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Cozy Bear (also called APT29, a known unit of Russia’s SVR foreign intelligence service) appears to have been behind the attack, the Wall Street Journal reports. Moscow denies any involvement in the incident. Reuters adds that the Kremlin thinks the Americans should have been more mutual, more cooperative.
FireEye calls the backdoor “Sunburst.” Microsoft’s Security Response Center has a detailed account of how the malware functions. Both FireEye and Microsoft have upgraded their security products to include measures for detecting and protecting against the attack. SolarWinds urges its customers to “upgrade to Orion Platform version 2020.2.1 HF 1 as soon as possible.”
When FireEye Inc. discovered that it was hacked this month, the cybersecurity firm’s investigators immediately set about trying to figure out how attackers got past its defenses.
It wasn’t just FireEye that got attacked, they quickly found out. Investigators discovered a vunerability in a product made by one of its software providers, Texas-based SolarWinds Corp.
“We looked through 50,000 lines of source code, which we were able to determine there was a backdoor within SolarWinds,” said Charles Carmakal, senior vice president and chief technical officer at Mandiant, FireEye’s incident response arm.
After discovering the backdoor, FireEye contacted SolarWinds and law enforcement, Carmakal said.
In part: Washington — U.S. government agencies were ordered to scour their networks for malware and disconnect potentially compromised servers after authorities learned that the Treasury and Commerce departments had been hacked in a months-long global cyberespionage campaign. The campaign was discovered when a prominent cybersecurity firm learned it had been breached.
In a rare emergency directive issued late Sunday, the Department of Homeland Security’s cybersecurity arm warned of an “unacceptable risk” to the executive branch from a feared large-scale penetration of U.S. government agencies that could date back to mid-year or earlier.
“This can turn into one of the most impactful espionage campaigns on record,” said cybersecurity expert Dmitri Alperovitch.
The apparent conduit for the Treasury and Commerce Department hacks – and the FireEye compromise – is a hugely popular piece of server software called SolarWinds. It’s used by hundreds of thousands of organizations globally, including most Fortune 500 companies and multiple U.S. federal agencies that will now be scrambling to patch up their networks, said Alperovitch, the former chief technical officer of the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike.
On its website, SolarWinds says it has 300,000 customers worldwide, including all five branches of the U.S. military, the Pentagon, the State Department, NASA, the National Security Agency, the Department of Justice and the White House. It says the 10 leading U.S. telecommunications companies and top five U.S. accounting firms are also among customers.
The DHS directive – only the fifth since such directives were created in 2015 – said U.S. agencies should immediately disconnect or power down any machines running the impacted SolarWinds software.
“We believe that this vulnerability is the result of a highly-sophisticated, targeted and manual supply chain attack by a nation state,” said SolarWinds CEO Kevin Thompson said in a statement. He said it was working with the FBI, FireEye and intelligence community. More here.
It turns out that the attackers also compromised the Department of Homeland Security. SolarWinds revealed to the Securities and Exchange Commission that the breach may affect 18,000 customers.
It appears that, in March 2020, someone managed to modify the SolarWinds Orion software during the build process—that is, the process that translates the human-readable code and merges it into a form that a computer can execute. This timing is based on both the Microsoft and FireEye analyses, as well as the reported versions affected by SolarWinds.
This modification included a sophisticated and stealthy Trojan program, designed to remotely control any computer that installed SolarWinds Orion. When customers installed the latest update, the Trojan program would start running on the victims’ computers. This is considered a software “supply chain attack”: The intended victims received a polluted copy of the Orion software directly or indirectly from SolarWinds.
What Now?
Christmas is now officially cancelled for three groups. The first is for the IT staff working for the perhaps 18,000 SolarWinds customers affected by the breach, who are going to have to spend the next weeks rebuilding their networks and going over everything with a fine-toothed comb looking for various backdoors. This is going to be a lot of work to sort out. The only good thing is that most of the customers don’t have secondary backdoors to worry about, because the biggest problem faced by the attacker was simply the target-rich environment. Each effort at exploitation increases the risk of discovery, and in the end, there are only so many people who can conduct these attacks.
The second group is the U.S. intelligence community. This attack started in March with the first exploitation starting in April. Either they didn’t know about it—a failure in the “defend forward” philosophy—or they did know about it, in which case they also failed to defend forward. There are going to be tough questions that the intelligence community will need to answer internally.
The final group is the Russian government. This was an amazingly valuable intelligence feed, capturing U.S. government communication leading up to the transition as well as critical insights into U.S. financial controls. Now the feed has gone dark and Russia has lost a hugely powerful asset. But then again, these are a bunch of Russian spies, so in the immortal words of every sysadmin: “fsck those guys”.
