Tag: espionage

Beijing Outraged as U.S. Warns Dominican Republic of Espionage Risk with Chinese Tech

The Chinese embassy in the Dominican Republic on Sunday accused its American counterpart of spreading “defamatory” remarks by sharing statements made by a U.S. official warning of the potential security dangers that come with using Chinese tech.

Over the past year, Trump administration officials have warned America’s Latin American allies of the great risks that come with using technology equipment made by Huawei, ZTE, and other companies linked to the Chinese communist party. The U.S. State Department’s Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Juan Pablo Segura reiterated the dangers of using Chinese tech in a social media post last week. Segura emphasized that Beijing forces tech companies to cooperate with the regime’s intelligence services, creating risks of spying, hacking, and network shutdowns.

“We urge U.S. partners in the Americas to quickly switch to trusted suppliers to protect their people and their sovereignty,” Segura wrote.

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German Spy Agency Sends Scouts to Gamescom 2026, Looking To Hire Gamers As Secret Agents: THE TELEGRAPH

BND wants hackers capable of waging cyberwar on Russia.

The newly beefed-up German foreign intelligence service is trying to get a leg up on its Russian foes by tapping a younger, radically different class of agents: gamers.

The BND has launched a recruitment drive for game enthusiasts, eying a ‘new generation of tech-savvy secret agents.’

The Telegraph reported:

“The Telegraph understands that agents from the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), the German equivalent of Britain’s MI6, will attend the world’s largest video game festival to recruit young spies.

BND officials said there was a ‘significant overlap’ between the skills possessed by gaming fans and those the agency needs to retaliate against Russian hackers targeting critical infrastructure in Germany.”

This is not the first time the BND has tackled gamers, because the exact same drive was enacted last year.

“The recruiting operation, at Gamescom 2026 in Cologne, is part of a historic rearmament drive in Germany that seeks to turn the once-toothless BND into a rival of MI6 and Mossad.

An intelligence source said gamers at the festival who fit the BND’s profile would be invited to take a five-step challenge that tests their aptitude for cyber-security and hacking.”

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Declassified Files Reveal Eric Swalwell Admitted to Sex with Chinese Spy Fang Fang

Files declassified by President Donald Trump on former Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) and the Chinese spy known as Fang Fang reveal that the disgraced ex-congressman admitted to the FBI he had a sexual relationship with her  — and that the bureau attempted at one point to recruit her without her knowledge.

The documents prove that the United States government was aware of the suspicious relationship between Swalwell and Fang since at least 2014, years before Axios broke the story in 2020.

A zip file of documents, labeled “Rusty Thumbs” after the FBI’s codename for Fang, was published on the White House Election Integrity webpage on Monday along with the following synopsis:

The FBI developed evidence that a Chinese woman with direct ties to that country’s intelligence service had potentially compromised a Democratic congressman from California with sex, foreign interns and illicit donations while she was being recruited to become a bureau informant a decade ago, according to bombshell memos that expose another threat to America’s political system from Beijing.

The files chronicling the relationship between Rep. Eric Swalwell and the Chinese national Fang Fang – also known by her English name Christine Fang – were declassified by President Donald Trump and released Monday by the White House Government Transparency Task Force as part of a broader effort to unmask foreign threats to U.S. political and election systems.

According to the explosive FBI files, the bureau had opened a full-scale investigation into Swalwell over the allegations that Fang, a suspected intelligence operative for the Chinese government, had been facilitating campaign contributions for him in exchange for placing interns in his office. At one stage of the operation, the objective was to gather enough evidence to arrest and charge both Swalwell and Fang, who had ties to China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS).

Multiple witnesses described their interactions with Fang to the FBI, including a winery owner who said that Fang told him to “just bring his checkbook” to a campaign event for Swalwell because she would reimburse him, and a wealthy restaurant franchise owner who said that Fang wanted his contribution to Swalwell attributed to her. 

