Chinese intelligence and spying (catch all)

[Bill Moore]

A NYT report that starts with:Link:https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/05/2...espionage.html

Those who rejected the mole theory attributed the losses to sloppy American tradecraft at a time when the Chinese were becoming better at monitoring American espionage activities in the country. Some F.B.I. agents became convinced that C.I.A. handlers in Beijing too often traveled the same routes to the same meeting points, which would have helped China’s vast surveillance network identify the spies in its midst

.

There are a number of possibilities on how the agents were compromised as the article points out. Espionage has always been a hazardous line of work, and it is even more so in the age of transparency. Also an age when we're overly forgiving of those who leak classified information, or in the case of former Secretary of State Clinton and others who maintain classified e-mails on unsecure systems. There are a lot of pieces to the puzzle that are now publically available.

I pulled the above quote from the article to also point out that I believe tradecraft skills probably have eroded over recent years due to the massive human intelligence requirement to support the war on terror. This may have created an erosion in tradecraft skills for at least two reasons. Mass production of case officers, and then conducting operations against relatively unsophisticated opposition (Jihadists). Not all were unsophisticated, but the most of the operations in Iraq and Afghanistan were, but even there shortcuts resulted in CIA agents getting killed.

Operating against a state actor like China and Russia is a very different and much more challenging challenge. The hard lessons of tradecraft developed over years need to be followed, regardless of how inconvenient they may be.