From Homeland computer breaches to pathogen smuggling, the China threat is blinking red

After years of muted response under former President Joe Biden, China’s aggressive and malign activities against the United States are being exposed at a rapid pace by the Trump administration, even as Beijing’s Communist leader prepares to visit Washington.National security will likely be at the forefront of discussions ahead of the meeting, given recent incidents linked to China, ranging from border security to academic research at American universities, artificial intelligence development, international shipping and military intelligence gathering. In one of the latest cases, a Chinese citizen was accused of tampering with computers at several border facilities in Maine. According to The Maine Wire, Terry “Jiajia” Liu removed computer components from devices used by Customs and Border Protection agents and replaced them with older models or models with fewer capabilities. 
Prosecutors did not allege that Liu installed malicious software on the computers or transmitted classified information back to China, but the incident prompted questions over security at federal computer facilities. Several other cases involved alleged Chinese influence in the U.S. Ohio State University agreed to pay $2.1 million to resolve federal allegations that it failed to disclose affiliations with China related to university researchers, Just the News reported. The school did not admit any liability.A Chinese-born American journalist was sentenced to two years in prison last week after pleading guilty to serving as an unregistered agent of China. He had provided confidential reports to Chinese officials and received about $100,000 from 2018 to 2022, prosecutors said. Officials also raised concerns regarding Chinese activities within the shipping industry. 
U.S. authorities accused Chinese state-owned shipping giant COSCO of using equipment aboard its ships to track military communications. Beijing has denied the allegations, which Just the News first reported. Artificial intelligence has been another source of controversy. Anthropic, the company behind Claude, has said Chinese-connected individuals attempted to use the AI program for military technology development, intelligence gathering and biological weapons research that could pose a threat to public health. Anthropic said one group connected to China had used Claude to help with electronic warfare and military system assessments. The company called the incidents evidence that the malicious use of advanced artificial intelligence was “evolving rapidly.” In addition, The Wall Street Journal recently reported that U.S. officials believed Iran used Chinese-provided satellite imagery to plan an attack that killed three U.S. service members in Jordan. 
Officials did not allege that China was aware of the attack in advance.
Instead, they said Iran used commercial satellite imagery obtained from Chinese companies to identify and validate the target. 
China has denied any wrongdoing, according to the report.
In addition, the XSafety team on the X social media platform investigated inauthentic accounts linked to China that were part of an anti-data center influence operation. 
X’s Global Government Affairs reported in late August that the team identified a bot farm operating about 200,000 accounts. Roughly 200 of those accounts posted anti-data center content, X reported.
The collection of incidents linked to China demonstrates the range of issues that U.S. officials have been scrutinizing more closely in recent months. 
Trump is expected to meet with Xi later this month to discuss trade and technology, including topics such as the artificial intelligence race. 

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