US "Struggling To Rebuild Its Human Espionage Capabilities In China": Report

America’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is struggling to build back its human espionage capabilities in China, said Wall Street Journal. It is said to be the agency’s “top target”, after a network of its agents were “systematically rounded up” over a decade ago. The report said, as many as two dozen assets that provided information to United States were executed or imprisoned, including high-ranking Chinese officials.

Wall Street Journal quoted US official who said the gap of a decade leave Washington with limited understanding of secret deliberations of the Chinese leader Xi Jinping and his circles regarding the key security issues. The report called the mission, “titanic, but mostly secret shift at the CIA and its sister US spy agencies”. Washington has shifted its focus from “fighting insurgencies around the world” to “preparing for a possible ‘great power’ conflict with China and Russia”.

CIA Director William Burns told Wallstreet Journal that the agency had “more than doble(ed) resources devoted to the China mission over the past three years”. The agency has established a China Mission Center as a standalone entity for coordinating those activities. The mission also includes building of a new unit focused on emerging technologies and interfacing them with private sectors of United States.

Several other intelligence agencies in Washington also formed units that focus on analyzing open sources intelligence while the main information source of the country has shifted to electronic surveillance. Beijing’s own surveillance apparatus makes the hiring of human sources increasingly downwards. Even recruiting officials when they travel to third world countries has proven to be difficult as US agents, who once believed their cover to be untouchable in a Latin American country, were actually followed and filmed Chinese observers, reported the Journal quoting former senior official.

The former and current senior officials of the agency agreed that the CIA’s mission was mangled by the loss of nearly 30 Chinses assets between 2010 and 2012 because of a glitch in the agency’s clandestine communication systems and betrayal by one of its Chinese operatives, said the report. While US holds a network of spy satellites and cyber surveillance tools against China, Washington has never recovered from its on-the -ground intelligence capabilities of China, and even now, relies on Chinese President Xi Jinping’s public statements, admitted Wall street Journal’s source.