The TechCrunch Global Affairs Project explores the increasingly intertwined technology sector and its relationship to global politics. Criminals have long carried out cyber espionage on behalf of China. Criminal-turned-government hackers, who are protected from prosecution by their affiliation with China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS), carry out much of China’s espionage. As surprising as it may sound, this is not a new phenomenon. For example, an indictment issued by the U.S. Department of Justice last year pointed to simultaneous criminal espionage by two Chinese hackers dating back to his 2009. His first attempt at the CCP in 2015 was inspired...