Chi Mak, who received a 24 1/2-year prison term for espionage last week, is the latest in a growing list of Chinese spies caught stealing America’s most precious military and technology secrets. Mak was convicted of trying to pass information on U.S. submarine propulsion systems to the Chinese military. He was, according to prosecutors, the “perfect sleeper agent,” having become a naturalized U.S. citizen and a respected employee of defense contractor Power Paragon.
U.S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney said the Mak sentence was intended to send a signal to China to stop stealing U.S. military secrets. That signal should have been sent years ago before China launched a massive espionage offensive against America in its drive to become the dominant power in Asia and a global rival of the U.S. In the last year alone, authorities have arrested five other individuals on charges of spying for China. In the past seven years, U.S. officials have conducted more than 500 investigations of illegal technology transfers to China.
None of this should come as any surprise because, as Jed Babbin and Edward Timperlake wrote in their 2006 book, “Showdown,” China has been spending a huge chunk of its national wealth on an effort “aimed at catching up to and surpassing the United States” militarily. The Chinese are especially interested in the development of offensive weapon systems such as satellite killers and a host of cyber-war systems meant to blind U.S. commanders and decision-makers during a crisis.
In an interview Thursday, Babbin told The Examiner that “China’s espionage against American government and industry is pervasive. By human agents, including suborned Americans, they have successfullypenetrated our most tightly secured agencies, including the nuclear weapons laboratory at Los Alamos. By cyber-war attacks, they are attacking U.S. government and industry computer networks literally hundreds of times a day for espionage and even more aggressive purposes.”
As China has grown more confident of its military prowess, its boldness in challenging the U.S. might has become clearer. An example was the surfacing in 2006 of a Chinese submarine near the USS Kitty Hawk and the sub’s subsequent disappearance because U.S. forces in the area couldn’t track it. China is also making worrisome land claims, including the recent assertion by a Chinese diplomat that India’s Arunachal Pradesh region belongs to China, and the statement last year by the Chinese Foreign Ministry rejecting Japan’s authority over the Senkaku Islands. And of course there remains the ever-present time bomb of Taiwan. Such aggressiveness requires a no-nonsense response that sends an unmistakable message of firmness to China. A U.S. boycott of the Olympics in Beijing along with the European Union would be an excellent amplifier.
