Sen. Katie Britt has been a vocal opponent of the Chinese Communist Party's attempts to steal American technology and intellectual property.

At last week's Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee hearing titled “National Security Challenges: Outpacing China on Emerging Technologies,” Britt, director of George Mason University's Antonin Scalia National Security Institute, We discussed this issue with Jamil Jafar, Founder and Executive Director. Law school.

“We are constantly reminded of the Chinese Communist Party's impact on our national and economic security, and the threat it poses to both our country and our future,” said Senator Britt. “The Chinese Communist Party has shown time and time again that it has no intention of following the rules governing international commerce. , aggressively stealing American technology and intellectual property across all sectors of our economy, from biology and beyond.”

In his remarks, Britt also noted a significant increase in reported cases of Chinese economic espionage.

“In fact, the number of FBI economic espionage cases related to China has increased by approximately 1,300% over the past decade, and a China-related counterintelligence investigation is now opened on average every 10 hours,” she said. Stated.

The senator called for immediate action to ensure that the Chinese Communist Party's attempts to take possession of American land fail.

“The stakes couldn’t be higher. We must fight the ongoing economic damage to hardworking American families, Main Street small businesses, up-and-coming entrepreneurs, and critical industries. We must act now to mitigate,” Britt continued. “To do that, we must stop the Chinese Communist Party from purchasing land in the United States. Not only is this impacting fertile farmland available to our nation's farming communities, but the Chinese Communist Party is By purchasing land, they are intentionally violating (U.S.) national security.”

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“That is why, along with Senator Tom Cotton, Instead of another inch or acre method. And I continue to encourage my colleagues to join us in this effort. ”

Britt then asked Jafar about efforts being made to thwart the Chinese Communist Party.

“We've allowed the NSA and Cyber ​​Command to be more aggressive and defend forward on enemy networks,” Jaffer explained. “More needs to be done there.”

He also said broader powers were needed to enable a more complete government response.

“We need to make policy decisions to actually counter Chinese predation and the efforts that other nation-state actors like Iran and Russia are making on our networks.”

Mr. Jaffer also noted the importance of protecting the United States from economic damage and reiterated the need to give the executive branch more “tools” to deal with this problem.

“Second, we need to ensure that we have policies and procedures in place to effectively push back against China economically.Currently, we use tools such as the SDN List and the Entity List; is not a tool designed for the kind of economic plunder they do.”

“We need to be more proactive,” Jeffer said. “It’s not just features and tools that need to be used more actively. We are too used to using only economic tools that are not as effective as they could be. You need to work on it.

“We either have a sledgehammer on one hand or a scalpel on the other. Neither will work. We need a butcher knife. That requires an act of Congress to give the administration more tools.” And the administration needs to use those tools and use them effectively.”

Austin Shipley is a staff writer at Yellowhammer News.