The Federal Burea of Investigation is "looking carefully" at the likelihood that foreign adversaries are influencing the George Floyd protests, which have sparked into full-on riots at times.
FBI Director Christopher Wray said the agency "has over 2,000 active investigations that trace back to the government in China." That means there has been "about a 1,300 percent increase in terms of economic espionage investigations with the Chinese nexus from about a decade ago," Wray told Fox News' Bret Baier on Wednesday.
Wray explained that people from different sectors have various incentives to steal ideas and inventions from Americans.
"We have certainly seen in the past a variety of foreign adversaries looking to amplify controversy in this country," the FBI director explained. "And they use state media. They use social media. Some of that is through propaganda, some of that's through disinformation, some of that's through just fake information. And we are looking carefully at the prospect of foreign influence or foreign interference in all of the protests and activities that have occurred over the last few weeks."
According to the FBI director, there have been instances in the past where China has "amplified" those who are seeking to cause chaos in America.
Wray did, however, emphasize that the destruction that's taking place isn't one specific ideological group. Antifa, the Boogaloos and even Chinese interference seems to be behind the riots and monument destruction.
"The violence that occurred during the protest of the last few weeks is driven by a variety of different motivations and ideologies. It's not all the work of any single ideology, movement or group," he explained. "We certainly have a number of active, ongoing investigations into violent anarchist extremists, some of whom self-identify or otherwise link to the Antifa movement."
"I think it's a mistake to put a lot of this into neat ideological buckets. We're really about the violence, not the ideology," Wray said.
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