Perhaps China has been doing what all states do, only better? This might be called the realist school of espionage in international affairs. There is little information in the public domain about what secrets Lee delivered to his Chinese handlers.Īt this point, you might well say, fair enough-spies spy, just as robbers rob. counterintelligence success-and in 2019 was sentenced to 19 years in prison. That person may have been Jerry Lee, a former CIA case officer working on Chinese affairs. There are also whispers that the network may have been compromised by a human agent-a mole, to use John le Carré’s phrase-in the CIA. It seems, however, that the MSS hacked into the CIA’s supposedly secure communication channels. Details about how Chinese intelligence compromised the U.S. It reportedly led to the killing or imprisonment of more than a dozen CIA sources in China over more than two years. As previously reported in these pages, in 2010 the MSS dismantled a major CIA network being run from its station in Beijing. government was consumed, if not distracted, by the global war on terrorism.Ĭhinese intelligence was soon winning its war on U.S. According to one CIA official with deep expertise on China, with whom I had an exclusive interview on condition of anonymity, internal MSS deliberations from that time were marked with glee as the U.S. intelligence-while the United States was pivoting to the global war on terrorism. From that point on, all of the service’s best resources and personnel were marshaled against U.S. intelligence.īeginning in 2005, the MSS declared war on the U.S. As the United States was mired in the Middle East, the gains being made by the MSS went by largely undetected or appreciated by U.S. Its long-term aim was to contain the United States, and then supplant it, in Southeast Asia. The strategy that China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS), its principal civilian intelligence service, took toward the United States after 9/11 followed a Chinese saying, ge an guan huo, which roughly translates as “watch the fires burn from the safety of the opposite river bank, which allows you to avoid entering the battle until your enemy is exhausted.” The MSS followed this saying to a T. As we pass the 20th anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, it is useful to understand how China’s intelligence and national security establishment reacted at the time. government’s strategic focus on combating terrorism took place at the expense of focusing on resurgent states such as China and Russia. ![]() spy chiefs followed priorities for this agenda set by decision-makers in Washington. intelligence community was overwhelmingly geared toward counterterrorism. Most Westerners do not yet appreciate just how sweeping China’s intelligence onslaught directed at their countries is for decades, their own governments likewise didn’t understand because their attention was largely directed elsewhere.Īfter 9/11, the U.S. Its strategy can be summarized in three words: collect, collect, collect. We are now witnessing some of the effects of a decision made years ago by China to use every means and medium of intelligence-gathering at its disposal against the West. To borrow a phrase from Mission : Impossible: Relax, it’s much worse than you think. ![]() What are we to make of these two stories, which are at their core both about Chinese espionage? His testimony came several weeks after the appearance of a Chinese spy balloon floating across the United States. Congress, before the world’s media, about whether the Chinese government uses the wildly popular video-sharing app to spy on Americans. One week ago, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew was questioned by members of the U.S.
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