France24: The UN General Assembly on Monday adopted a resolution urging Russia to end its “temporary occupation” of Crimea, which Moscow took over in 2014, “without delay.”
The resolution on the militarization of the peninsula of Crimea, the port of Sevastopol and parts of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov was adopted by 63 countries, with 17 voting against and 62 abstaining.
The resolution is non-binding but has political significance. It was put forward by 40 countries, including Britain, France, Germany and the Baltic states, as well the United States, Australia, Canada and Turkey.
The resolution “urges the Russian Federation, as the occupying Power, immediately, completely and unconditionally to withdraw its military forces from Crimea and end its temporary occupation of the territory of Ukraine without delay.”
Facing the “continuing destabilization of Crimea owing to transfers by the Russian Federation of advanced weapon systems, including nuclear-capable aircraft and missiles, weapons, ammunition and military personnel to the territory of Ukraine,” the resolution called on Russia to stop all such transfers “without delay.”
Fighting between Ukrainian troops and forces backed by Russia has left more than 13,000 dead since 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea and pro-Russian forces in the east of Ukraine rebelled against Kiev.
At the UN Security Council, tensions between Russia and western countries over the conflict remain in sharp focus, as was shown by an informal meeting last week by Moscow on the 2015 Minsk accords between Ukraine and Russia, which were sponsored by France and Germany.
Berlin and Paris sparked Russian fury by boycotting the meeting, described by European countries as an international platform offered to the Donbass separatists, several of whom had been invited to speak by Moscow.
Paul Goble
In the euphoria that surrounded Vladimir Putin’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea six years ago, most Russians were more than willing to spend money to integrate that region into the Russian Federation. But at that time, they had little idea just how much that process would cost. Not only did that aggressive breach of international law trigger Western sanctions against Russia, but the authorities in Moscow also never gave the public an honest estimate of just how much money would need to be spent, nor for how long, even after the Kremlin proclaimed the peninsula’s absorption an accomplished fact. Were the Russian economy doing well, that might not matter; but it is not (see EDM, May 6, 12, 18, November 30), and the subsidies going to Crimea are, of course, unavailable to support the domestic needs of the increasingly hard-pressed Russian people in Russia proper. That contradiction could, therefore, encourage Putin to try to launch a new military advance to cover these losses.
Russian regional affairs analyst Anton Chablin points out that the recently released budget figures for 2021 show enormous spending on Crimea is set to continue. Moscow plans to channel no less than 102 billion rubles ($1.5 billion) to support 68 percent of the budget of Crimea. That figure is larger than the subsidies going to Dagestan and Chechnya: 96.7 billion rubles ($1.4 billion) and 78.8 billion rubles ($1.1 billion), respectively. When the Russian economy was somewhat healthier, Russians generally ignored those costs as the generous outlays to the country’s newest imperial possession were not considered a serious problem. But now, the situation has changed; and the numbers Chablin cites will likely lead an increasing number of Russians to ask whether Crimea is worth it. Although such a mental shift may not push Moscow to return Crimea to Ukraine, it could certainly further undermine Russian support for Putin and make it more likely he will launch some new offensive to rebuild “patriotic” fervor around himself (Akcent.site, December 7).
The first signs of popular unhappiness about this spending are likely to emerge as the State Duma (lower chamber of parliament) considers the budget, Chablin writes. Deputies almost certainly will focus on three things: 1) the growth in Moscow’s subsidies rather than the declines the Kremlin had promised in earlier years; 2) the overly optimistic predictions about tax collection made by the Russian regime in Crimea that are unlikely to be met and that will force Moscow to pay out even more than it is budgeting; and, especially offensive to many in the current environment, 3) the fact that the administration on the peninsula continues to spend ever more money on itself rather than on things like vacation resorts that might benefit average Russians (Akcent.site, December 7).
From the beginning of the annexation, independent Russian observers did point out that the direct costs associated with integrating Crimea would be far larger than and last longer than the Kremlin promised. Historian Arkady Popov, for example, said that the Kremlin’s pledge to end subsidies amounting to a trillion rubles ($160 billion) after only five or six years was absurd. Not only was that amount, in fact, more than Moscow could possibly afford—it exceeded the projected subsidies to the North Caucasus and the Russian Far East over the same period—but it was actually far less than would be needed given the collapse of the economy in Crimea since Russia occupied it (Ej.ru, September 28, 2015). And even then, there were Russians complaining that Moscow had “billions” for Crimea but no money to refurbish their decaying housing
(Forum-msk.org, March 26, 2014).
