FBI Director Christopher Wray told “60 Minutes” on Sunday evening, with a week to go before his resignation on Jan. 20, that he believes the Chinese communist regime is the greatest threat to the United States.
Last month, Wray confirmed that he would be stepping down as director of the federal law enforcement agency, while President-elect Donald Trump named former U.S. intelligence official Kash Patel to lead the bureau.
“Well, the greatest long-term threat facing our country, in my view, is represented by the People’s Republic of China, the Chinese government, which I consider to be the defining threat of our generation,” Wray told the CBS News program.
Over the past several years, Wray has repeatedly stressed that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has long been working on its ability to take out U.S. infrastructure. He’s also said that China’s hacking program is more significant and larger than that of any other nation.
“China’s cyber program is by far and away the world’s largest—bigger than that of every major nation combined and has stolen more of Americans’ personal and corporate data than that of every nation, big or small, combined,” he said Sunday.
Wray added that Chinese malign actors have been “pre-positioning on American civilian critical infrastructure” in order to “lie in wait on those networks to be in a position to wreak havoc and can inflict real-world harm at a time and place of their choosing.”
In recent months, U.S. officials have warned about a China-linked hacking group known as “Salt Typhoon” that has burrowed its way into major U.S. telecommunications companies, prompting federal officials to warn Americans and officials not to use unencrypted messaging platforms.
When asked about whether CCP-linked groups have placed malware inside U.S. critical infrastructure, Wray said, “That’s correct.”
“Things like water treatment plants. We’re talking about transportation systems. We’re talking about targeting of our energy sector, the electric grid, natural gas pipelines. And recently we’ve seen targeting of our telecommunications systems,” the FBI director said, outlining the threat.
And for “some people,” these groups “have collected their content, the actual communications of those people,” he said.
Also in his interview, Wray explained why he is choosing to step down as Trump takes office.
“I care deeply, deeply—about the FBI, about our mission—and in particular about our people. But you know the president-elect had made clear that he intended to make a change, and the law is that that is something he is able to do for any reason or no reason at all,” Wray said on the program when asked about his decision.
“My conclusion was that the thing that was best for the bureau was to try to do this in an orderly way, to not thrust the FBI deeper into the fray.”
While Trump had appointed Wray to become the FBI director during his first administration and to serve out a 10-year term, he has been highly critical of the bureau and Wray in recent years, especially after FBI agents conducted a search of his Mar-a-Lago property in Florida for classified documents.
Wray argued in the interview that those agents were authorized to search Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence. Ultimately, the classified documents case, brought by special counsel Jack Smith, was dropped last month. The case was dismissed by a federal judge months before that, prompting Smith’s team to appeal the decision.
“And when we learn that information, classified material, is not being properly stored, we have a duty to act. And I can tell you that in investigations like this one, a search warrant is not and here was not anybody’s first choice,” he said.
From The Epoch Times