China learns crucial info by intercepting Trump's personal calls

By Hollie McKay

While President Donald Trump refuted reports on Thursday that snoops from Russia and China have been listening in on personal calls he continues to make from his personal phone -- despite warnings from intelligence officials -- leading experts in the field agreed such breaches are highly plausible, and potentially far more wide-reaching.
“They do this against everybody who matters. Hypothetically, it is not just the president but others as well,” said Dan Hoffman, a retired CIA senior clandestine officer and current Fox News contributor. “If you have got a cell phone and a senior person in government, they are going to be looking at you, too.”

A New York Times report said intercepted communications between foreign officials have affirmed the president's phone was being tapped, in particular by operatives working for China.
“It is certainly believable they would do it,” Hoffman conjectured. 

“And just because something isn’t classified, it doesn’t mean that it isn’t sensitive, or potentially interesting to the bad guys.”
So what is of value of personal conversations to such foreign eavesdroppers?
“For them, it is not just about the content but essentially about the Rolodex, the people with whom you are contacting. And we don’t always need to know the content,” he pointed out. 

“They want to get the people [who] are closest to the president.”
In terms of content, Hoffman noted, even small tidbits are of use.
“Even if the president doesn’t think he is saying something particularly useful to anybody, the bad guys may find that it is interesting,” he explained. 

“They want to collect information to understand what makes the president tick and understand what his plans are. It is not necessarily about jumping ahead and taking action. They would simply want to understand what he is doing, and try to make policy decisions based on what they have learned.”
Theresa Payton, who served as White House chief information officer under President George W. Bush and is now CEO of security consulting company Fortalice Solutions, agreed that China would look for information about what the president values, how he makes decisions, and who is important to him.

“For China, this would have been an information-gathering mission to try to outmaneuver the president and the United States,” she said. 

“They likely would have been looking for information to exploit in trade and other negotiations – maybe even national security secrets.”
While two of Trump’s phones were said to have been modified by the National Security Agency, the president reportedly prefers to use a third, personal phone -- seemingly to the chagrin of top intelligence brass.
It's believed China is most strongly taking advantage of the security lapse, and thus piecing together a list of Trump-connected confidantes. 

The Russians are running a somewhat less-refined listening protocol, according to the Times report. Two individuals named with close ties to Trump, and now of special interest to China, include Stephen Schwarzman, the CEO of the private equity giant Blackstone Group, and Vegas casino mogul Steve Wynn.
The calls could be hijacked as they move through the cell towers and cables that connect cellular networks. 

Moreover, electronic espionage is hardly new – or unique.
“It is just what they do, how they operate,” Hoffman said.
While Hoffman observed the skill of a state actor is involved at that level, other experts expressed concern an even more diverse array of hackers potentially could access telecom infrastructure.
“They would then be able to establish patterns of the life of the president and his associates,” said Carlos Perez, research and development practice lead at IT consulting company TrustedSec. “Locations visited, for how long, times where the phones are blocked from the network for security reasons and much more that can be used to piece a wider look at the current situation in the White House.”
Nonetheless, China’s Foreign Ministry has denied seizing the president’s private phone calls. 

The Russian Foreign Ministry and its Washington embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

How iPhones Are Helping Chinese Espionage

When Trump iPhones Friends, the Chinese Listen and Learn
By Matthew Rosenberg and Maggie Haberman

Trump has two official iPhones that have limited abilities and a third that is no different from hundreds of millions of iPhones in use around the world.

WASHINGTON — When President Trump calls old friends on one of his iPhones to gossip, gripe or solicit their latest take on how he is doing, American intelligence reports indicate that Chinese spies are often listening — and putting to use invaluable insights into how to best work the president and affect administration policy, current and former American officials said.
Trump’s aides have repeatedly warned him that his cellphone calls are not secure, and they have told him that Russian spies are routinely eavesdropping on the calls, as well. 

But aides say the voluble president, who has been pressured into using his secure White House landline more often these days, has still refused to give up his iPhones. 

White House officials say they can only hope he refrains from discussing classified information when he is on them.
Trump’s use of his iPhones was detailed by several current and former officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity so they could discuss classified intelligence and sensitive security arrangements. 

The officials said they were doing so not to undermine Trump, but out of frustration with what they considered the president’s casual approach to electronic security.
American spy agencies, the officials said, had learned that China and Russia were eavesdropping on the president’s cellphone calls from human sources inside foreign governments and intercepting communications between foreign officials.
The officials said they have also determined that China is seeking to use what it is learning from the calls — how Trump thinks, what arguments tend to sway him and to whom he is inclined to listen — to keep a trade war with the United States from escalating further. 