In the intervening years, various experts have attempted to put a price on Moscow’s assistance to Crimea; however, the Russian government has done what it can to obscure what it has been spending. Perhaps the best estimate came last year. It was prepared by economist Sergei Aleksashenko, who, in a book-length study, asserts that Crimea had by then cost Russia 1.5 trillion rubles ($23.5 billion). That figure, he points out in the piece, equals approximately 10,000 rubles ($160) for every man, woman and child in the Russian Federation. Or put another way, Aleksashenko continues, Moscow is now spending on Crimea 357 times the amount it is spending on the Russian Academy of Sciences, even though he concedes that a majority of Russians, as of 2019, did not think that the annexation was having a negative impact on their lives (Forbes.ru, March 24, 2019).
That passive acceptance may now be changing. For one thing, these budget figures are coming to light at a time of pandemic-induced suffering. And for another, Russians are increasingly aware of the collateral financial costs associated with Crimea that are not being counted in those base subsidy amounts. Among the largest of these associated costs, which has attracted significant attention recently, is what Moscow may be forced to spend in the coming months to ensure that the peninsula has enough drinking water (see EDM, February 26, August 12). Those estimated expenses are sufficiently great that Putin might decide on an alternative solution: launching a new military campaign against Ukraine to gain control of water supplies that Crimea lost access to when Russia occupied it (see EDM, May 21). If that were to happen, what may seem like a minor budgetary dispute could reignite the military conflict between Moscow and Kyiv, with all the far-reaching consequences that would involve.
Axios: A suspected Chinese intelligence operative developed extensive ties with local and national politicians, including a U.S. congressman, in what U.S. officials believe was a political intelligence operation run by China’s main civilian spy agency between 2011 and 2015, Axios found in a yearlong investigation.
Why it matters: The alleged operation offers a rare window into how Beijing has tried to gain access to and influence U.S. political circles.
While this suspected operative’s activities appear to have ended during the Obama administration, concerns about Beijing’s influence operations have spanned President Trump’s time in office and will continue to be a core focus for U.S. counterintelligence during the Biden administration.
Clockwise from top left: Fang with then-Dublin City Councilmember Eric Swalwell at an October 2012 student event; undated photo of Fang, now former Fremont Mayor Bill Harrison and Rep. Judy Chu; Fang with then-Rep. Mike Honda and then-San Jose city Councilmember Ash Kalra at a March 2014 event at the Chinese Embassy in D.C. Sources: Renren, Facebook, Facebook
The woman at the center of the operation, a Chinese national named Fang Fang or Christine Fang, targeted up-and-coming local politicians in the Bay Area and across the country who had the potential to make it big on the national stage.
Through campaign fundraising, extensive networking, personal charisma, and romantic or sexual relationships with at least two Midwestern mayors, Fang was able to gain proximity to political power, according to current and former U.S. intelligence officials and one former elected official.
Even though U.S. officials do not believe Fang received or passed on classified information, the case “was a big deal, because there were some really, really sensitive people that were caught up” in the intelligence network, a current senior U.S. intelligence official said.
Private but unclassified information about government officials — such as their habits, preferences, schedules, social networks, and even rumors about them — is a form of political intelligence. Collecting such information is a key part of what foreign intelligence agencies do.
Among the most significant targets of Fang’s efforts was Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.).
Fang took part in fundraising activity for Swalwell’s 2014 re-election campaign, according to a Bay Area political operative and a current U.S. intelligence official. Swalwell’s office was directly aware of these activities on its behalf, the political operative said. That same political operative, who witnessed Fang fundraising on Swalwell’s behalf, found no evidence of illegal contributions.
Federal Election Commission records don’t indicate Fang herself made donations, which are prohibited from foreign nationals.
Fang helped place at least one intern in Swalwell’s office, according to those same two people, and interacted with Swalwell at multiple events over the course of several years.
A statement from Swalwell’s office provided to Axios said: “Rep. Swalwell, long ago, provided information about this person — whom he met more than eight years ago, and whom he hasn’t seen in nearly six years — to the FBI. To protect information that might be classified, he will not participate in your story.”
What happened: Amid a widening counterintelligence probe, federal investigators became so alarmed by Fang’s behavior and activities that around 2015 they alerted Swalwell to their concerns — giving him what is known as a defensive briefing.
Swalwell immediately cut off all ties to Fang, according to a current U.S. intelligence official, and he has not been accused of any wrongdoing.
Fang left the country unexpectedly in mid-2015 amid the investigation. She did not respond to multiple attempts by Axios to reach her by email and Facebook.
Between the lines: The case demonstrates China’s strategy of cultivating relationships that may take years or even decades to bear fruit. The Chinese Communist Party knows that today’s mayors and city council members are tomorrow’s governors and members of Congress.
In the years since the Fang probe, the FBI has prioritized investigations into Chinese influence operations, creating a unit in May 2019 within the bureau solely dedicated to countering Beijing’s activities at the state and local levels. U.S. national security officials believe the threat posed by China has only grown with time.
“She was just one of lots of agents,” said a current senior U.S. intelligence official.
