National news outlets raced in previous weeks to provide background on the arrest of a former CIA officer — a U.S. citizen of Chinese descent — who is being accused of retaining highly classified material after his departure from the Agency in 2007. In truth, the story is a little more salacious: the former officer is suspected of providing CIA source information to Chinese authorities, which resulted in the arrest and murder of numerous Chinese citizens. [source]
(Analyst Comment: At least once a month, I see the Department of Justice publish a public affairs release about the arrest or conviction of a Chinese national engaging in espionage against the United States on behalf of the Chinese government. We’ll work on a roll-up of events from 2017 and maybe have a running count for 2018. Most recently, a 31-year old Chinese national was sentenced to five years in prison for theft of proprietary source code from his U.S. employer. This is very common — just about once a month by my recollection — but it’s causing serious erosion to U.S. technological advantages over China. Much of Chinese technology is derivative of what’s been stolen from the U.S. and other advanced Western nations. Chinese espionage is highly dependent on Chinese nationals and U.S. citizens of Chinese descent. As unpalatable as it may be — and it’s certainly not politically correct — the only way to significantly disrupt this type of Chinese espionage is for U.S. tech companies to end the practice of hiring Chinese nationals, and possibly even U.S. citizens of Chinese descent. Otherwise we’ll continue to see technology siphoned away from the U.S. in what can only be described as the largest transfer of wealth in world history.)
