CBS News
O’DONNELL: The U.S. trade representative put a figure on the theft of intellectual property and it’s up to $600 billion annually. That’s enormous.
WRAY: The thing that people need to understand is that this has an impact on everyday people. It has an impact on American businesses. It has an impact on American jobs. It has an impact on American consumers.
O’DONNELL: How so?
WRAY: Well, China’s goal is to take what it can and become essentially self-sufficient and put American businesses out of business.
O’DONNELL: Well, to replace America as the world’s economic superpower.
WRAY: I think that’s their goal and they’re pretty open about it.
O’DONNELL: It’s not only these individuals who are engaged in spying, it’s companies. You’ve raised concerns about the Chinese telecom giants Huawei and ZTE. Why are they national security risks?
WRAY: Well, anytime you start talking about foreign companies that are beholden to foreign governments that don’t share our values and our dedication to the rule of law…It enables them to conduct economic espionage. It enables them to conduct different kinds of cyberattacks. It enables them to steal information in a variety of ways.
O’DONNELL: The president intervened a few months ago to save ZTE from some of these crippling financial penalties that Congress wanted. Was the president wrong?
WRAY: I continue to be very concerned and I think the intelligence community continues to be very concerned about the threat to our telecommunications infrastructure presented by some of the kinds of companies that are beholden to foreign governments that don’t share our values… And the idea of letting the fox in the henhouse is something that I think people need to be really, really careful about before we find out that we’re gonna regret it.
O’DONNELL: Director Wray, I know you have been asked this many times… But I do want to ask it of you because the president has issued repeated attacks on the FBI, on the integrity of its work, on the people who work here at the FBI. In fact, he’s said that the reputation of the FBI is in tatters. Those attacks have to have taken their toll?
WRAY: I’ll tell you what I see. I see 37,000 men and women who get up every day trying to keep 325 million American people safe. I see people who work their tails off in that effort, who are people of character, of courage, of professionalism and diligence. And we do thousands and thousands of investigations every year. I think about the agents that I swear in at Quantico several times a year who compete like heck to be accepted into the ranks of the FBI…I could give you example after example, that’s the FBI that I see. That’s the real FBI and that’s what we’re about.
O’DONNELL: How would you describe your relationship with President Trump?
WRAY: My focus is on having a very professional relationship with the president. I think that’s what I’ve been trying to do since day one and that’s true today just as much as it was on day one.
O’DONNELL: He tweets a lot about Cabinet members and top members of his administration. But you specifically have never been the subject of one of his tweets.
WRAY: Well I’m not much of a Twitter guy, as people will tell you. And that’s not meant to criticize Twitter. Social media commentary has its place. I just find that I’ve got enough to do all day long running the FBI without getting too hung up on worrying about what’s on Twitter.

WILMINGTON, N.C. — Hurricane Florence could batter parts of coastal North and South Carolina with hurricane conditions for 24 hours or more and bring up to 40 inches of rain in its center, federal emergency officials said Wednesday.

Here’s the latest on Hurricane Florence

• The Category 2 storm is forecast to bring 15-25 inches of rain in some areas, with up to 40 inches of rainfall near its exact center.
• As of 11 p.m. Wednesday, the storm was about 280 miles east-southeast of Wilmington, North Carolina, with maximum sustained winds of 110 mph. It was moving northwest at 17 mph.
• About 1.7 million people in North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia have been warned to evacuate.
• Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Washington, D.C., and Maryland have declared states of emergency.

The storm was expected to make landfall late Thursday or Friday in coastal North Carolina and then potentially stall as it churns its way slowly down the coast, FEMA’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration liaison Steve Goldstein said at a news conference Wednesday morning.
“This could mean that parts of North and South Carolina near the coast will experience hurricane-force winds and hurricane conditions for 24 hours or more,” he said.
But regardless of when actual landfall occurs, hurricane-force winds were extending 80 miles from the center, and tropical-storm-force winds were extending outward of 195 miles from the center, the hurricane center said.
Coastal North Carolina could get 20 to 30 inches of rain, with isolated areas getting up to 40 inches, and all that rain could produce “catastrophic flash flooding,” the hurricane center said. South Carolina could see 5 to 10 inches, with isolated areas getting 20 inches.
A large area of North Carolina was forecast to get 10 inches of rain or more Friday into Saturday.
“This is not going to be a glancing blow,” said Jeff Byard, FEMA’s associate administrator for response and recovery. “This is going to be a Mike Tyson punch to the Carolina coast.”
The storm weakened to a Category 3 hurricane Wednesday afternoon and then weakened to just below that to a Category 2 as of 11 p.m. But the National Hurricane Center warned that “life-threatening storm surge and rainfall” were still expected, and the forecast predicts little change in strength before the storm’s center reaches the U.S. coast.
Wilmington, a city of around 119,000 on North Carolina’s coast, is along the forecast track. In the final hours before authorities shut down access to Wrightsville Beach, a town just east of Wilmington along the ocean, residents scrambled to secure their possessions, board up their windows, pack their cars and head inland.
Many lived through past storms, including hurricanes Fran and Bertha in 1996 and Floyd in 1999. They expected Florence to be at least as bad. But they largely accepted that with a sense of calm, saying that most homes on the island were more resilient than the cottages wiped out in those prior storms.
“It’s a much different beach here now,” said local Todd Schoen, just before he drove off the island with his wife and 9-year-old twin sons to stay with his parents four miles inland. “They’re all better prepared. A lot of those old beach houses are gone. They were trampled, washed away, knocked down and replaced with other bigger, better constructed houses. It’s a different time now.”
Duke Energy, the main power supplier for North and South Carolina, said on Twitter that as many as 1 million to 3 million of the company’s 4 million customers could experience power outages.
North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper warned those under evacuation orders that time was running out and urged the state to prepare for the powerful storm.
“North Carolina, my message is clear: Disaster is at the doorstep and it’s coming in,” he said at a news conference Wednesday morning. “If you’re on the coast, there’s still time to get out safely. No possession is worth your life.”
He warned North Carolinians to plan to be without power for days and “understand the rain may last for days and not hours.”
“The National Weather Service has just said it will be unbelievably damaging and they can’t emphasize that enough,” he added. Cooper said on MSNBC that some 2,800 National Guard soldiers have been activated and others are standing by.
Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal declared a state of emergency on Wednesday afternoon, joining South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Washington, D.C., and Maryland. West Virginia has declared a state of preparedness.
“In light of the storm’s forecasted southward track after making landfall, I encourage Georgians to be prepared for the inland effects of the storm as well as the ensuing storm surge in coastal areas,” he said in a statement.
Christina Saracina, a resident of Cape Carteret, North Carolina, said she was evacuating with her elderly parents and headed to Atlanta.
“We sat through a Category 2 hurricane before and it did enough damage that we decided that if it was a Category 3 or above we were out,” she said. “It was a hard decision because you’re leaving all your possessions and your home. You’re trying to pack whatever you can and go.”
She said she boarded up her home and her parents’ home before leaving.
“The area was going to be a disaster zone,” she said. “There’s a lot of trees in the area and we’re by the water.”