Book that lays bare how deeply the Chinese have infiltrated Britain reveals how they steal intelligence using blackmail, money⌠and sex
July 2020: "China has a huge appetite for other countriesâ technology, whether obtained legally or otherwise, it doesnât care. Sucking up information like a vacuum cleaner, it not only deploys its diplomatic and intelligence services to facilitate the theft of intellectual property, but also reaches deeply into overseas Chinese communities to recruit both agents of influence as well as informants and spies. In the United States, a senior counter-intelligence figure at the FBI observed in late 2018 that the bureau had handled thousands of complaints about, and investigations into, non-traditional espionage activity, mostly concerning China. âEvery rock we turn over, every time we look for it, it is not only there, it is worse than anticipated,â he said.
While traditional forms of espionage rely on specialised training, China has adopted what is known as the âthousand grains of sandâ strategy. It uses thousands of amateur information collectors. Professionals, business people, students and even tourists are encouraged to provide information to handlers in embassies and consulates. This is no haphazard operation but is directed by professionals in the intelligence services who target particular pieces of intellectual property, often working with factories and research labs in China, and then finding people who can acquire what they seek.
The U.S. Department of Energy, whose work includes nuclear weapons and advanced R&D on energy, has been heavily targeted to this end. Around 35,000 foreign researchers are employed in the departmentâs labs, 10,000 of them from China. In Silicon Valley, around one in ten high-tech workers is from mainland China. According to one report, so many scientists from the science and technology labs of Los Alamos have returned to Chinese universities and research institutes that people have dubbed them the âLos Alamos clubâ. Sex, as we have seen already, is a means of entrapment and exploitation. There is seduction that leads to the direct theft of secrets, as in the case of Ian Clement. Then there is seduction that leads to blackmail, using compromising photographs. In 2017 the former deputy head of MI6, Nigel Inkster, said that Chinaâs agencies were using honey traps, meiren ji, literally âbeautiful person planâ, more often. In 2016 reports suggested that the Dutch ambassador to Beijing had been entrapped."
Hidden Hand: Exposing How The Chinese Communist Party Is Reshaping The World by Clive Hamilton and Mareike Ohlberg
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