Espionage

LOS ANGELES — After the high-profile arrest Sunday at Los Angeles International Airport of a China-born real-estate agent accused of spying in Seattle on the family of Taiwan’s president, The Bureau found photographs placing her among members of an association linked to President Xi Jinping’s prior California visit, anti-Taiwan advocacy, and Beijing’s so-called United Front networks.

China’s state-owned shipping giant COSCO has secretly equipped commercial vessels with sophisticated technology to collect military communications near the United States and other countries, according to senior Trump administration officials.

Two U.S. officials told Reuters that COSCO has maintained a decades-long intelligence relationship with Beijing, allowing China to collect communications signals from ships and aircraft operating across North America, Europe and Asia.

The equipment aboard COSCO vessels consists of “sophisticated signals intelligence collection” systems rather than ordinary communications hardware, the officials said.

LAS VEGAS — In May 2013, an undercover FBI employee sat down in Las Vegas with a Chinese student who had already built an unusual network stretching from Chinese government circles into the political establishment of Northern California.

To Christine Fang, the encounter appeared to offer a business relationship.

The US has raised concerns that Dutch semiconductor giant ASML may have shipped an ultra-high-tech chip-making machine to China.

Howard Lutnick, the US commerce secretary, reportedly held several meetings with ASML executives in which he voiced fears that an extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machine may have ended up in Chinese hands.

This would be a major violation of the US’s export control regime, which bans the transfer of ASML’s EUVs to restricted markets such as China.