‘China, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the audio from Trump and Putin's private meeting that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.’

“The NSA notes that the attacks could have had an impact on voting tallies.”

Putin’s patriotic hackers Making America Great Again. #RiggedElection

According to a report at The Intercept, an internal document at the NSA shows that Russian military intelligence “executed a cyberattack on at least one U.S. voting software supplier and sent spear-phishing emails to more than 100 local election officials just days before last November’s presidential election.”

The Intercept notes the document is dated May 5, 2017, and states, “Russian General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate actors … executed cyber espionage operations against a named U.S. company in August 2016, evidently to obtain information on elections-related software and hardware solutions. … The actors likely used data obtained from that operation to … launch a voter registration-themed spear-phishing campaign targeting U.S. local government organizations.”

China’s top spy agency, the Ministry of State Security (MSS), has recently intensified its public outreach to alert Chinese citizens to the pervasive threat of foreign espionage. This comes amid an increase in public activities, including the release of a dramatic video on National Security Education Day, illustrating the stealth and variety of tactics used by foreign spies, from disguises as…

Australia's embassy in Beijing is using a Chinese government agency to recruit senior staff into the consulate, with intelligence insiders warning this practice is the equivalent of paying China to "put spies into our consulates".

In November DFAT engaged the Beijing Service Bureau for Diplomatic Missions to recruit a head of mission senior adviser and interpreter, paying an annual salary of 340,916.33 yuan ($69,256.28) and requested a start date "as soon as possible". 

It comes after ASIO began investigating revelations the CCP had infiltrated the Australian, British and US embassies in Shanghai via a government-sponsored recruitment agency called the Shanghai Foreign Agency Service Department. 

"China's role in the world today cannot be understood without reference to the wide array of malign activities that the Chinese Communist Party undertakes to influence our societies in ways that are covert, coercive and corrupting." -US State Department spokeswoman told the Australian.

The Australian's investigation, based on a leak of official CCP membership records from Shanghai — the first of its kind in the world — also revealed how CCP branches are embedded in global companies, including those holding sensitive defence contracts with the Australian and US governments. A data leak has uncovered at least ten Shanghai consulates have Chinese communist party (CCP) members in senior positions. A joint investigation by The Australian on Monday found at least 10 consulates in Shanghai have CCP members employed as senior political and government affairs specialists, clerks, economic advisers and executive assistants.

The Shanghai Foreign Agency Service Department could be part of a "state-sponsored spy ring".

The Shanghai Foreign Agency Service Department, systematically has been placing CCP members in the Australian, British, US and at least seven other consulates in Shanghai for more than a decade. Few democratic nations appear to have been immune to taking on CCP employees through the SFASD. Some, the records show, have been employed for more than a decade in the US consulate and even longer at the Italian and South African consulates. They have been working as senior political and government affairs specialists, clerks, economic advisers and executive assistants. A senior executive assistant who worked at Australia's Shanghai consulate and was involved in visits of parliamentary delegations has been listed as a CCP member. In Britain's Shanghai consulate, a CCP member works near MI6 intelligence officers operating under deep cover. The leaked database also shows a CCP member worked for the New Zealand consulate in Shanghai for four years as a policy adviser on trade and economics. Similarly infiltrated by CCP employees, as disclosed in the database leaked to the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China made up of 150 legislators from around the world, have been global companies such as Boeing, which has billions of dollars in international defence contracts, including with Australia; banks, including ANZ and HSBC; the Pfizer and AstraZeneca pharmaceutical companies developing coronavirus vaccines; and Western universities. 

In recent times, the frenzied bullying of the CCP "wolf warriors" has been on full display, not only in their malevolence towards Australia and democratic countries across the world but also in their brutal suppression of Hong Kong and attacks on India in the Himalayas.