The FBI’s case, codenamed “Freshman Fifteen,” was opened as a “Sensitive Investigative Matter” due to one of its subjects being a sitting member of congress at the time. In June 2014, an FBI memorandum stated that the possible violations included bribery of public officials, conspiracy, excessive campaign contributions, prohibited foreign-national contributions and contributions through conduits. 

In a May 2015 FBI interview, Swalwell said he first met Fang in 2012 when they were seated at the same table at an event celebrating the Chinese-American community. In the interview, he described Fang as a “striking individual,” and admitted that he met her for a drink a couple of weeks later. 

After that drink, he said that their relationship became sexual. 

According to Swalwell, he had “physical relations with Fang on a handful of occasions,” although the relationship did not become romantic. He said their last sexual encounter was in March 2015, just a couple of months before he sat down for that interview. 

While he described the relationship as casual, he stated that he believed that Fang wanted something more romantic. 

“Investigation has revealed that Fang Fang, a Chinese foreign national residing in the United States, is the facilitator of a scheme to trade internships in Congressman Eric Swalwell’s Congressional office in return for campaign contributions,” an FBI memorandum stated. 

The memorandum noted that “in at least two cases,” Fang used middlemen in order to conceal herself as a foreign-national source of political donations. 

When Swalwell was interviewed by the FBI again in March 2016, he brought along legal counsel. He again admitted to once having an ongoing physical relationship with Fang, but reiterated that it never advanced into formal dating. 

The FBI records also stated that Fang was introduced to Swalwell by the Asian Pacific Islander American Public Affairs Association (APAPA), with Swalwell telling the FBI that anyone Fang recommended for an internship with his office was effectively coming through APAPA. 

One of these referred interns who worked on Swalwell’s campaign was a Chinese national Fang referred to as her sister, though they were not related. 

Another Fang referral, who was a student at University of California, Davis, was given an internship in Swalwell’s office in Washington, DC.

Fang also extended multiple invitations to Swalwell and his family, including his father, to visit China. The Swalwells declined these invitations, with the then-congressman telling the FBI that he did not want to go unless it was an official trip sanctioned by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

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CCP Agent Buys a Listening Post Next to the White House

Location, location, location.

According to the Daily Caller, on July 21, a group called the Philip Qiu and Family Foundation paid $8.4 million for a hundred-year-old office building in DC.

What’s the big deal? It’s about 650 feet from the White House. That’s prime real estate… if your business is spying on the White House.

The buyer, Qiu Feili, is a former Shanghai police detective who later enrolled in an executive MBA program complete with a “team-building” wargame. Photos show him in camo, holding a rifle. University materials brag that he personally took out a third of the opposing side and posted the best individual marksmanship score in the group. Cool cool cool.

Since then, Qiu has climbed the ranks of the United Front Work Department, the CCP’s intelligence recruitment machine, eventually chairing the Shanghai Overseas Chinese Foundation. His circle connects straight into China’s actual spy services, the MPS and the MSS.

Qiu’s own assessment of the Party he serves, from 2021: it’s “like a kind, but firm parent.” Sure. The kind of parent who buys the building next door and points a listening device at your bedroom window. If Shelley were writing this newsletter, I’m sure she’d have something to say about that.

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Belgium Arrests Canadian NATO Intern on Charges of Spying for China

Belgian prosecutors this week announced the arrest of a Canadian intern for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) who was accused of espionage.

Media investigations soon revealed the suspect is a Chinese-born Canadian national who was allegedly spying for China.

The Belgian Federal Prosecutor’s Office said it made the arrest based on a tip from NATO security services, who warned the female suspect was spending an excessive amount of time at sensitive NATO facilities and asking too many questions.

The suspect was employed as an intern at NATO’s Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE), which is located in the city of Mons, Belgium. SHAPE handles planning and execution for all NATO operations.

“She is suspected of spying on behalf of a third country and of being a member of a criminal organization,” prosecutors said in a statement released Saturday.

The suspect’s home and workspace in SHAPE’s information technology department were raided when she was taken into custody. On Tuesday, prosecutors extended her pretrial detention by one month and the suspect immediately filed an appeal.

