Cooperation among foreign spy services hostile to the United States is increasing, according to the new National Counterintelligence Strategy, which cites China and Russia as representing the “most significant” threats, while “a range of other state and non-state actors” are also targeting the United States.
The strategy document, released by the White House last week, homes in on spying and technology theft by Chinese intelligence operatives and, for the first time, calls for “a strategic counterintelligence program” to disrupt or compromise foreign spies who work to damage U.S. national security before they can act.
In addition to spies from China and Russia, the strategy document warns that Iran, North Korea and other foreign state and non-state groups seek to “cause grave harm to the United States, its people and institutions.”
“Our leading adversaries view themselves as already engaged in an intense, multifaceted competition with the United States. As such, their intelligence services frequently conduct more aggressive operations that fall in the ‘gray zone,’ a space between war and peace that encompasses intelligence activities that push the boundaries of accepted norms, such as covert influence, political subversion and operations in cyberspace,” the document states. “We also see our leading adversaries cooperating more frequently with one another, enhancing the threat they pose to the United States.”