Beijing “is engaged in a highly sophisticated malign foreign influence campaign,” FBI director Chris Wray said in a July 2020 speech. These efforts involve “subversive, undeclared, criminal, or coercive attempts to sway our government’s policies, distort our country’s public discourse, and undermine confidence in our democratic processes and values,” Wray said.
The FBI declined to comment. The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.
Details: Axios spoke with four current and former U.S. intelligence officials about the case over a period of more than a year. They requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media about the case.
Axios also spoke with 22 current and former elected officials, political operatives, and former students who knew Fang personally when she was based in the United States.
The cover: How Fang worked
Fang’s friends and acquaintances said she was in her late 20s or early 30s when she was based in the U.S. and was enrolled as a student at a Bay Area university.
She used political gatherings, civic society conferences, campaign rallies, and campus events to connect with elected officials and other prominent figures, according to U.S. intelligence officials, Bay Area political operatives, former students, and current and former elected officials who knew her.
U.S. intelligence officials believed she was overseeing likely unwitting subagents whom she helped place in local political and congressional offices.
Fang attended regional conferences for U.S. mayors, which allowed her to grow her network of politicians across the country.
She also engaged in sexual or romantic relationships with at least two mayors of Midwestern cities over a period of about three years, according to one U.S. intelligence official and one former elected official.
At least two separate sexual interactions with elected officials, including one of these Midwestern mayors, were caught on FBI electronic surveillance of Fang, according to two intelligence officials. Axios was unable to identify or speak to the elected officials.
Between 2011 and 2015, Fang’s activities brought her into contact with many of the Bay Area’s most prominent politicos.
She volunteered for Ro Khanna’s unsuccessful 2014 House bid, according to a former campus organizer and social media posts. (Khanna, a Democrat, was elected to the House in 2016.) Khanna’s office said he remembers seeing Fang at several Indian American political gatherings but did not have further contact with her. Khanna’s office said the FBI did not brief him on her activities. Khanna’s 2014 campaign staff said that Fang’s name does not appear in their staff records, though they said that their records do not include all volunteers.
Flyer for fundraiser for Rep. Tulsi Gabbard. Source: Facebook
Fang helped with a fundraiser for Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) in 2013, according to a flyer from the event Fang shared on Facebook. She appeared in photos over multiple years with a host of California politicians, including Khanna, Swalwell, Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.) and then-Rep. Mike Honda (D-Calif.).
Gabbard “has no recollection of ever meeting or talking with her, nor any recollection of her playing a major role at the fundraiser,” a spokesperson said in an email to Axios.
Fremont City Councilmember Raj Salwan, whose name appears on the flyer, told Axios he was unaware of Fang’s role in the event and her name was added to the flyer by other Asian American leaders.
Chu’s office said they have no records of Christine Fang. Honda said he had no memory of meeting Fang.
From left: Fang with Fremont City Councilmember Raj Salwan (L) and then-U.S. House candidate Ro Khanna at a September 2013 fundraiser for Rep. Tulsi Gabbard; Fang helped organize a 2012 town hall for Rep. Judy Chu. Sources: Facebook
The bottom line: U.S. officials believe Fang’s real reason for being in the U.S was to gather political intelligence and to influence rising U.S. officials on China-related issues.
Close relationships between a U.S. elected official and a covert Chinese intelligence operative can provide the Chinese government with opportunities to sway the opinion of key decision-makers.
Beijing may aim to influence foreign policy issues directly related to China, or issues closer to home, such as partnering with Chinese companies for local investment — an issue particularly salient among local-level officials such as mayors and city council members.
Sounding the alarm: The U.S. response
Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios
U.S. counterintelligence officials said they believe Fang acted at the direction of China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS), the country’s main civilian spy agency.
U.S. officials first noticed Fang through surveillance they were conducting on a different person — a suspected MSS officer working undercover as a diplomat in the San Francisco consulate, a current U.S. counterintelligence official said.
The suspected officer used the consulate as a base to do outreach to state and local-level U.S. politicians, including inviting them on trips to China, the official said.
The official added that both Fang and the suspected officer were focused on gathering political intelligence and conducting influence operations in the Bay Area. (Axios corroborated through U.S. State Department records that a Chinese diplomat with the same name as the suspected MSS officer was stationed in San Francisco during the period Fang was there.)
Fang and the suspected officer met or spoke on numerous occasions, leading U.S. officials to look into Fang’s own background and activities, the official said.
However, Fang’s main intelligence handlers were believed to be based in China, according to two U.S. officials.
Fang was put under FBI surveillance, four current and former U.S. officials said. The FBI’s San Francisco Division led a counterintelligence investigation into Fang’s activities, according to one current and one former U.S. intelligence official.
“The fact that she was traveling around the country” getting close to U.S. politicians “was a big red flag,” said one of the officials. “She was on a mission.”
