xhw1986
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In the past 20 years, the United States has spent trillions of dollars to create and deploy the world's best military technology. It also has enacted laws and regulations aimed at keeping that technology away from potential adversaries such as Iran, North Korea and the nation that poses perhaps the most significant long-term threat to U.S. military supremacy, China.
China's efforts to obtain U.S. technology have tracked its accelerated defense buildup. The Chinese military budget - second only to America's - has soared to close to $200 billion.
President Xi Jinping is championing a renaissance aimed at China's asserting its dominance in the region and beyond. In recent weeks, Beijing has declared control over air space in the contested East China Sea and launched China's first rover mission to the moon.
IMMEDIATE THREAT
As China rises to challenge the United States as a power in the Pacific, American officials say Beijing is penetrating the U.S. defense industry in ways that not only compromise weapons systems but also enable it to secure some of the best and most dangerous technology. A classified Pentagon advisory-board report this year, for instance, asserted that Chinese hackers had gained access to plans for two dozen U.S. weapons systems, according to the Washington Post.
But the smuggling of technology such as radiation-hardened microchips out of America may present a more immediate challenge to the U.S. military, Reuters has found. If China hacks into a sensitive blueprint, years might pass before a weapon can be manufactured. Ready-made components and weapons systems can be - and are - used immediately.
Beijing says its efforts to modernize its military are above-board. "China has mainly relied on itself for research and development and manufacturing," the Chinese defense ministry said in a statement to Reuters. "China always complies with relevant laws and cooperation agreements and protects intellectual property rights."
How often the Chinese succeed at acquiring U.S.-made weaponry or components is unclear. U.S. government officials say they don't know, in part because the problem is too widespread and difficult to track. By its very definition, black market smuggling is hard to monitor and quantify. Quite often, sensitive U.S. technology is legally shipped to friendly nations and then immediately and illegally reshipped to China.
China also presents a special challenge: It is both the largest destination for legally exported American-made goods outside North America and the most or second-most frequent destination for smuggled U.S. technology. A 2010 classified Pentagon assessment showed a spike in legal shipments to China of "dual-use" technology - products that have civilian and military purposes, a person involved in the study said.
The technology products the Chinese military seeks tend to be miniaturized, and thus aren't easily identifiable to U.S. border agents - unlike drugs, for example. And trafficking in these goods isn't technically illegal until someone tries to export them.
"When you think about how many legitimate transactions go to a place like China, it makes it very difficult to track," said Craig Healy, a senior Homeland Security official who directs the U.S. export enforcement center.
Officially published U.S. estimates of how frequently American arms technology gets smuggled are incomplete. By one Pentagon calculation, suspicious queries to U.S. defense manufacturers by entities linked to China increased 88 percent from 2011 to 2012. The government won't disclose the number of cases that underlie that percentage.
U.S. defense and intelligence officials said that although they closely monitor the Chinese buildup, they believe China remains at least a decade behind America. "They still have a long way to go," said one senior U.S. defense official.
China Military Technology Trafficking From US - Business Insider