In what amounts to a marriage of lobbying and espionage, the Chinese have pieced together a list of the people with whom Trump regularly speaks in hopes of using them to influence the president, the officials said.
Among those on the list are Stephen A. Schwarzman, the Blackstone Group chief executive who has endowed a master’s program at Tsinghua University in Beijing, and Steve Wynn, the former Las Vegas casino magnate who used to own a lucrative property in Macau.
The Chinese have identified friends of both men and others among the president’s regulars, and are now relying on Chinese businessmen and others with ties to Beijing to feed arguments to the friends of the Trump friends. 

The strategy is that those people will pass on what they are hearing, and that Beijing’s views will eventually be delivered to the president by trusted voices, the officials said. 

Steve Wynn, who owned a resort in Macau, is among the friends of Trump the Chinese hope to use to influence the president.

L. Lin Wood, a lawyer for Wynn, said his client was retired and had no comment. 

A spokeswoman for Blackstone, Christine Anderson, declined to comment on Chinese efforts to influence Schwarzman, but said that he “has been happy to serve as an intermediary on certain critical matters between the two countries at the request of both heads of state.”
Russia is not believed to be running as sophisticated an influence effort as China because of Trump’s apparent affinity for President Vladimir V. Putin, a former official said.
China’s effort is a 21st-century version of what officials there have been doing for many decades, which is trying to influence American leaders by cultivating an informal network of prominent businesspeople and academics who can be sold on ideas and policy prescriptions and then carry them to the White House. 

The difference now is that China, through its eavesdropping on Trump’s calls, has a far clearer idea of who carries the most influence with the president, and what arguments tend to work.
The Chinese and the Russians “would look for any little thing — how easily was he talked out of something, what was the argument that was used,” said John Sipher, a 28-year veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency who served in Moscow in the 1990s and later ran the agency’s Russia program.
Trump "friends" like Schwarzman, who figured prominently in the first meeting between Xi Jinping and Mr. Trump at Mar-a-Lago, the president’s Florida resort, already hold pro-China and pro-trade views, and thus are ideal targets in the eyes of the Chinese, the officials said.

Targeting the friends of Schwarzman and Wynn can reinforce the views of the two, the officials said. 

The friends are also most likely to be more accessible.
One official said the Chinese were pushing for the friends to persuade Trump to sit down with Xi as often as possible. 

The Chinese, the official said, correctly perceive that Trump places tremendous value on personal relationships, and that one-on-one meetings yield breakthroughs far more often than regular contacts between Chinese and American officials.
Whether the friends can stop Trump from pursuing a trade war with China is another question.
Officials said the president has two official iPhones that have been altered by the National Security Agency to limit their abilities — and vulnerabilities — and a third personal phone that is no different from hundreds of millions of iPhones in use around the world. 

Trump keeps the personal phone, White House officials said, because unlike his other two phones, he can store his contacts in it.
Apple declined to comment on the president’s iPhones. 

Mr. Trump has been pressured into using the secure White House landline more often, but has still refused to give up his iPhones.

The calls made from the phones are intercepted as they travel through the cell towers, cables and switches that make up national and international cellphone networks. 

The issue of secure communications is fraught for Trump. 

As a presidential candidate, he regularly attacked his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, during the 2016 campaign for her use of an unsecured email server while she was secretary of state, and he basked in chants of “lock her up” at his rallies.
Intercepting calls is a relatively easy skill for governments. 

American intelligence agencies consider it an essential tool of spycraft, and they routinely try to tap the phones of important foreign leaders. 

In a diplomatic blowup during the Obama administration, documents leaked by Edward J. Snowden, a former contractor for the National Security Agency, showed that the American government had tapped the phone of Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany.
Foreign governments are well aware of the risk, and so leaders like Xi and Putin avoid using cellphones when possible.
Barack Obama was careful with cellphones, too. 

He used an iPhone in his second term, but it could not make calls and could receive email only from a special address that was given to a select group of staff members and intimates. 

It had no camera or microphone, and it could not be used to download apps at will. 

Texting was forbidden because there was no way to collect and store the messages, as required by the Presidential Records Act.
“It is a great phone, state of the art, but it doesn’t take pictures, you can’t text. The phone doesn’t work, you know, you can’t play your music on it,” Mr. Obama said on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” in June 2016. 

“So basically, it’s like — does your 3-year-old have one of those play phones?”
When Mr. Obama needed a cellphone, the officials said, he used one of those of his aides.
Trump has insisted on more capable devices. 

He did agree during the transition to give up his Android phone (the Google operating system is considered more vulnerable than Apple’s). 

And since becoming president, Trump has agreed to a slightly cumbersome arrangement of having two official phones: one for Twitter and other apps, and one for calls.
Trump typically relies on his cellphones when he does not want a call going through the White House switchboard and logged for senior aides to see, his aides said. 

