a high-stakes presidential visit.

But reading the Pentagon’s reports on China provides insight into the pace of its naval and nuclear rearmament, as well as the relentless pressure on the Philippines and Taiwan.

They mention blockade drills against Taiwana move that could be more attractive to the Chinese government now that the United States blocks shipments to and from Iran.

Additionally, it outlines an unwavering effort to develop artificial intelligence and achieve self-sufficiency in semiconductors.

Trump did not mention the sanctions on Thursday, at least publicly.

But those sanctions — and similar measures taken by China against the United States and its companies — could define the relationship in the coming years more than the statements about impending alliances that Trump and Xi are likely to cite.