Iran Press/ America: Christopher Wray was asking for funding for FY2024 to expand the FBI's cyber division to address threats.
"They’ve got a bigger hacking program than every other major nation combined and have stolen more of our personal and corporate data than all other nations – big or small combined," Wray said at a House Appropriations Committee hearing Thursday.
"To give you a sense of what we’re up against, if each one of the FBI’s cyber agents and intel analysts focused exclusively on the China threat – on nothing but China – Chinese hackers would still outnumber FBI cyber personnel by at least 50 to 1," Wray testified.
"Today’s cyber threats are more pervasive, hit a wider variety of victims, and carry the potential for greater damage than ever before," Wray said. "You can take China. A key part of the Chinese government’s multi-pronged strategy is to lie, to cheat, and to steal their way to surpassing us as the global superpower in cyber."
Wray testified that the scale of the Chinese cyber threat is "unparalleled," but he said China is "not the only challenge in cyberspace."
"Not even close," he said. "We’re investigating over a hundred different ransomware variants. Each variant with scores of victims, as well as a host of other novel threats posed by both cyber criminals and nation-state actors."
Wray said those threats also come from Russia, Iran, and North Korea.
He made these claims while newly disclosed documents show that the US is spying on its allies.
American spies have continued to eavesdrop on the German military even a decade after the 2013 NSA scandal, the newspaper Die Zeit and public broadcaster ARD reported on Thursday. The outlets cited a fresh ‘Pentagon leaks’ document detailing information that US intelligence had gathered about talks between the German and Chinese militaries.
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