No More Secrets
China has been stealing U.S. military intelligence since the 1970s. America’s sensitive nuclear weapons technology, which has taken decades and hundreds of millions of dollars to develop, is now being shared by China with Iran, Pakistan, Libya, Syria and North Korea. Complete security breaches by operatives working for Beijing have been identified at four major national weapons laboratories.
Since 1996 the U.S. administration has permitted China to accumulate over 600 U.S.-built supercomputers which are required for the design and testing of nuclear weaponry. Before 1996 China owned only two supercomputers. U.S. satellite communications and electronics companies knowingly contributed equipment and sensitive technical information to China without authorization from Washington. The security failure has enabled China to rapidly advance its commercial and military satellite technology to unprecedented levels.
This is the shocking but true story behind why these thefts occurred and where their damaging effects are leading America. Now, for China, there are no more U.S. nuclear secrets.
The Dragon’s Plunder
On June 18, 1998, after an overwhelming vote of 409 to 10, the U.S. House of Representatives created the Select Committee on U.S. National Security and Military/Commercial Concerns with the People’s Republic of China. On December 30 of that year, the bipartisan committee unanimously approved its findings. On May 25, 1999, what became known as the Cox report was officially declassified. Select portions of the report were omitted because of their danger to national security and ongoing criminal investigations. The Cox report was a national security bombshell.
“The People’s Republic of China (prc) has stolen classified design information on the United States’ most advanced thermonuclear weapons. These thefts of nuclear secrets from our national weapons laboratories enabled the prc to design, develop and successfully test modern strategic nuclear weapons sooner than would otherwise have been possible. The stolen U.S. nuclear secrets give theprcdesign information on thermonuclear weapons on a par with our own” (Cox report, overview, p. 2; emphasis mine here and throughout).
The report revealed that the Chinese government stole classified information on seven thermonuclear warheads, including the W-88 Trident D-5 slbm, the most sophisticated nuclear weapon the United States has ever built. (This miniaturized tapered warhead is mated to the D-5 submarine-launched ballistic missile carried aboard the Trident nuclear submarine. China’s theft of this particular warhead information was discovered in 1995.)
The report’s list of stolen classified nuclear warhead information is actually incomplete, as China pilfered additional information which has not yet been made available to the public.
Adding to the dragon’s plunder, specific guidance technology used on U.S. missile and military aircraft was stolen, including that used on the Tactical Missile System (atacms), Stand-off Land Attack Missile Extended Range (slam-er), Naval F-14 fighter, Air Force F-15, F-16 and F-177 fighters. Chinese covert genius is sucking the blood from American nuclear technology.
U.S. intelligence officials also admit that during the late 1990s China made almost 50 attempts to obtain two specific documents. In one ten-month period, U.S. intelligence agencies recorded 792 computer-based security incidents; 324 of these came from outside the United States. The attacks were direct efforts to gain scans of vulnerable systems and sensitive password files. For some time Chinese hackers had “root” access to Energy Department computer systems, giving them unrestricted right of entry to sensitive data.
One recent heist at the Los Alamos facility in New Mexico netted the Chinese cyberthieves sensitive data the equivalent of a stack of documents three feet high. The hackers disguised themselves by entering the facility’s ftp (file-transfer protocol) site via computer system gateways at various U.S. universities. They stole controlled, naval, export and corporate proprietary data. In a stunning revelation reported on August 3 by the Washington Times, Jim Danneskiold, spokesman for the lab, “suggested that the Chinese intrusion in question might not have been detected because security officials at Los Alamos were in the process of installing a security ‘firewall’ system designed to keep out unauthorized computer intruders.” A case of too little, too late.
Surveying the magnitude of penetration, one is left wondering just how long the secret facility was without the protection of the firewall security. In the wake of the heist, one U.S. security analyst managed to electronically track the Chinese hackers all the way back to a research institute in Beijing.
In addition to the recent security breaches, the Cox report charges that China’s theft of U.S. military secrets stretches back many decades. After Henry Kissinger’s secret 1971 trip to China and President Nixon’s much-publicized 1972 state visit, it was only a few years before U.S. nuclear secrets began to be smuggled into China. “In the late 1970s, the prc stole design information on the U.S. W-70 warhead from the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory. The U.S. government first learned of this theft several months after it took place” (Cox report). This warhead contains elements that may be used either as a thermonuclear weapon or an enhanced radiation weapon such as the neutron bomb.
