RUTHFULLY YOURS

Security: The Pentagon report warning that Beijing is amassing high-tech missiles leaves out another alarming domestic security issue: massive Chinese spying.

Forget about the Russian spy ring the FBI broke up that stole mostly headlines (as opposed to U.S. secrets) for their amateurish methods. This is no joke. These Chinese moles mean business. And they’re stealing highly sensitive military secrets.

At least 44 of them have been quietly prosecuted in the last two years alone — a figure that dwarfs the number of Russian spies expelled last month. And those are just the ones we’ve caught.

The Chinese agents are serving time in federal prison on espionage-related charges. They stole sensitive weapons technology, trade secrets and other classified information bound for China. Some of the cases involve agents operating on behalf of the Chinese government or intelligence.

Earlier this month, a former B-2 stealth bomber engineer in Hawaii was convicted of selling military secrets to China. He sold stealth cruise missile technology to Beijing during trips there.

The growing espionage threat comes on the heels of the administration’s decision last year to downgrade our own intelligence gathering on China from “Priority 1” status, alongside Iran and North Korea, to “Priority 2.” The decision sent shock waves throughout the U.S. intelligence community, according to China expert Bill Gertz.

So while China has deployed an army of agents to spy on us, we’ve reined in our spooks. That means our intelligence about China’s military buildup will only suffer, adding to an already dangerous gap there.

“China has exceeded most of our intelligence estimates of their military capability and capacity every year,” said Adm. Robert Willard, the new commander of U.S. Pacific Command. “They’ve grown at an unprecedented rate in those capabilities.”

Added GOP Rep. Pete Hoekstra, ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee: “China is aggressively pursuing military capabilities and aggressively conducting cyberattacks” against the United States.

Gertz says the downgrade came after Beijing lobbied Obama’s intelligence czar, Dennis Blair, who once called Taiwan the “turd in the punch bowl” of U.S.-China relations.

Let’s hope this administration’s soft China policy doesn’t produce the kind of mass transfer of secrets to Beijing and security breakdown we witnessed under the Clinton administration.