Washington Free Beacon senior editor Bill Gertz explained the scope of Chinese spying on American industry Wednesday on "Tucker Carlson Tonight."
Gertz told the Fox News host the threat America faces is from different sides.
"It's a three-pronged threat. You have traditional spying. Right now in Alexandria (Virginia), there are two ex-CIA officers who are under investigation or being prosecuted for spying-related activities in China," Gertz said. "Then you have the cyber threat, and this is a massive theft of technology from both the government and the private sector.
"And then last are what they call the non-traditional collectors, that's the 350,000 Chinese students here, researchers, academics, and they are all working together as much [as] a secret government, Chinese government-directed program to steal all the most modern technology. They are going after the cutting edge stuff right now: artificial intelligence and quantum computing."
Gertz said the FBI was in charge of protecting America against Chinese spying, but that not enough has been done to counter the threat from China.
Gertz also blasted the Obama administration for their lack of action during President Barack Obama's eight years in office and why he did little to counter China.
"It's the same thing with the Russia probe too, they knew about the Russian interference going back to 2015 and did nothing," he said. "So, basically it's been a passive approach. They rely on just diplomatic niceties and they basically ignored this growing intelligence threat that, as you said, the massive amounts have been totaled between $200 billion and $600 billion annually in our most cutting-edge technologies."