The Chinese Espionage Threat-Real or Hyped?

[Kevin23]

I've been following on and off over the past year, developments in regards to the PRC's intelligence activities. Especially, since there has been alot of converge about the People's Republic's cyber espionage operations(breaking into secure systems & databases; attempting to put back doors into Chinese made electronic products etc).

Both successful and failed attempts to commit industrial espionage against a number of private sector companies around the globe. As well as the PRC's attempts both real and accused of trying to solicit information from foreign nationals both in mainland China it's self/in other countries, and from the large Chinese diaspora abroad.

I've heard some say that the PRC's intelligence operations against the US exceed those of Russia and even the USSR(in it's later years). I've also read that some nations that have dealings with China such as Canada have had both their prominent private and public institutions thoroughly infiltrated by Chinese intelligence.

However, despite all these instances that are cited both proven and rumored; how big a problem is Chinese espionage actually?

I mean from what I can tell it's well documented that the PRC's intel collection abilities thorough cyber, open-source, and other means appears quite extensive. Not to mention the numerous Chinese communities throughout the world which provide a good resource pool.

I'm also skeptical from all I've been hearing about in terms of the PRC's espionage efforts. Since they seem limited in their ability to infiltrate/subvert organizations. Because the Chinese diaspora and cyber intel collection amongst others only goes so far IMO.

I'd be interested in hearing the opinions of those more knowledgeable then me on this subject. So does the PRC really have that big of a global/western spy operation or is it being hyped to be something larger then it really is?

Here is an article from the Diplomat on these issues.
http://the-diplomat.com/2011/09/19/c...ng-spy-threat/

[bourbon]

Originally Posted by Kevin23

However, despite all these instances that are cited both proven and rumored; how big a problem is Chinese espionage actually?

Massive. The cyber-warfare issue may or may not be hyped or exaggerated; the cyber-espionage issue is not being exaggerated.

These people invent nothing these days and steal everything. It is the greatest transfer of wealth in history – the director of the NSA has said as much.

Originally Posted by Kevin23

I'm also skeptical from all I've been hearing about in terms of the PRC's espionage efforts. Since they seem limited in their ability to infiltrate/subvert organizations. Because the Chinese diaspora and cyber intel collection amongst others only goes so far IMO.

Don't be. They have money and they know how to use it; the PRC money has been pumping money into our political system for years to both parties.

Cyber-espionage can go pretty damn far if you stop and think about it. We might be better off printing out every government and corporate secret that we have and just dumping it all into China, just to confuse the SOBs. The NSA has come out and said that some form of computer compromise is the new normal, and that no system is secure – even their own.

Also the US gives the nation of Israel the right to steal whatever the hell it wants in our country; and since the nation of Israel exports little of value other than military technology, Israel inevitably sells its stolen technology to China.

Originally Posted by Kevin23

So does the PRC really have that big of a global/western spy operation or is it being hyped to be something larger then it really is?

I think we are only now seeing the tip of the iceberg. The full ramifications wont be seen for decades to come.

[Dayuhan]

I'd say both real and hyped. No doubt there's a threat and an issue, but I also have little doubt that the threat has been oversensationalised. It's also fairly obvious that the same things are being done in the opposite direction, along with various other countermeasures (such as setting up defective or erroneous data for theft). The Chinese are neither omniscient not omnipotent, and the people on the other side are not entirely inept.

Given that as a general rule the most effective intel operations are the ones that remain unknown, it's very difficult to say what's bigger, better, most extensive or most effective.

[bourbon]

Originally Posted by Dayuhan

I'd say both real and hyped. No doubt there's a threat and an issue, but I also have little doubt that the threat has been oversensationalised.

A previous comment of yours in a thread about cyber-espionage demonstrated that you have a poor understanding of information security concepts. Combine that with your reflexive apologizing for China, and I’m not sure your opinion alone on this matter is worth a damn.

Originally Posted by Dayuhan

It's also fairly obvious that the same things are being done in the opposite direction,

So what? China hardly has significantly s&t worth stealing for commercial or military industrial purposes; they invent nothing, they innovate nothing – all they do is copy and steal.

Originally Posted by Dayuhan

Given that as a general rule the most effective intel operations are the ones that remain unknown, it's very difficult to say what's bigger, better, most extensive or most effective.

The operations uncovered so-far are pretty damned impressive and were pretty effective.

[davidbfpo]

Only two small stones to throw into this pond.

I have seen a reference to more PLA officers studying at US universities than US military, less certain was this was at Ph.D. level.

Universities here found now a few years ago that virtually all Chinese technical and scientific students made incredible use of the then free university photocopiers.

[bourbon]

Originally Posted by davidbfpo

Universities here found now a few years ago that virtually all Chinese technical and scientific students made incredible use of the then free university photocopiers.

