Free Republic

Michael Ledeen, the controversial national security journalist, scholar and schemer who died at age 83 on May 17 from complications following a stroke, played a significant covert role leading up to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, as well as other productions of false intelligence for political ends. Ledeen was featured prominently in The Italian Letter, a 2007 book by SpyTalk Contributing Editor Peter Eisner and Knut Royce, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter at Newsday. Obituaries published this week gave scant attention to the key role Ledeen played in fabricating intelligence to justify the eventually disastrous military campaign to oust...

If the Trump administration succeeds in blocking Harvard from enrolling international students, the hardest-hit group would be students from China, who make up the school’s biggest share of current students from overseas.The consequences are likely to extend far beyond those select few who could gain entry to the prestigious university. The move could reshape the broader relationship between the two countries by cutting off one of the few remaining reasons that people in China still admire the United States.The flow of students from China to the United States has long been one of the most reliable ballasts in the two...

Chinese government snoops - hiding behind the guise of fake consulting companies - are actively trying to recruit the thousands upon thousands of US federal employees who have been fired since President Trump took office. Cyber and information warfare experts at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) uncovered five companies they say are part of a larger Chinese intelligence operation that posted ads on LinkedIn, Craigslist, and other smaller job boards and websites targeting former government employees on the hunt for new gigs. One Craigslist ad pitched: "Job Opportunities for Recently Laid-Off US Government Employees." It says: "We understand...

Rogue communication devices found in Chinese solar inverters Undocumented cellular radios also found in Chinese batteries U.S. says continually assesses risk with emerging technology U.S. working to integrate 'trusted equipment' into the grid LONDON, May 14 (Reuters) - U.S. energy officials are reassessing the risk posed by Chinese-made devices that play a critical role in renewable energy infrastructure after unexplained communication equipment was found inside some of them, two people familiar with the matter said. Power inverters, which are predominantly produced in China, are used throughout the world to connect solar panels and wind turbines to electricity grids. They are...

A bombshell report out of Stanford University shed light on the influence of spies from the Chinese Communist Party that the student newspaper says have likely infiltrated the prestigious institution and other universities nationwide to gather intelligence. The report, published by the Stanford Review, tells the story of a Stanford student working on sensitive research at the school – and given the name "Anna" to protect her identity – receiving unexpected messages from a man with the alias Charles Chen asking about seemingly harmless topics like networking opportunities. Those messages soon took a "strange turn," according to the outlet when...

A James Bond-esque mission to recover highly sensitive secret files held in safes aboard the sunken super-yacht Bayesian was reportedly carried out by UK intelligence service MI6 before Italian divers could get to them. The top secret documents related to yacht owner Mike Lynch’s Darktrace cybersecurity company, which has contracts with UK, US and Israeli intelligence agencies, ... ... Sources close to the Italian investigation claimed British MI6 agents removed sensitive computer equipment and data belonging to Lynch — one of seven people killed in the sea tragedy last August — from the shipwreck, before the Italian authorities started to...

This summer, a CCP agent impersonated a Stanford student. Under the alias Charles Chen, he approached several students through social media. Anna*, a Stanford student conducting sensitive research on China, began receiving unexpected messages from Charles Chen. At first, Charles's outreach seemed benign: he asked about networking opportunities. But soon, his messages took a strange turn. Charles inquired whether Anna spoke Mandarin, then grew increasingly persistent and personal. He sent videos of Americans who had gained fame in China, encouraged Anna to visit Beijing, and offered to cover her travel expenses. He would send screenshots of a bank account balance...

Stanford is one of the leading universities in the Unites States and naturally that makes it a target for China. I've written about China's attempts to infiltrate American universities before. Back in January 2020, the head of Harvard's chemistry department, Dr. Charles Lieber, was arrested for lying about his connections to a Chinese program that recruited US scientists and offered them big money to share their expertise with Chinese universities.According to a criminal complaint, Lieber failed to disclose that he was being paid a salary of up to $50,000 per month and up to $158,000 per year in living expenses...

For as long as there has been war, there has been a need to reveal what the enemy is planning. This was no less true in ancient Greece where generals and statesmen relied on espionage to reveal the intentions and capabilities of their adversaries. The philosopher Plato believed that the ancient Greek states were in a constant state of war, whether declared or undeclared. It was within this grey zone that the subtleties of espionage took place, a dimension of foreign affairs that remains true to this day. Like the practice of spying itself, the sources regarding espionage in ancient...

Boston Democratic Mayor Michelle Wu’s 2021 campaign received hundreds of thousands of dollars from a fundraiser who is listed by a Chinese intelligence agency as an official, a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation discovered. Gary Yu, the founder of Boston International Media Consulting, helped raise over $300,000 for Wu with the help of a Chinese civic association he leads. However, Yu — whose Chinese name is Yu Guoliang — is listed as an official by an agency of a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) influence and intelligence service called the United Front Work Department (UFWD), and also operates as a recruiter...

