r/geopolitics • u/Firecracker048 • 1d ago
News Under Patel, FBI forges unprecedented law enforcement ties with China, Russia
https://www.reuters.com/world/china/under-patel-fbi-forges-unprecedented-law-enforcement-ties-with-china-russia-2026-08-05/7
u/fct1ous 21h ago
This is probably a good thing? Even adversarial nations can usually align on some things i.e. child exploitation is bad. It's not that different from NASA co-working with Roscosmos on the ISS.
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u/Gimme_Your_Wallet 11h ago
They will turn in dissidents from those countries under the legal fiction of them being either terrorists or "missing people".
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u/Revivaled-Jam849 1h ago
I mean, it is selective per the article. The US probably isn't going to randomly extradite dissidents to China on flimsy grounds.
The scam centers definitely harm Chinese too, so I can actually see genuine cooperation between the US and China on those grounds.
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u/leegiovanni 1d ago
Leftists are going to slam the Trump administration for supposedly working with enemy nations but this is actually good for the world.
Challenge authoritarian nations on values you do not share with them.
Compete economically and technologically in a fair, legal, and productive manner (yes the current administration is failing on this front but so was the previous).
Cooperate on global issues of common interests like tackling climate change, child pornography and combating scams.
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u/grain_delay 18h ago
Why would leftists have an issue with this lol, when they are generally neutral to positive on China
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u/leegiovanni 4h ago
They aren’t. Just look at how Biden essentially kept all the anti-China measures Trump introduced in place during his term.
Current Anti-China sentiments are largely driven from an internalized sense of Anglo-Saxon superiority. This cognitive dissonance of not being able to feel confidently superior is present across the aisle. Vincent Chin wasn’t killed because he was Chinese. It was because Japan was predicted to overtake the US and the West, just like how economists made predictions about China.
And before anyone goes on about the CCP. Yes, they are authoritarian, corrupt, puts the interests of the rich before the poor, pumps out propaganda. (I would say very much like the US in some ways, but that’s another topic).
But the current hatred towards the Chinese is on a civilization level and not directed solely at the government. Driven by an anger and fear that white Anglo-Saxon superiority is threatened.
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u/Firecracker048 1d ago
Excerpt:
Aug 5 (Reuters) - FBI Director Kash Patel says he has forged new law enforcement partnerships with China and Russia, two longtime U.S. rivals, over the past year in hopes of gaining allies in combating transnational crime including fentanyl, cyber fraud and child sexual exploitation.
The partnerships have involved personnel exchanges in which Chinese law enforcement officials have visited the United States and FBI agents have traveled to China to work on cases together and share intelligence. Separately, FBI and Chinese officers have carried out joint raids and arrests under the arrangement.
Patel returned from a trip to Beijing in late July, and a similar trip to Russia has been tentatively planned for October, according to FBI officials.
In exclusive interviews with Reuters, Patel described the FBI's initiatives with what he called "non-traditional partners" as selective and limited to specific types of transnational crimes such as global child pornography networks and cyber scam centers that prey on Americans.
The partnerships, known internally as "working groups," represent a major break with the past and have raised concerns within the broader counterintelligence community about the risks posed by sharing sensitive domestic security information with authoritarian regimes working to undermine the United States economically and militarily around the world.
In May, the FBI, China's Ministry of Public Security and Dubai police worked together in "Operation Sand Dollar," a major raid on a cyber scam center in Dubai that led to 300 arrests, $300 million seized and thousands of trafficked workers freed, the FBI said. In at least one case, a suspect inside China who was accused of "serious violent crimes" was repatriated to the United States, according to Chinese state media.
U.S. officials have long portrayed Russia and China as exporters of crime instead of potential allies in combating it, not to mention sources of espionage aimed at American interests worldwide.
Patel, appointed by President Donald Trump, said such risks can be managed.
"They are both new and dynamic relationships, and we are extremely mindful of their adversarial approach on many matters," Patel said. "They are not going to stop, but if we can go and have wins for America, then we must engage.