FBI Director Kash Patel says he has spent the past year establishing new, narrowly defined law enforcement channels with China and Russia aimed at tackling transnational crimes such as fentanyl trafficking, cyber scams and networks producing child sexual abuse material.
According to Patel, these arrangements have included reciprocal personnel exchanges in which officers from China’s Ministry of Public Security have visited FBI facilities in the United States and FBI agents have traveled to China to collaborate on investigations and swap intelligence. The relationship has also produced coordinated raids and arrests, Patel said, and the director returned from a trip to Beijing in late July. A comparable visit to Russia has been tentatively scheduled for October, FBI officials said.
Patel described the outreach to what he called "non-traditional partners" in exclusive remarks as deliberate and constrained, focused on specific categories of cross-border criminality such as global child pornography networks and cyber scam centers that target Americans. Internally, the FBI has organized these efforts into four "working groups" that concentrate on cyber fraud, violent crimes against children, counternarcotics and a fugitive task force.
Operational results and exchanges
Officials point to concrete outcomes from the cooperation. In May, the FBI, China’s Ministry of Public Security and Dubai police jointly executed "Operation Sand Dollar," a raid on a cyber scam facility in Dubai that the FBI said resulted in 300 arrests, $300 million seized and the liberation of thousands of trafficked workers.
An internal FBI memo reviewed by officials credited cooperation with China’s Ministry of Public Security in a series of actions against Chinese pharmaceutical companies earlier this year that led to the arrest of nine people, closure of two chemical production facilities and the shutdown of three associated websites, and the seizure of fentanyl precursor chemicals "likely otherwise destined for the United States." The memo did not specify locations for those arrests and seizures.
In another instance, Chinese law enforcement worked with the FBI’s field office in Omaha, Nebraska, to dismantle a multinational child sexual abuse materials network in June, an operation that resulted in the arrests of 16 suspects, the memo said. Chinese state media also reported at least one case in which a suspect inside China accused of "serious violent crimes" was repatriated to the United States.
How the exchanges work
Patel said the pattern of engagement began around the time of a visit to China in May 2025 by President Donald Trump and was followed by two trips Patel himself made to China. He described a regular cadence of exchanges: "Every month, they send their working-level MPS officers here, and the following month we go there," Patel said. "They are speaking with us daily, which has also never happened before." The FBI director said information sharing is narrow in scope and explicitly reciprocal for the four categories of transnational crime the working groups cover.
A Chinese Embassy spokesperson in Washington, asked about joint operations, said: "We have always believed that dialogue and negotiation are the right way forward, and that military means offer no solution."
Patel emphasized that the new relationships are not intended to supplant long-standing intelligence partnerships such as the "Five Eyes" alliance with Canada, Australia, Britain and New Zealand. "Five Eyes will always be our most important intelligence relationship. No one is trying to replace that," he said. "Unlike military and traditional intelligence agencies, we have a unique lane to drive this dynamic change with law enforcement, which is an apolitical mission."
Counterintelligence concerns and safeguards
The shift toward operational engagement with major geopolitical competitors represents a break from longstanding U.S. practice, which has typically portrayed Russia and China as exporters of crime and sources of espionage. That break has prompted unease among current and former counterintelligence officials about the potential risks of sharing sensitive domestic security information with authoritarian governments.
Jeff Crocker, a former FBI supervisory agent who retired in 2024, voiced stark skepticism: "China and Russia are our enemies, period," he said. "They are actively trying to harm our country physically, economically and militarily." Crocker warned that allowing Chinese officials access to U.S. intelligence networks, diplomatic personnel and government facilities presents opportunities for hostile actors to infiltrate those spaces. "So this is great cover for them," he added.
Patel said the FBI deploys counterintelligence measures and other countermeasures whenever foreign officials visit agency facilities. He told Reuters that the bureau vets visitors and takes electronic and physical surveillance precautions. Three former FBI employees said such vetting typically includes electronic and physical observation, especially for visitors from countries the United States regards as its most dangerous adversaries. "We know exactly who is coming here, and we vet them," Patel said.
Assessments of impact on the drug crisis
The FBI’s work with China on counternarcotics has been cited as one factor in shifts in U.S. overdose trends, though experts offer cautious appraisals. Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution, noted that U.S. fentanyl overdoses have been falling rapidly since the winter of 2022, and said that cooperation with China may have contributed to those declines, along with other factors such as widespread availability of naloxone. "It could be that the people who were already vulnerable had already died," she said. "I think that the cooperation is useful, should be fostered, and that it contributed to some extent. But how much is really hard to know, and there are a lot of complexities to it."
Patel pointed to specific enforcement outcomes in describing the counternarcotics work. He said the FBI’s joint actions with China had culminated in operations targeting chemical production and distribution channels for fentanyl precursors, and that some of those operations resulted in arrests and facility shutdowns.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio offered a guarded evaluation of Chinese engagement on narcotics during a recent visit to the Philippines, calling cooperation on fentanyl precursors "a work in progress." "I think we’ve made some progress on that front, but not entirely where we need to be," Rubio told reporters.
Russia cooperation and behind-the-scenes efforts
Patel said the bureau has also been conducting months of behind-the-scenes collaboration with Russian law enforcement that target violent criminal networks. "This stuff doesn’t happen overnight," he said. "We’ve been at this for 15 months." The director said the same playbook used in engagements with China and Russia could be adapted for other non-traditional partnerships with law enforcement in other countries, tailored to each relationship’s particulars. "The fact that we did it with China," Patel said, "when everyone said, ’Don’t do it,’ and, ’You can’t do it,’ shows what we can do with almost anyone."
Questions and limits
Despite operational successes, the approach remains controversial within the broader national security community. Critics say that the potential intelligence and operational trade-offs merit careful scrutiny, and that reciprocal arrangements risk exposing U.S. systems and personnel.
Patel maintains the partnerships are limited, subject to vetting and driven by specific investigative priorities rather than broader intelligence-sharing agendas. He stressed the work is focused and tactical, and that established intelligence alliances will remain paramount.
As the FBI continues to pursue these unconventional law enforcement links, officials and observers say they will be watching for both additional measurable enforcement results and any signs that the engagements compromise broader U.S. security interests.
Operational snapshots and numbers
- Operation Sand Dollar - a tripartite operation with Chinese MPS and Dubai police that produced 300 arrests, $300 million seized and thousands of trafficked workers freed.
- Internal memo - credited coordination with China that led to nine arrests, the shutdown of two chemical production facilities and three websites, and seizures of fentanyl precursor chemicals "likely otherwise destined for the United States."
- Omaha child exploitation operation - Chinese law enforcement and the FBI’s Omaha field office worked together in June to arrest 16 suspects in a multinational child sexual abuse materials investigation.
The FBI’s new law enforcement ties with China and Russia mark a deliberate shift in operational posture. Patel argues those ties produce tangible enforcement wins in defined areas of transnational crime while insisting the bureau maintains safeguards to reduce espionage risk. Others caution that allowing adversarial states operational access to U.S. investigative channels carries inherent risks that require continued oversight and assessment.