Canada’s CBC News on Wednesday identified the suspect as Biwei Zhang, a systems engineer who previously worked for the Canadian Space Agency and Statistics Canada. She has also used the names Claire Zhang and Catina Zhang.

CBC said Zhang’s personal and professional profiles matched the limited information provided by Belgian prosecutors, as do numerous posts she made on Facebook and LinkedIn. A group of European news outlets reached the same conclusion about her identity.

Zhang appears to be 32 or 33 years old and holds a master’s degree from the University of Ottawa, class of 2022. She reportedly worked as an economist for Statistics Canada from 2018 to 2022, then took a job as a systems engineer for the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) in May 2022. Her resume also includes work as a policy analyst for the European Space Agency (ESA) and a researcher for the World Trade Organization (WTO).

To date, there have been no details of the allegations against Zhang from Belgium, Canada, or NATO, beyond the vague description of her alarming behavior and assurances from SHAPE that her questionable activities did not interfere with operational readiness. The week since her arrest was announced has included some awkward excuses about who was supposed to vet her for a security clearance and how thorough a job they did.

The ESA told Reuters on Thursday that Zhang’s position with the agency did not require a security clearance, but she was subjected to “standard human resources screening procedures.” The WTO declined a request for comment about her work history.

NATO officials said responsibility for security clearances lay with contributing member nations, which in this case would mean Canada. Canadian Minister of Public Safety Gary Anandasangaree said on Monday that national screening procedures would be reviewed to “get to the bottom of what happened.”

According to CBC News, there was a rather large red flag in Zhang’s background: the Public Service Commission of Canada in 2023 found that she “committed fraud in an application for a position at the Canada Border Services Agency by applying under two different names and emails and failing to later clarify whether she had submitted multiple applications.”

Canada’s Globe and Mail explained that Zhang “submitted applications from two e-mail addresses, one from York University and the other from the University of Montreal and twice wrote the same standardized exams in an effort, the commission found, ‘to increase her chances of being appointed.’”

Zhang requested a judicial review of this finding in February 2024, but it was dismissed by a federal court judge.

“I think the concern level would be very high in government. Everybody wants to know what happened. There are a lot of questions to be asked,” former Canadian national security adviser Jody Thomas told the Globe and Mail.

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ARRESTED: Intern at NATO Headquarters Faces Charges of Espionage in Belgium – Canadian Woman With Chinese Origin Also Suspected of Links to Criminal Organization

NATO infiltrated.

In Belgium, home of the military headquarters for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), police made an arrest with geopolitical significance.

A ‘Canadian woman ​of Chinese origin’, an intern at ‌NATO’s military headquarters, has been detained on spying charges, Belgian prosecutors said today (25).

Reuters reported:

“’She is suspected of spying ​on behalf of a third country and of ​being a member of a criminal organization’, the ⁠Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office said in a statement.

The woman ​worked as an intern at NATO’s Supreme Headquarters Allied ​Powers Europe (SHAPE) in the Belgian city of Mons, the statement said. It did not provide further details of her identity or the country ​or organization she is suspected of spying for.”

NATO’s headquarters do the planning and carrying out all operations of the transatlantic military alliance.

“The suspect had come to the attention of SHAPE’s security services, who reported ​her to Belgian ​intelligence officials, ⁠according to the prosecutors’ statement. Investigators searched the suspect’s home and her workplace at SHAPE, and ​she was placed under arrest on Friday.

A ​SHAPE spokesperson said ⁠there was no indication that NATO or SHAPE operational readiness, command and control arrangements or ongoing tasks had been affected.”

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The CCP Is Inside the Fed: Shocking New Evidence of Chinese Infiltration at America’s Central Bank

Most Americans have heard about Chinese spies targeting our military or hacking private companies. But there’s another front in this quiet war, one that’s gone largely unreported—and it may be the most dangerous of all: China’s long game to infiltrate and manipulate the United States Federal Reserve.

