Forget Russia.

FBI Director Christopher Wray argues China is the biggest threat to the United States.

The nation’s top law man on Wednesday said President Xi Jinping is playing the long game when it comes to unseat the U.S. as the world’s dominant economic power.

“From a counter-intelligence perspective, China represents the broadest and most challenging threat we face as a country,” Wray said during the Aspen Security Forum in Aspen, Colo. “It is a whole state effort.”


Speaking to moderator and NBC News anchor Lester Holt, Wray said his federal agents have found traces of China’s pervasive economic espionage in all 50 states.

“It covers everything from corn seeds in Iowa to wind turbines in Massachusetts,” he said.

In the same talk, Wray declined to use President Trump’s perferred term to describe investigations into Russia’s role in swaying the 2016 presidential election. The phrase “witch hunt” is often hurled by Trump in volatile tweet sprees to denounce Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s narrowing probe.

He said Russia’s threat is “a significant one that we have to deal with very aggressively,” just hours after Trump reversed his stance on Putin’s role in the election meddling. He claimed to have verbally chided his Russian counterpart for the hack job that handed him the White House during an interview Wednesday with CBS Evening News.


Wray warned that Russia “continues to engage in malign influence operations to this day”

According to the FBI boss, the U.S. should not minimize China’s influence through cyber intelligence and traditional espionage tactics.

“The volume of it, the pervasiveness of it, the significance of it is something this country cannot underestimate,” said Wray, who joined the law enforcement agency in August 2017.

As for the militant nation to China’s east, Wray said their cyber threats are just as significant and only serve to generate revenue for Kim Jong Un’s cash-strapped regime.


“I do think their tactics are more sophisticated than people appreciated several years ago,” Wray added.