China has stolen enough data to compile a 'dossier' on every American

Top national security officials for former President Donald Trump are sounding the alarm about China's illicit pursuit of data through cyber theft and other means, with one warning the sensitive information is enough for them to put together a “dossier” on every American adult.

Matthew Pottinger, a former Trump deputy national security adviser, warned during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Wednesday that China was looking to use the data it had stolen from the United States and worldwide to influence and coerce everyone from political leaders to private citizens.

“Assembling dossiers on people has always been a feature of Leninist regimes, but Beijing’s penetration of digital networks worldwide, including using 5G networks … has really taken this to a new level,” Pottinger said. “So the Party now compiles dossiers on millions of foreign citizens around the world, using the material that it gathers to influence, target, intimidate, reward, blackmail, flatter, humiliate, and ultimately divide and conquer.”

Pottinger added: “Beijing’s stolen sensitive data is sufficient to build a dossier on every single American adult and on many of our children too, who are fair game under Beijing’s rules of political warfare.”

Last month, the U.S. and its allies blamed China’s Ministry of State Security for the massive hack against Microsoft, with the Justice Department also charging members of the Chinese intelligence agency over a separate global espionage campaign.

The U.S. did not implement sanctions against China like it did against Russian intelligence hackers for the SolarWinds hack earlier this year. However, the White House said it raised its concerns about “the PRC’s broader malicious cyber activity” with senior Chinese officials.

William Evanina, Trump’s director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, also provided testimony Wednesday, contending that “the existential threat our nation faces from the Communist Party of China is the most complex, pernicious, strategic, and aggressive our nation has ever faced.”

Evanina warned China’s efforts “drive a comprehensive and whole of country approach to their efforts to invest, leverage, infiltrate, influence, and steal from every corner of U.S. success” and that “it is estimated that 80% of American adults have had all of their personal data stolen by the CCP, and the other 20% most of their personal data.”

He pointed to the “willingness of China and its intelligence services to illegally and legally obtain data to drive artificial intelligence, research, and development programs and to facilitate their military and economic goals." He lamented that “over the past decade we have seen CCP cyber and insider threat breaches and criminality to such a level I fear we are becoming...

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