| Submit your comments on this article |
| China-Japan-Koreas |
| Chinese espionage steals $600 billion from US firms yearly. It's time for government to act |
| 2026-05-17 |
| [FoxNews] The goal isn't just to steal from individual firms but to pilfer entire industries, says former CIA officer Timed to the Beijing summit, I caught up with my friend and former CIA colleague Tom Lyons, who is the co-founder of the 2430 Group, which advises private sector businesses on strategies to counter China's ubiquitous espionage and unfair trade practices. Powered by the most innovative free market economy on the planet, the U.S. has become too easy a mark for China's ruthless theft of our intellectual property. China steals upwards of $600 billion annually from U.S. companies. Lyons, who testified during a Senate Judiciary hearing in April, assesses that the amount of theft is actually much higher because most firms never detect espionage and most of those who do, do not report it out of concern for reputational damage and shareholder distress. For companies that do wish to pursue legal recourse, the cost of litigation can range into the millions of dollars. And to make matters even worse, if the criminal enterprise is based in Beijing, then there would be no chance of collecting any compensation. China does not enforce U.S. court judgments. China's objective is not simply to pick off specific businesses for intellectual property theft, but rather to pilfer entire industries. President Xi Jinping directs China's state-controlled command economy, where he and his cronies funnel trillions of dollars of investment into their industries of choice, with massive corruption. China's Communist Party rejects the idea of a private sector. By law, every employee in Chinese firms must report to the Ministry of State Security, which heavily infiltrates especially high technology companies. Lyons recounted the case of Linwei Ding, the Google engineer who stole proprietary AI chip architecture for a trillion-dollar industry and used his knowledge of Google's designs as his China-based company’s selling point. Ding was arrested and convicted of economic espionage, but the damage is done. Having stolen our technology, China can produce a copycat product at an extremely low cost with an eye towards purloining Google's market share. U.S. companies should bear some responsibility for recognizing their own vulnerability. The idea of a Chinese copycat product impacting a company’s global revenue is often considered an over-the-horizon challenge for some future CEO, given it takes time to commercialize stolen designs. But short-term focus risks long-term strategic losses. During the past 25 years, China's systematic theft has eroded or eradicated critical U.S. industries like steel, telecommunications, solar and semiconductors. If our checkered past, a massive transfer of wealth from the U.S. to China, is prologue then Lyons is absolutely right to ring the alarm bells about growing risks to U.S. national security. |
| Posted by:Skidmark |