Photocopiers are so last century!: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/chinese-students-steal-secrets-inventor-james-dyson/story-e6frg6so-1226028900686

[carl]

Bourbon: Is the whole of this Red Chinese effort centrally coordinated or is it encouraged in a general sense or do they give out equivalents of letters of marque or what? How do they control something so big or do they even truly try?

[Fuchs]

Originally Posted by bourbon

Massive. The cyber-warfare issue may or may not be hyped or exaggerated; the cyber-espionage issue is not being exaggerated.

These people invent nothing these days and steal everything. It is the greatest transfer of wealth in history – the director of the NSA has said as much.

Well, "nothing" is obviously an exaggeration, as is "everything".

Aside from the unnecessary exaggerations:


Let's assume you were correct about the "nothing" and "everything". We have a historical precedent for the total exploitation of a country's intellectual property: Germany 1945. All patents, all high profile blueprints - gone to the victors.
What did it mean? Actually, very little.

The real transfer was in the captured or hired technicians and scientists.
Blueprints with no or only minor captured technicians regularly led to minimal or no success.

The German economy had to be rebuilt, but lack of intellectual property was not among the big problems. Not a single major industry collapsed for this reason. The only key industry that shrank badly was the aviation industry, and that had obvious different reasons in both West and East.


The real challenge is to make good and timely use of documents, not to get them in the first place.


Besides; the U.S. isn't that innovative, either.
The majority of American innovation announcements I know were no innovations, but rather revivals of failed ideas or revivals of European innovations. Now imagine how many of the others were no innovations either and I just didn't know their roots!
There's a lot of show aptitude involved that deceives many people.

[Dayuhan]

Originally Posted by bourbon

Combine that with your reflexive apologizing for China, and I’m not sure your opinion alone on this matter is worth a damn.

Since when did failure to panic constitute an apology? Given the nature of the subject, I doubt that any of us is in a position to accurately assess the threat level, and if we were we would not be allowed to post on the subject.

What I said was that threats don't have to be real or hyped, they can also be real and hyped. Virtually all real threats we face are over-hyped, often by people in some way invested in trying to sell us their particular "solution" to whatever threat is in question. That "solution" may be an ideology, a policy, a product, or any number of other things, but if someone needs to invoke fear in order to sell it, there's a good chance that they think the suspension of rational thought is a necessary element of making the sale. Fear is right up there with greed as a marketing strategy.

As a general rule, whenever you read something written by someone who wants you to be afraid, it's time to start taking out grains of salt. That doesn't mean there are no threats, it means that the threats are almost invariably less than what they are hyped up to be.

Originally Posted by bourbon

So what? China hardly has significantly s&t worth stealing for commercial or military industrial purposes; they invent nothing, they innovate nothing – all they do is copy and steal.

Strange how people so incapable of innovation seem, at least according to some, to be so remarkably capable of inventing ways to steal information. How did a bunch of bonehead copycats morph into the omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent masters of the information universe before whom we must tremble in fear?

Our espionage efforts, cyber or otherwise, don't have to be aimed at stealing their innovations. We'd have our own set of goals, like getting a handle on what they've got, where they got it, what they've done with it, and to what extent what they've done with it actually works. Obviously whatever information is gained from these efforts is not being made public.

We know that they spy on us. We also know that we spy on them. We also know that they will be trying to fool us by leaking wrong information to confuse our spying efforts, and that we are doing the same. It's actually a bit reassuring that we don't hear much, if anything, about the efforts on our side. If they were in the headlines, that would be evidence of failure.

Originally Posted by bourbon

The operations uncovered so-far are pretty damned impressive and were pretty effective.

It would be more impressive if they hadn't been uncovered. Is it not an axiom in the intel world that failure is public and success remains unknown?

[carl]

Originally Posted by Dayuhan

Since when did failure to panic constitute an apology? Given the nature of the subject, I doubt that any of us is in a position to accurately assess the threat level, and if we were we would not be allowed to post on the subject.

That is an all purpose good for whatever ails you argument, I don't know and I know that you don't know because if you did you couldn't say but you did so you don't so what I say is just as good as what you say.

And to answer your question, since legitimate concern became hysteria and panic.

[Dayuhan]

Originally Posted by carl

That is an all purpose good for whatever ails you argument, I don't know and I know that you don't know because if you did you couldn't say but you did so you don't so what I say is just as good as what you say.

I can't begin to unravel all that, but I doubt that anyone here is in a position to accurately assess the respective extent and effectiveness of US and Chinese cyperespionage efforts.

Originally Posted by carl

And to answer your question, since legitimate concern became hysteria and panic.

When we paint the other guys as giants and ourselves as midgets, when we claim that they know everything about our capabilities and intentions and we know nothing of theirs, when we claim that everything they do works and everything we do fails, when we look at them as an inevitably rising economic powerhouse and ourselves as a terminally declining has-been, when we base our fears on speculative projections of what somebody might be able to do in a few decades... then we go beyond legitimate concern and into the realm of hysteria, panic, and overhyped threats perceptions.

