Wu Fei, expert at the Xinjiang University’s Academy of Mass Communications, told Sputnik China that the CIA can effectively spy on Chinese social media at its leisure.
Furthermore, while President Donald Trump deployed THAAD missile defense systems in relatively close proximity to Chinese borders, US intelligence operatives can not only monitor Chinese social networks but even intervene in online discussions between Chinese netizens.
"There’s no way to escape this kind of surveillance because all social networks and operating systems contain backdoors that the CIA may exploit, with the exception of the technologies that were developed without any CIA involvement. Earlier Snowden revealed that the CIA funded the creation of Facebook and Apple, so obviously there’s a backdoor for the agency to use," Wu said.
Furthermore, it is extremely difficult to protect Chinese social networks from this kind of surveillance, except for those systems that were developed in China without any foreign involvement, he added.
"As soon as you use some foreign solutions, the probability of an outside entity seizing control of the system drastically increases," Wu said, adding that so far there’s has been no reports of a product that was developed by China without any outside involvement.
