FBI Director Wray warns of threats from hostile nations in university speech

FBI Director Christopher Wray on Wednesday warned of the threat China poses to U.S. security in a speech at Texas A&M.

Wray warned hostile nations would "become even more aggressive in their efforts to steal our secrets and our innovation ... target our critical infrastructure ... interfere with our democratic institutions ... and export their repression to our shores."

"Front and center in that expanded threat is China," he declared. "The current Chinese regime will stop at nothing to steal what they can’t create and to silence the messages they don’t want to hear — all in an effort to surpass us as a global superpower and shape a world order more friendly to their authoritarian vision."

Wray focused on the extensive nature of Chinese espionage efforts, highlighting its use of modern technologies and nominally unaffiliated entities to steal U.S. secrets.

"The result of all this theft is lost American leadership in key industries, lost American jobs, and lost opportunity," he continued. Wray then pointed to recent efforts from Beijing to target dissidents abroad, citing an incident in which a Chinese-American student at an Indiana college posted materials supportive of the Tiananmen Square protesters only to have Chinese officials threaten his family within that country and to face the outcry of Chinese students on his campus.

Wray has previously pointed to the Chinese-owned social media platform TikTok as a major liability for U.S. digital security.

"I guess my point is that just to tie it all up, [TikTok] is a substantial national security threat for the country of a kind that we didn't face in the past," he said in March.

He also warned of rising threats from Russian and Iran. In the case of the former, he cited Moscow's use of cyber activities through trolling and hacking to conduct intelligence against critical U.S. infrastructure.

In the case of Iran, he singled out recent efforts by the Iranian regime to target former U.S. national security officials, referencing a recent hit Tehran put out on former National Security Advisor John Bolton.

Ben Whedon is an editor and reporter for Just the News. Follow him on Twitter.