U.S. authorities detained a California resident on Sunday, alleging she acted as an informant for Chinese officials while gathering intelligence on the son of Taiwan’s president, according to a statement from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The FBI arrested Wanying Zhang, who also goes by the name Heather, at Los Angeles International Airport on Sunday just before she was scheduled to depart for China. Zhang, 34, a resident of Irvine, California, has been charged with serving as an unregistered foreign agent.
The geopolitical implications here are huge. I wonder how this impacts current US-Taiwan diplomatic relations moving forward.
Seems incredibly bold to spy on someone at an airport. Does the FBI have hard proof or is this just a preliminary charge?