[davidbfpo]

hat tip to the Lowy Institute e-briefing for a pointer to a Jamestown Foundation report on Taiwan's intelligence chief's public parliamentary hearing; which ends with this flip side of Chinese espionage:

...the Taiwanese record of espionage against China suggests Tsai’s remarks should be taken seriously. In his well-publicized leaked remarks last year, PLA Major General Jin Yi’nan identified several major Taiwanese spy cases, including the party secretary of China’s National Nuclear Corporation (“General’s Spy Comments Reveal More Than Just Espionage,” China Brief, September 2, 2011). A few years previously, Taiwanese intelligence also developed a spy ring at the PLA Air Force Command Academy, including the school president and other members of its leadership (Global Times, February 14, 2011). These Taiwanese successes indicate that, regardless of Taiwan’s own counterintelligence problems, the island’s intelligence services continually have developed high-level sources in Chinese military circles that could inform Tsai’s annual reports to the Legislative Yuan.

Link:http://www.jamestown.org/programs/ch...b703805948196e

[slapout9]

On Economic Espionage.......notice it begins with the Cold War is not over!! I agree 100% which all this business spying goes with basic Commie Take Over Theroy from the 50's and 60's. But all the left over Hippies are know in senior leadership postions. Just as Lenin dreamed we will be weakened to such a point where the final takeover violence will be minimal. They know how to attack on a Systems Level.....more Deadly Than War.


http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/investig...omic-espionage

[carl]

Originally Posted by Dayuhan

When we paint the other guys as giants and ourselves as midgets, when we claim that they know everything about our capabilities and intentions and we know nothing of theirs, when we claim that everything they do works and everything we do fails, when we look at them as an inevitably rising economic powerhouse and ourselves as a terminally declining has-been, when we base our fears on speculative projections of what somebody might be able to do in a few decades... then we go beyond legitimate concern and into the realm of hysteria, panic, and overhyped threats perceptions.

I'll tell you what. I'll answer to hysterically panic stricken if you'll answer to complacent appeaser. Deal?

[Dayuhan]

If complacency is the absence of fear, I'll wear that label. It's not a definition I'd use, but some might. Where have I ever advocated appeasement?

I personally think the US education system is a greater threat to American security than Beijing and Goldman Sachs combined, but I guess we all have to be hysterical and panic-stricken over something. I mean, think about it... you live in a country where astrologers outnumber astronomers 100 to 1, and you're worried about the Chinese?

[carl]

Ok. I sense there's room for a deal here.

You'll be complacent but not an appeaser and I'll be just hysterical but not panic-stricken. How about that?

[Dayuhan]

If I confess to complacency, may I be excused from tearing my hair and rending my garment? I've no great stock of hair to begin with, and garments get more expensive by the day... plus they're all made in China, so I couldn't replace it without subsidizing the evil ones.

[Firn]

My brother who made his engineering Bachelor in Munich told me that his institute of the TU (technical university) had no troubles to find internships for their students but for the Chinese. It seems as if certain things, especially espionage happened rarely with other nationalities but relative often with the latter.

[Jedburgh]

Defense Security Service: Targeting US Technologies: A Trend Analysis of Reporting From the Defense Industry

....Overall, the majority of collection attempts in FY10 originated from the East Asia and the Pacific region; commercial entities were the most active collector affiliation category for the second year in a row; targeting of information systems (IS) technology more than doubled from FY09; and collectors continued to most commonly use requests for information (RFIs) to elicit information from cleared contractors.

Even as the total suspicious contact reports from industry more than doubled from FY09 to FY10, the East Asian and Pacific region accounted for an even larger percentage of the total in FY10, increasing from 36 percent to 43 percent. East Asia and the Pacific accounted for as much of the total as the next three regions combined. Despite the dramatic increase in the number of reported cases attributed to the second most active region, the Near East, its share of the total actually declined slightly, due to the even greater increase in incidents attributable to East Asia and the Pacific.

As with the East Asia and the Pacific and Near East regions, Europe and Eurasia’s reported collection attempts more than doubled from last year, causing it to displace South and Central Asia as the third most active collector region. Together, East Asia and the Pacific, the Near East, and Europe and Eurasia accounted for over three-quarters of the world-wide total reported collection attempts against the U.S. cleared industrial base.....

[Ken White]

Originally Posted by Dayuhan

I personally think the US education system is a greater threat to American security than Beijing and Goldman Sachs combined, but I guess we all have to be hysterical and panic-stricken over something. I mean, think about it... you live in a country where astrologers outnumber astronomers 100 to 1, and you're worried about the Chinese?

All three parts; the first point quite accurately and sadly , the last hilariously .

Shame that hysteria and panic isn't directed at the pathetic state of our education system which promotes a tendency toward those failings as well as an obsessive desire for safety and comfort couched as risk or harm avoidance.