McCaul: U.S. Pushing Back on Chinese IP Theft and Global Aggression

The United States is finally pushing back against the mounting threats from China, including intellectual property theft, global expansion through coercive economics, and the attempted takeover of the South China Sea, a senior Republican member of Congress says.

Members of Congress in particular, from both parties, are waking up to the problem, said Rep. Michael McCaul (R., Texas), senior Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

"A lot of this has been under the radar and a game of deception, and I think a lot of members of Congress are starting to wake up to the fact this is a serious threat to the national security of the United States," he said in an interview with the Washington Free Beacon.

McCaul was chairman of Homeland Security Committee until 2017 and said he is well versed in Chinese cyber attacks through that experience. Those attacks involved the massive theft of American intellectual property from both government and private sector computer networks.

One of the most damaging attacks involved Chinese hackers stealing 22 million federal employee records, including millions with access to classified information. Security officials say the Chinese are using the stolen records for both cyber espionage and human intelligence-gathering efforts.

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