The U.S. government must launch a probe into the Chinese overseas law enforcement operation in New York City, experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation, as other countries raise the alarm over reports of police stations on their soil. “How in God’s name could they openly have these communist police stations in our country?” Beau Dietl, retired NYPD detective, told the DCNF. “This shows the Chinese Communist Party is not afraid to exert its will outside of China, and we should do all that we can to counter this behavior,” Senate Foreign Affairs Committee Ranking Member Jim Risch of Idaho...

The spread of Chinese overseas police service stations around the world raises concerns among human rights campaigners. The Chinese government is opening illegal police posts all over the world. China claims that these posts are capable of cracking down on global and multinational crimes. These checkpoints have been opened in many countries around the world including developed countries like Canada and Ireland. According to local media reports, Fuzhou has established informal police service stations affiliated with the Public Security Bureau (PSB) across Canada. At least three of these stations are located in the Greater Toronto Area only. Chinese Police Station...

An alleged sushi-slinging spy is in ICE custody. Ming Xi Zhang, known as “Sushi John,” the 61-year-old owner of Ya Ya Noodles in Montgomery Township, NJ, was arrested March 24 by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Newark. Zhang was convicted in April 2024 of acting as an unregistered agent of the Chinese government and sentenced to three years’ probation. In May 2021, he pleaded guilty to having served as an agent of China in 2016 without notifying the U.S. Attorney General. ICE says he legally entered the U.S. in 2000 but later “violated the terms of his lawful admission.”...

Lip-Bu Tan, the man chosen to lead Intel, the U.S.'s largest chip maker, has invested in hundreds of Chinese tech firms, including at least eight with links to the People's Liberation Army, according to a Reuters review of Chinese and U.S. corporate filings. The appointment last month of Tan, one of Silicon Valley's longest-running investors in Chinese tech, as CEO of a company that manufactures cutting-edge chips for the U.S. Department of Defense raised questions among some investors Reuters' review found that Tan controls more than 40 Chinese companies and funds as well as minority stakes in over 600 via...

"The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), National Security Agency (NSA), and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) assess that People's Republic of China (PRC) state sponsored cyber actors are seeking to preposition themselves on IT networks for disruptive or destructive cyberattacks against U.S. critical infrastructure in the event of a major crisis or conflict with the United States," an alert released by the agencies earlier this week said... "CISA and its U.S. Government partners have confirmed that this group of PRC state-sponsored cyber actors has compromised entities across multiple critical infrastructure sectors in cyberspace, including communications, energy, transportation, and water...

Internet-connected cameras made in China are giving the Chinese government the ability to "conduct espionage or disrupt US critical infrastructure," according to a Department of Homeland Security bulletin obtained by ABC News. The cameras typically lack data encryption and security settings and, by default, communicate with their manufacturer. It's believed there are tens of thousands of Chinese-made cameras on the networks of critical U.S. infrastructure entities, including within the chemical and energy sectors, the bulletin said. Chinese cyber-operatives have previously exploited internet-connected cameras.. the DHS warns. "A cyber actor could leverage cameras placed on IT networks for initial access and...

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A technique that hostile nation-states and financially motivated ransomware groups are using to hide their operations poses a threat to critical infrastructure and national security, the National Security Agency has warned. The technique is known as fast flux. It allows decentralized networks operated by threat actors to hide their infrastructure and survive takedown attempts that would otherwise succeed. Fast flux works by cycling through a range of IP addresses and domain names that these botnets use to connect to the Internet. In some cases, IPs and domain names change every day...

President Donald Trump has fired several members of his National Security Council team. DailyMail.com confirmed an Axios report released Thursday morning. The dismissals come after National Security Advisor Michael Waltz accidentally added The Atlantic's editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg to a Signal chat where top administration officials were discussing an attack on the Houthis in Yemen. Trump has publicly supported Waltz, a former Florida congressman, in the aftermath of Signalgate, despite some White House insiders labeling him a 'f***ing idiot.' However The New York Times reported Thursday morning that far-right conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer visited the Oval Office on Wednesday and pressed...

The U.S. government has banned American government personnel in China, as well as family members and contractors with security clearances, from any romantic or sexual relationships with Chinese citizens, The Associated Press has learned. Four people with direct knowledge of the matter told the AP about the policy, which was put into effect by departing U.S. Ambassador Nicholas Burns in January shortly before he left China. The people would speak only on condition of anonymity to discuss details of a confidential new directive. Though some U.S. agencies already had strict rules on such relationships, a blanket “non-fraternization” policy, as it...

Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) said on Tuesday on MSNBC’s “Deadline” that the Signal group chat on military strikes against the Houthis between Trump administration officials might be a violation of the “Espionage Act as well as the Federal Records and Presidential Records Act.” Blumenthal said, “I’ve talked to some of the pilots who have undertaken these missions against the Houthis. They have very seriously threatening air defense systems that can shoot down our planes and the early warning that might have been given them about the targets, the human targets that were on the list, about the weather, about the...