What happened next: Senior U.S. intelligence officials provided multiple defensive briefings around 2015 to warn targeted local and national politicians about Fang’s connections to Chinese intelligence and potential Chinese assets in their offices, one of these officials said.
U.S. intelligence officials also provided multiple briefings to White House officials and members of Congress on the case, a current senior official said.
Bill Harrison, the mayor of Fremont, California, at that time, said he knew Fang because she volunteered in his office and participated in numerous local political and community events. Harrison told Axios that in August 2015 he was contacted by FBI officials who warned him about Fang’s suspected activities in the Bay Area.
Bureau officials said Fang’s activities were part of a “long game play” targeting local politicians, Harrison recalled. The FBI told him the Chinese government’s strategy is “to strike up a relationship with you and see if you move up the line,” Harrison said.
How it ended: Fang left the U.S. suddenly
Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios
U.S. officials said China’s intelligence operation broke up in mid-2015 when Fang left the U.S. amid the FBI-led probe.
Fang had planned to travel to Washington, D.C., to attend a June 2015 event.
But shortly beforehand, she said she could no longer attend because she unexpectedly needed to return to China, according to an acquaintance from California on the same trip, who spoke with Axios.
Many of Fang’s political contacts in the Bay Area were surprised and confused about her sudden departure from the country.
“When she left kind of abruptly, we all kind of scratched our heads,” recalled Harrison, the former Fremont mayor. (The FBI reached out to Harrison after Fang’s departure.)
“She disappeared off the face of everything,” remembered Gilbert Wong, the former mayor of Cupertino, California, who had seen Fang frequently at political events.
But in the months surrounding her departure, rumors swirled in Bay Area political circles that the FBI was investigating her, according to four local organizers, political operatives, and elected officials who knew her.
Fang has not returned to the U.S., said intelligence officials and her former political acquaintances. She appears to have largely cut off contact with her U.S.-based friends and the networks she spent years building in California.
The Justice Department has filed no public charges against Fang.
Why Beijing targets California’s Bay Area
Data: FEC; Map: Andrew Witherspoon/Axios
The Bay Area offers ideal conditions for a foreign intelligence operative aiming to identify and target ambitious local politicians with national aspirations.
The big picture: Some of America’s most powerful politicians got their start in Bay Area politics, and China recognizes California’s importance. The MSS has a unit dedicated solely to political intelligence and influence operations in California.
Silicon Valley is also the world’s most important center for the technology industry, making it a hotbed for Chinese economic espionage. Russian intelligence has also long targeted the Bay Area.
California’s economy is the largest of all the U.S. states, giving California state lawmakers significant influence over national trends.
Democrats dominate the Bay Area, from mayors to its numerous U.S. congressional districts, and anyone seeking proximity to power needs to be in their political circles.
Context: The FBI’s extensive surveillance of left-wing political groups in the 1960s and 1970s has created a lingering distrust of the bureau that still exists today in Bay Area politics.
The Bay Area has one of the largest and oldest Chinese American communities in the country. Keeping tabs on Chinese diaspora communities is a top priority of China’s intelligence services, U.S. officials said.
China’s spy services want to influence these communities to become more predisposed to the regime, as well as surveil and stamp out potential organized opposition to the Communist Party.
Access to local political offices can give Beijing’s intelligence operatives opportunities to collect information on communities of Chinese descent in the United States.
A high-profile example of this occurred in the 2000s, when China’s Ministry of State Security allegedly recruited a San Francisco-based staffer in Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s office. This person, who was fired when the FBI alerted Feinstein to his activities, was responsible for liaising with the local Chinese community.
What’s at stake: Chinese Americans find themselves in a difficult position in 2020, being squeezed both by influence campaigns from the Chinese government and a rise in anti-Chinese racism in the United States.
“We want to fight against racism, we want to call it out,” Wong, the former mayor of Cupertino, told Axios. “But if there’s a spy, we definitely support full prosecution and we don’t support China penetrating the Chinese community.”
“How do we address this issue without infringing on Chinese American rights?” he added.
Khanna said in a statement: “I respect the need for law enforcement to protect our nation from espionage. [But] we need strict guardrails to make sure the FBI’s investigations do not have collateral damage to the privacy of American citizens or to the legitimacy of Asian Americans in this country.” He underscored his concern about “the chilling effect” of overbroad surveillance on Chinese American political participation.
How Fang rose to prominence among Bay Area politicos
In 2011, Fang enrolled as a student at California State University East Bay, where she served as the president of the school’s Chinese Student Association and president of the campus chapter of Asian Pacific Islander American Public Affairs (APAPA), a national organization that encourages Asian Americans to get involved in civic affairs.
