The Dutch defense minister said that the communist country has intensified its spying on the Netherlands’ development and manufacture of semiconductors.
“The semiconductor industry, which we are technologically leading, or technology advanced, of course, to get that intellectual property – that’s interesting to China,” Dutch Defense Minister Ruben Brekelmans told Reuters in an interview on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue security meeting in Singapore Saturday.
Semiconductors are materials such as silicon and germanium that enable the controlled flow of electric current in modern electronics. They are crucial components in microchips and other devices.
An annual report released last year by the Dutch military intelligence agency alleged that Chinese spies had targeted the Netherlands’ semiconductor, aerospace, and maritime industries in an effort to strengthen China’s armed forces.
When asked if the spying had stopped, Brekelmans told Reuters:
It’s continuing. In our newest intelligence reports, our intelligence agency said that the biggest cyber threat is coming from China, and that we do see most cyber activity when it comes to us being as from China. That was the case last year, but that’s still the case. So we only see this intensifying.
China’s foreign ministry did not respond to Reuters’ request for comment, but typically and routinely denies such allegations.
Tensions have grown between the two countries since Dutch intelligence agencies announced last year that Chinese cyber spies gained access to the country’s military network in 2023.
Last year, the Netherlands joined an American effort to keep chipmaking technology from China for national security reasons, restricting the export by a leading company of certain chipmaking equipment for Chinese customers.
Chinese spying has been a persistent challenge for both the United States government and private industry.
It has come through industrial espionage, the hacking of telecommunication companies, and even intelligence operations at prestigious universities like Stanford, as Breitbart News reported last month.
Defense Minister Brekelmans told Reuters security is becoming increasingly important for the Netherlands as China is “using their economic position for geopolitical purposes and also to pressure us.”
The minister appeared to echo President Donald Trump when he told the wire service that his country and region also need to reduce their dependency on China for critical raw materials.
“Both on the European Union level, but also on the national level, we need to make bigger steps in order to reduce those dependencies,” he said.
Contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the best-selling author of Below the Line and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.