In May of this year, agitated lawmakers summoned Energy Secretary Bill Richardson to Washington for an explanation of why two top-secret computer hard drives went missing at Los Alamos National Laboratory. The ten-year-old drives contained classified information about locating and dismantling U.S. and foreign nuclear devices that could be used in a terrorist attack. The two hard drives were pilfered from the top-secret X division of the lab.
Chinese nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee has spent the past seven months in a New Mexican jail awaiting trial for allegedly copying two top-secret nuclear weapons files while working in the X division of the Los Alamos facility. Recently, Lee received sympathetic support from the Federation of American Scientists. Ironically, the federation was founded in 1945 by disgruntled scientists from the Manhattan Project. These were the men who spent their time during World War ii developing and testing the first atomic bomb.
China’s currently deployed icbms, which are targeted on key U.S. cities, are modeled on 1950s design technology. But as the Cox report reveals, the stolen thermonuclear weaponry secrets provide China with design information on a par with the U.S. “With the stolen U.S. technology, the prc has leaped, in a handful of years, from 1950s-era strategic nuclear capabilities to the more modern thermonuclear weapons designs. These modern thermonuclear weapons took the United States decades of effort, hundreds of millions of dollars, and numerous nuclear tests to achieve” (ibid.).
China also stole information pertaining to missile design, analysis and testing procedures. In China the ballistic missile and space launch programs have long been interconnected, reporting to the very same state-owned corporation and government ministry.
Sharing the Secrets
The Cox report also confirms China’s status as one of the world’s leading proliferators of complete ballistic missile systems and missile components.
Along with technology and equipment, China has outfitted Iran with 95-mile range CSS-8 ballistic missiles. For the past 20 years China has transferred C-802 anti-ship cruise missiles to Iran. In addition, China is intimately involved with Iran’s nuclear development program. China has also supplied Pakistan with CSS-X-7/M-11 mobile missile launchers and helped set up the facilities that produce the M-11 missiles. The Chinese also supply them with the uranium enrichment, ring magnets and other technologies currently used in Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program. In 1987 China provided Saudi Arabia a complete CSS-2 missile system, which has a range of 1200 to 1900 miles. In addition, the special committee confirmed that North Korea has also received China’s assistance in weapons and military-related projects.
The report also stated that further sharing of U.S. nuclear technology has occurred with other countries, but that the current administration has determined this information cannot be released publicly without seriously jeopardizing national security. This leaves you wondering just how bad China’s proliferation of U.S.-generated nuclear secrets really is!
In the Grip of Greed
Despite China having its hand caught in the U.S. nuclear-secret cookie jar, Congress has voted to continue to reward China the coveted status of most-favored trading partner.
Washington has sent a clear message to Beijing: You can keep stealing our nuclear secrets, just don’t stop trading with us! This is consistent with the current U.S. administration’s belief that two-way trade equals two-way peace. Sadly, the national security of a once-great superpower has been sacrificed on the altar of international free trade. America has been caught in the grip of greed.
Authors of the New York Times bestseller Year of the Rat, Edward Timperlake and William C. Triplett ii, write on page 12 of their new book, Red Dragon Rising, “In short, through a misguided foreign policy that has sacrificed national security for money and personal political power, the Clinton-Gore administration has materially assisted Beijing’s military ambitions.”
Have we forgotten that the world’s most populous nation considers itself the mother of Asia and center of the world? Have we forgotten Mao Tsetung’s leadership and the murder of 20 million Chinese? Have we forgotten the Tiananmen Square massacre? Have we forgotten that China has threatened to attack Taiwan? The Chinese have not forgotten that U.S.-led nato planes bombed China’s embassy in Belgrade! Have we forgotten that China has secured Hong Kong, the Panama Canal and Macau? Have we forgotten that China publicly states that it hates America and claims the U.S. as its enemy?
YES—it appears America has forgotten!