A 2022 Senate investigation offered a rare glimpse into this operation, but even that barely scratches the surface. What’s playing out behind closed doors isn’t just a few bureaucratic missteps or naïve collaborations—it’s a full-blown economic espionage campaign.

This is warfare without bullets.

The Fed: A Prime Target for Chinese Espionage

The Federal Reserve is the engine of the U.S. economy. Its decisions move markets, shape global capital flows, and set the tone for the world’s monetary system. Infiltrating the Fed doesn’t just give China intelligence – it gives them influence.

Over at least a decade, the CCP has targeted Fed employees through a mix of coercion, recruitment offers, unauthorized data access, and propaganda partnerships, mostly hidden behind Chinese academic institutions and think tanks.

According to this damning Senate report, the Fed’s own counterintelligence team identified a group of 13 employees across eight regional banks—internally referred to as the “P-Network”—who exhibited serious red flags linked to the Chinese government.

This pattern could be replicated at scale.

Hard Evidence of Espionage and Infiltration

Here are some documented examples that received little attention from the mainstream media:

1. Detained and Surveilled in China (Individual A)

    •    In 2019, a Fed employee was detained four separate times by Chinese authorities during a visit to Shanghai. He was threatened, told his family would be harmed, and coerced into handing over sensitive U.S. economic data. Chinese agents accessed his Fed laptop, phones, and internal contact lists. He was ordered to “tell a good story about China” back in the U.S. This employee returned to his post with full access to confidential monetary policy data.

2. Secret Data Transfers to Chinese Institutions (Individual B)

    •    Another employee sent modeling code and restricted Fed data to a university linked to China’s central bank (PBOC). He proposed deeper collaboration between his Reserve Bank and Chinese state institutions while maintaining access to Class II FOMC data, which includes sensitive internal forecasts and deliberations.

3. Coordination with Chinese Propaganda Outlets (Individual C)

    •   Another Fed employee took a paid visiting professorship in China funded by the CCP and subsequently acted as a liaison with Xinhua News Agency, the Chinese government’s propaganda arm. He even helped Chinese journalists and officials gain access to Fed contacts, often bypassing formal Fed communication channels.

4. Suspicious Talent Recruitment Programs (Individual D)

    •    Another Fed employee attempted to transfer large U.S. data sets to Chinese institutions. He was found to have joined the Thousand Talents Program, China’s premier foreign recruitment tool for stealing scientific and economic research. This affiliation was never disclosed and the employee continued working at the Fed.

A Named Case: John Harold Rogers

The Justice Department indicted John Harold Rogers, a former senior adviser in the Federal Reserve’s Division of International Finance, for allegedly passing sensitive U.S. economic data to agents tied to the Chinese government  .

Rogers served at the Fed from 2010 to 2021, holding access to confidential materials related to FOMC deliberations, economic forecasts, and tariff policy analysis  .

He allegedly began working with Chinese co‑conspirators posing as university students starting around 2013, and intensified the misconduct after 2018, using personal email and printed documents to transfer restricted Fed data  .

In 2023, Rogers is accused of receiving approximately $450,000 from a Chinese university while teaching and meeting with these supposed “students” in China, including hotel rooms where he shared Fed trade secrets.

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Former Federal Reserve Adviser Sentenced to 38 Months in Prison After Lying About Sharing Restricted Information With Suspected Chinese Intelligence Operatives

Former Federal Reserve senior adviser John Harold Rogers, 64, was sentenced today to 38 months in federal prison.

According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, Rogers was sentenced in connection with making false statements to federal investigators about sharing restricted Federal Reserve information with Chinese intelligence operatives.

As The Gateway Pundit previously reported in detail when Rogers was arrested and indicted in late January 2025, the longtime Fed economist exploited his position of trust for years.

Rogers worked as a Senior Adviser in the Federal Reserve Board of Governors’ Division of International Finance from 2010 until his retirement in 2021.

He had access to highly sensitive, non-public information, including proprietary economic data sets, deliberations on tariffs targeting China, briefing books for Fed governors, and critical insights into upcoming Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) decisions and interest rate moves.