She used those positions as her initial platform to gain access to political circles. She frequently invited political figures, business executives, and Chinese consular officials to attend the flurry of high-profile events she organized over a period of several years, according to current and former local officials, former students, Bay Area politicos, and social media activity.
Fang’s first known contact with numerous politicians, including Swalwell, Harrison, Chu, and then-candidate Khanna was through her role as president of these organizations.
Fang received a campus pride award for the work she did on behalf of the Chinese Student Association during the 2012–2013 academic year.
During this time, Fang maintained unusually close ties to the Chinese consulate in San Francisco.
It’s common for Chinese student association presidents to communicate frequently with Chinese consular officials.
But Fang’s relationship to the San Francisco consulate was especially close, according to social media posts, event flyers, photographs, and one current U.S. intelligence official.
A “certificate of honor” awarded to Fang by the Chinese consulate in San Francisco for her work as president of the CSU East Bay Chinese Student Association. Source: Renren
As Fang branched out into off-campus politics, she relied heavily on her APAPA affiliation. Many of Fang’s activities were “under the auspices of APAPA,” said one Bay Area political operative, an observation echoed by five other Bay Area political figures and activists.
Henry Yin, who is president of the APAPA Bay Area region chapter, told Axios in a phone call that he had seen Fang at numerous events and remembered her as being “very active.”
APAPA is “not involved with foreign countries,” said Yin, adding that the organization tries “to make connections with concerned citizens for the betterment of Asian and Pacific Islanders, and also benefit all citizens at large.”
Fang soon became a mainstay at Bay Area political events, fundraising for candidates and bringing along donors.
“She was everywhere,” said Raj Salwan, a current Fremont City councilmember, expressing a sentiment echoed by several other current and former local officials who spoke to Axios. “She was an active student. I was surprised at how active she was and how she knew so many politicos.”
Fang’s Facebook friends list is a virtual who’s who of local Bay Area politicos, and includes city council members, current and former mayors, Khanna, and Swalwell’s father and brother.
She positioned herself “to be the connector between the Asian American community and members of Congress,” recalled a Bay Area political operative who knew her.
One photo, taken at a March 2014 event at the Chinese Embassy in D.C., shows Fang together with Honda and Ash Kalra — at the time a San Jose city councilmember, later elected to the California State Assembly in 2016. A representative of Kalra’s office said he does not remember meeting Fang.
Fang attended events in support of former San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, according to an acquaintance present at the gatherings. (Lee, who began serving as mayor in 2011, passed away in 2017 while in office.)
What they’re saying: Several acquaintances in political circles told Axios that Fang was “charismatic” and “well liked” — though others described her behavior as “secretive” and even “suspicious.”
“Christine was a political player and she was someone who was good to know,” said a former campus political organizer who knew her.
But others found her less substantive. “She never really, to me, was interested on the policy side,” recalled the Bay Area political operative.
Few seemed to know Fang on a personal level. Several acquaintances told Axios she seemed to come from wealth — she drove a white Mercedes, according to one official — but said she never spoke about her family or her hometown.
Fang’s connection to Swalwell
From left: Fang and Swalwell at a 2013 Lunar New Year banquet, held at CSU East Bay; Fang and Swalwell at another 2013 event; Fang and Swalwell at an October 2012 CSU East Bay event. Sources: Facebook, Facebook, Renren
Fang’s ties to Rep. Eric Swalwell, which began when he was a councilmember for Dublin City, California, demonstrate China’s long game.
Swalwell rose to prominence rapidly, and in late 2012 became one of the youngest members of the U.S. House.
In January 2015, Swalwell was assigned a seat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, serving as the lead Democrat on the subcommittee on CIA oversight.
Details: Fang’s earliest known engagement with Swalwell occurred through the Chinese Student Association. By 2014, she had risen in local political circles and developed close ties to Swalwell’s office.
Fang “was a bundler” for Swalwell and other candidates, according to a Bay Area political operative with direct knowledge of her efforts. A current U.S. intelligence official confirmed her activity for Swalwell; a local elected official also said she brought in donors for other candidates. Bundlers persuade others to write checks for campaigns; they can bring in substantial sums of money as well as deepen the campaign’s engagement with target communities, making bundlers a valuable and thus potentially influential ally to a candidate.
The Bay Area political operative who witnessed Fang fundraising on Swalwell’s behalf was concerned whether donors she brought in were legally permitted to donate. They found no evidence of illegal contributions.
Fang facilitated the potential assignment of interns into Swalwell’s offices, the political operative said. In at least one case, an intern recommended by Fang was placed into Swalwell’s D.C. office, this person said. A current U.S. intelligence official confirmed the intern placement.
For Fang, targeting Swalwell made sense. His 2012 campaign — which was something of a longshot bid, pitting a young and relatively inexperienced city official against a longtime incumbent from the same party — relied heavily on Asian American support, said a former congressional staffer from the East Bay.