Many of those Trump speaks with most often on one of his cellphones, such as hosts at Fox News, share the president’s political views, or simply enable his sense of grievance about any number of subjects.
Administration officials said Trump’s longtime paranoia about surveillance — well before coming to the White House he believed that his phone conversations were often being recorded — gave them some comfort that he was not disclosing classified information on the calls. 

They said they had further confidence he was not spilling secrets because he rarely digs into the details of the intelligence he is shown and is not well versed in the operational specifics of military or covert activities.
In an interview this week with The Wall Street Journal, Trump quipped about his phones being insecure. 

When asked what American officials in Turkey had learned about the killing of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, he replied, “I actually said don’t give it to me on the phone. I don’t want it on the phone. As good as these phones are supposed to be.”

But Trump is also famously indiscreet. 

In a May 2017 meeting in the Oval Office with Russian officials, he shared highly sensitive intelligence passed to the United States by Israel. 

He also told the Russians that James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, was “a real nut job” and that firing him had relieved “great pressure.”
Still, Trump’s lack of tech savvy has alleviated some other security concerns. 

He does not use email, so the risk of a phishing attack like those used by Russian intelligence to gain access to Democratic Party emails is close to nil. 

The same goes for texts, which are disabled on his official phones.
His Twitter phone can connect to the internet only over a Wi-Fi connection, and he rarely, if ever, has access to unsecured wireless networks, officials said. 

But the security of the device ultimately depends on the user, and protecting the president’s phones has sometimes proved difficult.
Last year, Trump’s cellphone was left behind in a golf cart at his club in Bedminster, N.J., causing a scramble to locate it, according to two people familiar with what took place.
Trump is supposed to swap out his two official phones every 30 days for new ones but rarely does, bristling at the inconvenience. 

White House staff members are supposed to set up the new phones exactly like the old ones, but the new iPhones cannot be restored from backups of his old phones because doing so would transfer over any malware.
New phone or old, though, the Chinese and the Russians are listening, and learning.

Donald Trump is a moron

Trump called for Guo Wengui’s deportation after casino owner Steve Wynn brought letter from Beijing government
By Julian Borger in Washington

Billionaire Guo Wengui, whom Chinese security agents have tried to restrain from publishing accusatory tweets against the Beijing government. 

Donald Trump called for the deportation of a Chinese dissident living in the US, after receiving a request from Beijing hand-delivered by a casino owner with business interests in China, according to a US report.
The Wall Street Journal described a Chinese government attempt to put pressure on Guo Wengui, a real estate tycoon living in exile in New York, to halt his allegations of corruption in high places in China.

Guo Wengui tweeted this picture of himself with former senior Trump aide Steve Bannon.

A group of officials from China’s ministry of state security, who entered the US on visas that did not allow them to conduct official business, visited Guo in his New York apartment in May, and used veiled threats in an attempt to persuade Guo to stop his accusatory tweets, which have a wide following in China, and return home. 

Guo shrugged off the pressure and made a recording of his conversation with the officials, part of which he posted online.
After that visit, FBI agents confronted the Chinese officials at New York’s Pennsylvania Station. 

The Chinese visitors first claimed to be cultural diplomats and then admitted they were security officials. 

The agents warned them they were violating the terms of their visa and told them to leave the country.
However, two days later, just before leaving the country, the Chinese officials paid a second visit to Guo, triggering a debate within the administration over whether they should be arrested. 

FBI agents were posted at John F Kennedy airport ready to carry out the arrests before the officials boarded their flight, but they were not made, after the state department argued it could trigger a diplomatic crisis.
Guo has filed an application for political asylum in the US, which is pending. 

But according to the Journal’s account, Trump called for Guo’s deportation in a discussion on policy towards China, describing him as a “criminal” at an Oval Office policy meeting in June, on the basis of a letter from Beijing accusing him of serious crimes.
The report said the letter had been hand-delivered to him at a private dinner by Steve Wynn, a Las Vegas casino magnate and Republican National Committee finance chairman with interests in the Chinese gambling enclave of Macau, for which Wynn relies on Beijing for licensing.
The marketing director for Wynn Resorts Ltd, Michael Weaver, told the Journal in a written statement: “[T]hat report regarding Mr Wynn is false. Beyond that, he doesn’t have any comment.”
Weaver did not respond to a request for comment from the Guardian on what part of the story was false and whether Wynn had ever delivered a letter from the Chinese government to Trump.
The Journal report said that aides tried to persuade Trump out of going ahead with Guo’s deportation, noting he was a member of the president’s Mar-a-Lago club in Florida. 

The aides later ensured that the deportation would not go ahead.
There was no immediate response from the White House or the state department to a request to comment on the report. 

A state department representative told the Journal: “Decisions on these kinds of matters are based on interagency consensus.”
A justice department representative said: “It is a criminal offense for an individual, other than a diplomatic or consular officer or attache, to act in the United States as an agent of a foreign power without prior notification to the attorney general.”