Former FBI official Chris Piehota advises Director Kash Patel prioritize combating Chinese espionage

Former FBI assistant Director Chris Piehota says newly appointed Director Kash Patel should prioritize restoring counterintelligence programs similar to now defunct China Initiative.

"Given China's interest in, well, destabilizing us, it has to be reprioritized immediately," Piehota said  on a recent episode of the "Just the News, No Noise" TV show. "I think Director Patel has to look at them as our primary adversary, competitor and threat when it comes to a near peer, nation-state level opponent or competitor, as we like to say.

He also said Patel, in an effort to "refocus priority" within the agency, should promptly move the Chinese programs back into a position of prominence "because that which the boss is interested in gets done and it gets done well."

"So he has to make it one of his primary priorities right now, and we have to go back to creating what I consider to be an inhospitable or hostile operating environment for the Chinese or other international adversaries," Piehota continued. 

The China Initiative, a program started by President Trump's first FBI director, Jeff Sessions, was designed to monitor and prosecute Chinese espionage in U.S. industry and academia.

It was terminated by the Justice Department in 2022, after Trump's first term and during President Biden's one term.

Piehota served as the FBI's executive assistant director under Sessions from 2016 to 2020. He is the author of the book "Wanted: The FBI I Once Knew."

Piehota also told show hosts John Solomon and Amanda Head the Biden administration's priorities caused the FBI to decrease counterintelligence efforts. 

"I think over the past several years, the FBI and other intelligence organizations had to step back a little bit," he said. "The previous administration was not as amenable to creating those hostile environments where I think the current administration is looking for that to be reestablished," Piehota said.