That made Swalwell’s ties to the Chinese American community, and particularly APAPA, the Asian American civic organization, especially important.
Fang sought out mayors around the U.S.
Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios
Fang attended conferences for mayors around the U.S., according to three U.S. intelligence officials, as well as numerous current and former politicians who knew her.
Why it matters: By attending conferences for local officials, Fang went to extraordinary lengths to meet and befriend U.S. politicians, ostensibly as part of her activities as a Chinese agent, U.S. officials believe.
Details: Fang engaged in sexual or romantic relationships with at least two mayors of Midwestern cities, said one U.S. intelligence official and one former elected official.
At a 2014 conference in Washington, an older Midwestern mayor “from an obscure city” referred to Fang as his “girlfriend” and insisted the relationship was genuine despite the clear age difference between Fang and himself, according to former Cupertino Mayor Gilbert Wong, who was directly present for the conversation.
Fang also had a sexual encounter with an Ohio mayor in a car that was under electronic FBI surveillance, said one current U.S. official. When the mayor asked why Fang was interested in him, Fang told him she wanted to improve her English, the same official said.
What they’re saying: Wong told Axios he knew Fang from her political activities in California, where she would attend fundraisers and Chinese cultural events.
But Wong said he was “shocked” to see her appear at an event for U.S. municipal officials hosted by the Chinese Embassy in D.C. in March 2014. Wong told Axios he had gone to D.C. twice that year to attend mayor-focused events, and that he saw Fang at both of those events.
At the Chinese Embassy event, Fang introduced Wong to the mayor of Shenzhen, a city that, like Cupertino, is home to a major tech industry. She translated so that the two mayors could have a conversation.
The bottom line
Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios
U.S. intelligence officials believe China’s spy services have become more aggressive and emboldened, including in their U.S.-focused influence and political intelligence-gathering operations. Fang’s case shows how a single determined individual, allegedly working for Beijing, can gain access to sensitive U.S. political circles.
Source: A NEW REPORT BY the United States National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, has found that the so-called ‘Havana Syndrome’, which afflicted American and Canadian diplomats in Cuba and China in 2016 and 2017, was likely caused by directed microwave radiation. The study, which was commissioned by the US Department of State, is the latest in a long list of scientific assessments of the mysterious syndrome. The case remains a source of debate in the scientific, diplomatic and intelligence communities.
In 2017 Washington recalled the majority of its personnel from the US embassy in Havana, and at least two more diplomats from the US consulate in the Chinese city of Guangzhou. The evacuees reported experiencing “unusual acute auditory or sensory phenomena” and hearing “unusual sounds or piercing noises”. Subsequent tests showed that they suffered from sudden and unexplained loss of hearing, and possibly from various forms of brain injuries. In April of 2019 the Canadian embassy evacuated all family members of its personnel stationed in the Cuban capital over similar health concerns.
The latest study by the National Academies of Sciences resulted from the coordination of leading toxicologists, epidemiologists, electrical engineers and neurologists. The resulting 66-page report describes in detail the symptoms experienced by nearly 40 US government employees, who were examined for the purposes of the study. Its authors said they examined numerous potential causes, including psychological factors, infectious diseases, directed radio frequency energy, and even exposure to insecticides. Ultimately, the authors concluded that “many of the distinctive and acute signs, symptoms and observations reported by [US government] employees are consistent with the effects of directed, pulsed radio frequency (RF) energy”, according to their report.
However, the study does not attempt to answer the burning question of whether the symptoms experienced by the sufferers resulted from deliberate attacks, and if so, who may have been behind them. Some have accused the governments of Cuba and/or Russia of being responsible for the syndrome. However, the Cuban and Russian governments have strongly denied the accusations. The National Academies of Sciences report does state that the systematic study of pulsed radio frequency energy has a history of over half a century in Russia and the Soviet Union.
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Description
In late 2016, U.S. Embassy personnel in Havana, Cuba, began to report the development of an unusual set of symptoms and clinical signs. For some of these patients, their case began with the sudden onset of a loud noise, perceived to have directional features, and accompanied by pain in one or both ears or across a broad region of the head, and in some cases, a sensation of head pressure or vibration, dizziness, followed in some cases by tinnitus, visual problems, vertigo, and cognitive difficulties. Other personnel attached to the U.S. Consulate in Guangzhou, China, reported similar symptoms and signs to varying degrees, beginning in the following year. As of June 2020, many of these personnel continue to suffer from these and/or other health problems. Multiple hypotheses and mechanisms have been proposed to explain these clinical cases, but evidence has been lacking, no hypothesis has been proven, and the circumstances remain unclear.