China has a clear strategy to dominate Asia through trade and military might. The fruit of this strategy is that China is pursuing control of key global sea lanes. Control over these vital trade life lines equals power, and that power has now been handed over to China on a silver platter by Britain and America. China is on a roll and is clearly being aided in its drive to regional greatness by a U.S. administration that has blurred the lines between personal and national interest.
In 1998 alone, America’s trade deficit with China was a staggering $57 billion. The U.S. is the second-largest investor in China, with over $43 billion plunged into business ventures in an attempt to take advantage of its mammoth market of 1.2 billion citizens. China is also using its trade relationship with the U.S. to gain access to the World Trade Organization (wto) and International Monetary Fund (imf).
While the U.S. disagrees with China’s extensive record of human rights violations, international espionage, communist dogma, professed hatred of America and alliances with rogue nations, it says a resounding yes to the extension of trade relations. Why? “For the love of money is the root of all evil” (i Tim. 6:10).
A nation that forgets history is destined to become history! This is the path that modern-day America is treading today.
Consistent Inconsistency
Inconsistency in foreign policy and U.S.-China relations reveals a more troublesome national affliction. A nation that permits other nations to steal from it and still maintain preferential trade relations as if nothing happened is a nation too absorbed in the pursuit of prosperity. The character of America is in crisis.
America’s weakness in moral character and leadership was foretold anciently. God said He would take away from America the “mighty man, and the man of war, the judge, and the prophet, and the prudent, and the ancient, The captain of fifty, and the honourable man, and the counseller, and the cunning artificer, and the eloquent orator. And I will give children to be their princes, and babes shall rule over them” (Isa. 3:2-4).
It is the ballooning moral deficit that has gutted America’s foreign policy. The Woodstock, student-protesting baby boomers have spawned generation X and Y in preparation for the premature birth of an even more defiled and morally broken lineage—generation Z! Because of national rebellion God has broken the very pride of America’s power (Lev. 26:19).
The only way to turn around this morally bankrupt foreign policy that allows a country to steal from it while maintaining them as a prime trade partner is to turn back to the values and principles that made America the largest, most prosperous, blessed nation the Earth has ever seen. In short: Turn back to God!
Have we forgotten what the second President of the United States, John Adams said in 1776?
Read it for yourself: “Statesmen may plan and speculate for liberty, but it is religion and morality alone which can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand.”
President James Madison stated the same. “We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not on the power of government … [but] upon the capacity of each and every one of us to govern ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.” The true reason China has been able to steal U.S. secrets for almost 30 years is America’s disobedience to God’s commandments. America has forgotten God!
“Behold, I set before you this day a blessing and a curse; A blessing, if ye obey the commandments of the Lord your God, which I command you this day: And a curse, if ye will not obey the commandments of the Lord your God, but turn aside out of the way which I command you this day, to go after other gods, which ye have not known” (Deut. 11:26-28). Gone are the days of Abraham Lincoln, who called America to its knees for repentant prayer and fasting.
America’s loss of vital military nuclear secrets is not merely a result of lax security. It is a curse direct from God for not obeying His commandments, which were the moral framework for the creation of America as a nation. Write for our free booklet Character in Crisis for more information.
The Final Chapter
America’s China policy is an exercise in self deception. China is taking full advantage of the economic and foreign-policy weakness of the United States. In its policy of good intentions, the U.S. is helping China achieve its goal of rebuilding its inefficient economy and enhancing its military capability.
Watch for China to continue to revive its economy and streamline its military as it exerts more power in Asia at the expense of American strength. China is keen to strike strategic alliances with the world’s second and third most-populous nations, Russia and India. The Bible reveals that in fact China will not attack the United States, but, in concert with Russia, will ultimately steamroll the European Union. Russia and China are destined to lead a powerful Sino-Russian-Asian power bloc (Dan. 11:44). For more understanding, request our free booklet Russia and China in Prophecy.
China’s theft of U.S. intelligence will continue as long as America continues to disobey God’s law. Eventually the U.S. will be forced to return to the immutable principles upon which it was founded. Then the stealing will stop. Americans will live happy, abundant, joyful lives in accordance with God’s Ten Commandments under a perfect government (Isa. 9:6-7).
Ruling from Jerusalem, Jesus Christ and those who have willingly submitted to His direction in preparing the way for His return will rule using loving family government, ushering in a millennium of abundant peace and well being for all.
