BUFFALO, N.Y. — Recently we have seen FBI National Director Christopher Wray testifying before Congress about the national security threats our nation faces. He even sat down with NBC's Lester Holt.
2 On Your Side had a similar chance to interview the head of the FBI Buffalo office to see what keeps him awake at night with some of the regional concerns his office must deal with.
You've seen him at local news conferences focusing on national security. FBI Buffalo Special in Charge Matthew Miraglia addressed the November 2023 border bridge crash in Niagara Falls, as he noted back then, "Right now we have no indications of a threat of terrorism from it. The Investigation continues."
For Miraglia and the agents and staffers under his command in 17 upstate counties, there are now shifting priorities for our digital age.
"Counterterrorism is still our No. 1 threat and our No. 1 priority, but cyber is going to be No. 1, right? And there's a lot of crossover with counterterrorism and cyber, the way they use the internet, but cyber because it touches so much, and it can touch so many people at once," Miraglia said.
Miraglia's degree and background are actually in computer science amidst the federal law enforcement tradition. And just like his boss in Washington and the cybersecurity agencies, they must deal with the very serious cyber-terrorism threat now aimed increasingly at our sometimes interconnected utilities and industry, realizing a complete loss of power, water, or business transactions could cause panic.
"They might say, 'Hey, I'm going to hack our power grid,' and then what they'll do is look for low-hanging fruit. Critical infrastructure is huge. We also work with our partners at CISA (Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency), another government agency whose job it is to ensure that those systems are protected and secured," Miraglia said.
So there is FBI outreach and specialists to focus on hackers, as well as perhaps the youngest, most vulnerable victims with child porn, exploitation, and sextortion.
"We've unfortunately seen it explode, and it is getting worse and worse," Miraglia said.
There is an FBI-based Western New York Child Exploitation regional task force finding suspects, including many educators and, unfortunately, other parents may trust. That is here and overseas.
"Child pornography is unfortunately rampant here, so there's a lot. We arrest people all the time. The sexploitation, you'll see a lot out of Africa, where it's harder to identify who these people are. The infrastructure just isn't there, things like that. Ransomware actors, most of them in Russia and China," Miraglia said.
Another international concern is right here at our college campuses and businesses, with potential espionage and theft, according to Miraglia.
"When we talk about the Chinese, we're talking about the Chinese government, right? Like, we're not talking about the Chinese-Americans that live here that are just living their lives. We're talking about the Chinese government and their espionage apparatus. They will steal anything that they think will help advance their country, and Western New York has a lot of that," Miraglia said.
Last summer a University at Buffalo student in aerospace engineering was arrested for VISA violations after he allegedly failed to disclose his ties to the Chinese military.
"UB is a shining star of our SUNY system in New York," Miraglia said. "They do a lot of incredible work that's cutting edge. If a Chinese government person can go in there and take all that without having to spend the money that we have to do, without having to do — get all the failures that come with success — that's a win for them."
He added "AI, that's a big one. Other ones I don't want to get into because they might be classified. Medical technologies, vaccines. If you look at COVID, for example. If they steal that information from our research institutions, from our companies here, then now they have the world's best vaccines that they didn't pay to create, that they didn't pay to test, so that's what we're here to stop."
With that focus on cyberterrorism, the local FBI office is now adding a second cyber squad to help with regional coverage.
We also learned both UB and Alfred State here in Western New York dropped official ties in recent years with the Confucius Institute, which is a Chinese cultural organization because of federal research funding restrictions and concerns about Chinese government influence.
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