The Department of State asked the National Academies to review the cases, their clinical features and management, epidemiologic investigations, and scientific evidence in support of possible causes, and advise on approaches for the investigation of potential future cases. In An Assessment of Illness in U.S. Government Employees and Their Families at Overseas Embassies, the committee identifies distinctive clinical features, considers possible causes, evaluates plausible mechanisms and rehabilitation efforts, and offers recommendations for future planning and responses.
Obama’s normalizing relations did not work out so well. The big question now is whether there is a human rights violation and diplomatic consequence.
Meet Kenes Rakishev who has business interests in metals & mining, oil & gas, finance, and technology. His tech investments, made privately or through Singulariteam, cover a range of innovative companies, mostly in the fields of augmented reality, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, advanced robotics and blockchain technology. One particular financial adventure of Rakishev is the IQCard provides advanced financial services for the Russian retail market. Founded in 2012 with the support of Direct Group and Rakishev’s Fastlane Ventures, IQCard has developed affordable, convenient, and reliable payment solutions that include online banking services, bonus programmes and a loyalty programme.
This emerging scandal has all the hallmarks of Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation which manifested during her time as Secretary of State and it has the appearance of the same while John Kerry was Secretary of State. Note that John Kerry has endorsed candidate Joe Biden and the Bidens interaction with Alexandra Forbes Kerry, John Kerry’s daughter.
Hunter and Joe Biden with Kenes Rakishev (left) and Kazakhstan’s former prime minister, Karim Massimov (right)KIAR
From the NYP:A new photograph has emerged of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden posing with Hunter Biden and Kenes Rakishev, a Kazakh oligarch who reportedly worked with the former veep’s scandal-scarred son.
The snap, first published by a Kazakhstani anti-corruption website in 2019, follows last week’s bombshell Post exposés detailing Hunter Biden’s overseas business dealings and a report claiming Rakishev paid the Biden scion as a go-between to broker US investments.
In the undated photo, shared by the Kazhakhstani Initiative on Asset Recovery, the former vice president can be seen smiling with Kazakhstan’s former prime minister Karim Massimov and his son, who is flanked by Rakishev.
A Daily Mail report published Friday detailed Hunter Biden’s alleged work with Rakishev, claiming he dined regularly with the Kazakh businessman and attempted to facilitate investment for his cash in New York, Washington, DC, and a Nevada mining company.
But Rakishev, who enjoys close ties to Kazakhstan’s kleptocratic former president, reportedly ran into trouble when Western business partners realized that the opaque origins of his reported $300 million fortune could become a “liability,” the Mail reported.
The photo’s authenticity has not been independently verified but comes as the family faces growing scrutiny over Hunter Biden’s overseas business interests while the elder Biden was President Barack Obama’s vice president.
The Post published emails last week indicating Hunter Biden introduced his father to a Ukrainian oil executive before the veep pressured Ukrainian government officials to fire the prosecutor involved in an investigation of the shady organization a year later.
Biden’s campaign denied that the septuagenarian candidate had an “official” meeting with Vadym Pozharskyi but later conceded they couldn’t rule out that a meeting may have happened.
Other emails believed to be from Hunter Biden showed him leveraging links with his influential dad to boost his pay on the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma.
The British tabloid said they obtained emails from “anti-corruption campaigners” in Kazakhstan showing Hunter making contact with Rakishev and attempting to facilitate investment for his cash in New York, Washington DC and a Nevada mining company.
Through his connections, emails show Hunter Biden successfully engineered a $1 million investment from Rakishev to filmmaker Alexandra Forbes Kerry — the daughter of ex-Sen. and former Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, the report said.
Hunter Biden also traveled to the country’s capital of Astana for business talks.
Rakishev, however, repeatedly ran into problems finding western business partners due to the murky origins of his wealth. The respected International Finance Corp. pulled out a planned deal with him over “liabilities” stemming from his connections to the country’s rulers.
As in other nations like Ukraine and China where Hunter plied his trade, Joe Biden may not have been far behind. The Mail published a photo they obtained from the “Kazakhstani Initiative on Asset Recovery” showing Hunter Biden with his beaming father alongside Rakishev.
Hunter Biden and Rakishev also enjoyed a long and chummy personal correspondence as well, alleged emails show.
“I’m on vacation with family [at] Lake Michigan . . . trying to spend some much needed time with my wife and daughters. It’s my 20th anniversary of marriage tomorrow,” Hunter told Rakishev in 2013. Source
source
Clockwise from top left: Fang with then-Dublin City Councilmember Eric Swalwell at an October 2012 student event; undated photo of Fang, now former Fremont Mayor Bill Harrison and Rep. Judy Chu; Fang with then-Rep. Mike Honda and then-San Jose city Councilmember Ash Kalra at a March 2014 event at the Chinese Embassy in D.C. Sources: Renren, Facebook, Facebook
