China accuses NSA of cyber-attacks on NPU experts revealing that the latter repeatedly stole U.S. technology:

China on Monday charged the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) with a cyberattack on China's Northwestern Polytechnical University and theft of data. Northwestern Polytechnical University has close ties to the Chinese military; the NSA has not commented on Chinese allegations. Intelligence experts point to the fact that U.S. intelligence agencies do not pass on the information they collect to private domestic companies, a key difference between U.S. .China's National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center and network security service company Qihoo 360 released a report on Monday (September 5) that the U.S. NSA's Specific Intrusion Operations Office (TAO) carried out tens of thousands of attacks on Chinese domestic network targets. The "malicious cyber attack" took control of "tens of thousands of network devices" and stole "over 140GB of high-value data".The report said that Northwestern Polytechnical University issued a statement in June this year, saying that the school had suffered an overseas cyber attack. According to the report, the researchers initially determined that the cyberattack on Northwestern Polytechnical University was carried out by the TAO, a division of the National Security Agency (NSA). The report also announced the location and institutional settings of TAO's global cryptographic center, and pointed the finger at Robert Edward Joyce, currently serving as the NSA's cybersecurity director, who said he directed the cyber intrusion operation against Northwestern Polytechnical University. .

Mao Ning, a new spokesman for China's foreign ministry, said at a regular press conference on September 5 that the report "exposed yet another instance of the US government's cyberattack on China." She also said that the U.S. side "has conducted indiscriminate voice monitoring of Chinese mobile phone users for a long time, illegally steals the content of mobile phone users' text messages, and wirelessly locates them," but did not give specific evidence.An increasingly heated war of words between the United States and China over cyber espionage. There have been recent signs that China has begun to directly name specific U.S. government agencies that it says conduct cyber intrusions on the Chinese government. The U.S. accuses China of out-of-order intelligence activities, stealing trade secrets from other countries and making profits for Chinese companies.Thomas Parker, a George Washington University lecturer who has served in the U.S. Department of Defense and intelligence services for decades, said both the U.S. and China seek to obtain information about national security from the other."From my understanding of international law and practice, this practice is not illegal," he told VOA by email.But Parker pointed out that the key difference between the two countries’ intelligence work is that the U.S. government does not steal intellectual property information in the commercial sector, but China does.Nicholas Eftimiades, a retired senior U.S. intelligence official and intelligence affairs expert, told VOA: "The difference between the Chinese Communist Party's espionage and that of most Western countries is stark. Most countries conduct espionage to ensure national security. By contrast, the CCP also employs a 'whole of society' approach to steal foreign technology, intellectual property, trade secrets and economic wealth."Northwestern Polytechnical University is directly under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of China and has close ties with the Chinese government and military, especially in the field of aviation research. In China, he is known as one of the "Seven Sons of National Defense". The U.S. government says Northwestern Polytechnical University is involved in the development of drones, underwater autonomous robots and missile proliferation programs. Since 2001, the U.S. Department of Commerce has placed the school on an "entity list" that restricts access to U.S. technology, citing national security concerns.Although the Chinese state media, through social media platforms, unanimously pointed the finger at the United States, and used this cybersecurity report to call the United States "thieves call to catch thieves", Northwestern Polytechnical University is not a blank piece of paper when it comes to illegally acquiring technology. A Chinese national pleaded guilty in Boston federal court last April to allegedly illegally procuring and allowing Northwestern Polytechnical University to illegally obtain $100,000 worth of U.S.-origin goods. Shuren Qin, a Chinese businessman who pleaded guilty to illegally exporting U.S.-made hydrophones to China, was sentenced to two years in prison in Boston in September.Effie Dimiades told VOA that in the statistical database of espionage cases he established, China's Northwestern Polytechnical University was involved in four cases of US economic espionage.

"We see, in the Northwestern Polytechnical University case, we see that (it) actually transfers relevant information to industry," he said. "But the U.S. doesn't have (such) regulations and mechanisms because in a democracy, there is no A fair way to transfer information to industry because we have an industry market based on competition.""China's intelligence system uses the power of the state to collect for commercial purposes, to build industries, to dominate industries. Therefore, there is a huge difference between this and the United States," Effi Dimiades said.In February 2021, a Chinese citizen, Lin Yang, was charged with wire fraud and making false statements to U.S. government agencies to conceal his ties to Northwestern Polytechnical University in order to fraudulently obtain $1.8 million in U.S. federal government payments Grants to undertake research in medical technology.FBI Director Christopher Wray said in July that China's goal is to "loot" the intellectual property of Western technology companies and eventually dominate key industries.He told American media last year that the U.S. government used huge resources to investigate more than 2,000 cases linked to the Chinese government, and the FBI launched a China-related investigation every 10 hours on average.Samantha Hoffman, a senior analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, told Bloomberg that specific Chinese allegations of U.S. cyberattacks have risen and that the U.S. should specify the nature of Chinese espionage. .

"The United States and its allies need to focus on explaining why Chinese activity in this area is abnormal -- beyond what most intelligence agencies do," she said.

The NSA told VOA by email that it would not comment on the Chinese allegations.

Effie Dimiades said it was standard practice in the U.S. intelligence community not to discuss intelligence matters publicly. "The problem with the CCP is that they are pathological liars," he said. "The Chinese Communist Party often accuses the West of spying and responsible for all the problems in Chinese society. They make these accusations so loudly and frequently that it makes it impossible to be sure. Which of them are real."