Prosecutors alleged that beginning as early as 2018, Rogers passed this information to co-conspirators tied to the People’s Republic of China’s intelligence and security apparatus.

These individuals posed as graduate students at a PRC university. They allegedly lured Rogers with gifts, an all-expenses-paid beach vacation, and a lucrative part-time “professor” position at Fudan University in Shanghai, for which he was paid approximately $450,000 in 2023 alone.

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US citizen found guilty of helping export tech to Iran in violation of sanctions

A Massachusetts man was found guilty Monday of conspiring to unlawfully export electronic components to Iran in violation of U.S. sanctions.

Mahdi Mohammad Sadeghi, who worked at the global electronics company Analog Devices, was accused of helping an Iranian business associate get around American export control laws. U.S. prosecutors say the business associate’s Tehran-based company makes navigation systems for the military drone program of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. Authorities say the scheme included the creation of a front company in Switzerland.

The second defendant, Mohammad Abedininajafabadi, called Abedini in court documents, was not on trial. He is believed to be in Iran after an apparent prisoner exchange for an Italian journalist.

Sadeghi was found guilty on three of the five charges. He showed no visible reaction to the verdict, which came early in the fourth day of jury deliberations. He and his lawyers did not comment as they left court, and he will remain free until sentencing Oct. 13

Sadeghi, a 43-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen, chose not to testify. A father of two, he lost his job at Analog Devices due to the charges. Although he was arrested in December 2024, long before the current war with Iran, his trial has unfolded during the conflict.

“At its core, this case is straightforward. You cannot send goods, especially the goods at issue in this case, to Iran. Period. Full stop,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Alathea Porter told the jury. “The defendant knew that, and conspired with Mr. Abedini to do that.”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Jared Dolan, in his closing remarks, said documents, text messages and photos proved that the illegal acts were the “fruits of this relationship” between Sadeghi and Abedini.

“The evidence established that he knew what Abedini was doing because he told him in writing,” Dolan said. “He helped him anyway.”

Sadeghi’s attorney, William Fick, told jurors that the scheme laid out by the prosecution “makes no sense” and was full of holes. He said Sadeghi was only offering advice to a longtime friend about how to get business with the semiconductor company, and wasn’t responsible for procuring the parts for Abedini.

Fick said there was no proof the parts ended up in Iran, and he disputed that the Swiss company was a front.

“If you look at the world through dirty glasses, everything looks dirty,” Fick said. “That is fundamentally what the prosecution is asking you to do here.”

Fick also said prosecutors hadn’t shown Sadeghi gained anything from the alleged plan — although the prosecution pointed out that they didn’t need to prove a motive.

“He had nothing to gain and everything to lose,” Fick said. “He has lived in the country for decades. He was a well-regarded, respected employee on his way up in the company.”

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Chinese University Espionage and How Biden Shut Down the Program That Might Have Stopped It

Chinese enrollment in U.S. higher education grew steadily through the Obama years, climbing from under 200,000 in 2011–12 to a peak of 372,532 by 2019–20. By March 2018, alongside that growth, the FBI warned in its bulletin, “China: The Risk to Academia,” that the broader population of international students and scholars in the United States, then numbering 1.4 million, posed a national security exposure. Chinese students were the largest source of that population.

The Bureau warned that a subset of those students and scholars was being used by Beijing as “non-traditional collectors,” exploiting the openness of U.S. research institutions through talent recruitment programs, unsolicited research collaboration offers, and academic visits to advance Chinese military and commercial interests. The bulletin stated that China does not “play by the same rules of academic integrity” as American institutions and called on universities to report suspicious contacts to their local FBI field office.

That assessment fed directly into the Department of Justice’s response. On November 1, 2018, the DOJ launched the China Initiative under Attorney General Jeff Sessions to counter Chinese economic espionage. The initiative was led by Assistant Attorney General John Demers of the National Security Division, alongside a senior FBI executive and five U.S. attorneys.

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