Sunday, November 06, 2005

Chinese Spies - Damn they're everywhere!

If you thought the old cold war Soviet KGB was the "last" big human intelligence (HUMINT) network in the world, you're sadly mistaken. The Chinese have been big into HUMINT "Spying" and continue to be in a major way. Evidence the recent arrests in Los Angeles of a Chinese intelligence-gathering ring. (hat tip: MT1(SS)). Of particular interest is that fact that the Chinese spies were caught with classified information on the new Virginia class submarine. Two blogs on my "Submariner Blogroll", have posts up on this news; Gus Van Horn here and Chapomatic here.

Chinese spies have been very active of late, lets do a little news run down:

Belgium and Greater Europe - The Telegraph, China aims spy network at trade secrets in Europe.

Canada - CBC news, Defectors say China running 1,000 spies in Canada.

Japan - The China Post, Who's spying now?

Russia - The Daily Telegraph, Official charged with spying for Beijing.

Sweden - The Local, China "suspected of spying at Swedish universities".

United States - Strategy Page, The FBI and the Chinese Spy Army.

Via the Internet 1 - NetworkWorld.com, Communist China spying via the ‘Net?

Via the Internet 2 - Australian IT, Worms do China's spying.

Via the Internet 3 - Washington Post, Hackers Attack Via Chinese Web Sites .

How difficult is it to track a Chinese national if they were involved in espionage?

According to the FBI and U.S. Immigration, cultural and economic exchange between the United States and China results in about 150,000 Chinese students studying at U.S. Universities and about 700,000 Chinese tourists and business executives visiting the U.S. each year.

China may be a valued trading partner but they don't have our interests in mind, in fact, much to the contrary.

The Media Line - IRAN LAUNCHES FIRST SPY SATELLITE (Chinese-made satellite)

Persian Journal - The Chinese Communist Party Won Iran's "Election".

The Washington Post - China Tells Congress To Back Off Businesses.

The Washington Times - China may attack Taiwan in two years: Pentagon.

Science Daily - Chavez may sell F-16 planes to China, Cuba.

The Heritage Foundation - Balancing China's Growing Influence in Latin America.

Everyone spy's, but with this much activity being reported in the press it's got me wondering, are the Chinese bad at the espionage business or is their operation so large that they can afford to have a few get caught? I'm thinking the latter....

2 comments:

bothenook said...

this shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that has been paying attention in the last 15 years. let's see, nuclear warhead plans, guidance systems given by raytheon, excellerated purchases of all the scrap they can get their hands on (like decommed USN ships). hmmmm. wonder what they are up to?

Lubber's Line said...

Bo, not a surprise to us news junkies, but with the GWOT, Iraq and all the political back-biting this stuff seems to get pushed back in the news cycle.

Unless they read Gertz at the Washington Times if someone says "China" people usually think "Bird Flu" and "Walmart" not espionage.