In a major update posted to X, FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino announced that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has cracked down on a massive and sophisticated Chinese spy ring that was trying to target American service members and push them into committing treason that aids the People’s Republic of China.
As background, this latest update comes in the context of other discoveries of Chinese espionage involving American service members, such as when three Army soldiers were caught in a treason-adjacent espionage case this spring, stealing secrets from the military and sending them to the PRC.
Beginning the post, the deputy director said that the FBI is focused on protecting America from foreign agents, saying: “As promised, I want to provide an update on our efforts to defend the homeland and protect the American people from foreign intelligence agents. This is your @FBI, and you deserve to know about the work we’re doing every day to keep our country and citizens safe.”
Building on that, he noted that eight cities were targeted in raids taht attempted to find and root out members of a “sophisticated” Chinese espionage ring, writing, “Today we announced two arrests and the execution of eight search warrants in San Francisco, Houston, Portland, and San Diego as part of our disruption of a sophisticated ring of Chinese government agents trying to recruit U.S. military service members to betray their country by committing espionage.”
Further, he noted that the sweeping operation came in the context of a larger project of protecting Americans from espionage attempts carried out by our main enemies and competitors. He said, “We are mission-focused on keeping our nation’s secrets, technology, and data out of the hands of foreign intelligence agents. That’s crucial to protecting America’s military and technological advantage over adversaries like China, Iran, Russia and North Korea.”
Explaining what the FBI has found such intelligence assets doing, the deputy director explained that 51 agents have been arrested in the first half of 2025 alone, and they were found to be doing evertying from “STEALING our technology and financial policies through economic espionage and theft of trade secrets” to “SMUGGLING biological pathogens that put our health and our agriculture at risk.”
However, Bongino then explained that while there have so far been a few major successes, the problem of foreign espionage targeting America remains. Explaining the scale of the problem, he said, “There’s a lot more work to be done. We have nearly 5,000 open counterintelligence investigations, including more than 800 new cases opened this year alone.”
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Concluding, the deputy director noted that the FBI is improving despite its past mistakes that have eroded the public’s faith in it, writing, “We typically work behind the scenes in this space, but we understand we need to rebuild your trust in the FBI and learn from past mistakes. That’s why we have declassified and shared with Congress thousands of pages of documents related to our counterintelligence work, and it’s why we’re continuing to release as much as we can to the public. We thank you for your patience and will continue to be as open and transparent as possible to earn back your trust in the FBI. Because we work for you.”