The Rest Is Classified - 105. The Chinese Spy Scandal: Mastering LinkedIn (Ep 2)

Episode Date: December 3, 2025

In 2017, former CIA officer Kevin Mallory was drowning in debt when a message landed in his LinkedIn inbox. A Chinese “headhunter” said he had consulting work. Mallory - fluent in Mandarin, seasoned in intelligence, and once trusted with some of America’s most sensitive secrets - replied. In this episode, David and Gordon unpack how Chinese intelligence services used think-tank cover, tailored taskings, and a custom encrypted smartphone to reel Mallory in. From FedEx scans of classified documents to a frantic attempt to reinvent himself as a double agent, this is the anatomy of a recruitment gone disastrously wrong. ------------------- Make someone a Declassified Club Member this Christmas – go deeper into the world of espionage with exclusive Q&As, interviews with top intelligence insiders, regular livestreams, ad-free listening, early access to episodes and live show tickets, and weekly deep dives into original spy stories. Members also get curated reading lists, special book discounts, prize draws, and access to our private chat community. Just go to https://therestisclassified.supportingcast.fm/gifts And of course, you can still join for yourself any time at therestisclassified.com or on Apple Podcasts. ------------------- THE REST IS CLASSIFIED LIVE 2026: Buy your tickets ⁠HERE⁠ to see David and Gordon live on stage at London’s Southbank Centre on 31 January. ------------------- Try Attio for free at ⁠https://www.attio.com/tric⁠ ------------------- Email: [e-mail] Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@triclassified⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Social Producer: Emma Jackson Producer: Becki Hills Head of History: Dom Johnson Exec Producer: Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Chat with your advisor or visit fidelity.ca slash performance to learn more. Commission's fees and expenses may apply. Read the funds or ETF's prospectus before investing. Funds and ETFs are not guaranteed. Their values change and past performance may not be repeated. Gordon, you've given me no, no shot. LinkedIn messages to read to start this episode. Sorry. But LinkedIn is really the answer to this question of how in the world would China's intelligence services find and eventually recruit

a former CIA officer? And the answer is going to involve again LinkedIn. And last time in our sort of first episode on how China spies, we talked about LinkedIn, read that very memorable piece of prose from Shirley Shen, a global headhunter who was reaching out to all manner of people across the UK. And we talked a lot about how LinkedIn is used to approach people who were working in and sort of around the UK Parliament. LinkedIn was being used by Chinese intelligence officers. It's kind of this digital platform that allows you to start a relationship with someone and then follow that through to a more traditional in-person recruitment. And so today, day, we are going to, I guess, walk through a kind of case study of how a spy service

can use an online platform to find someone, begin a relationship with them, and then convert, I think, that relationship into a more traditional, you know, sort of human intelligence operation. Yeah, that's right. So last time we looked mainly at parliaments, but we did leave our listeners with a cliffhanger of in 2017, Kevin Mallory in Virginia, getting a message from a Chinese headhunter, not that dissimilar from the ones that those people in the UK Parliament got. Let's dive a bit deeper into what happened, because Kevin Mallory, just to explain who he was, he graduated from

Brigham Young University in 1981 with a BA in Political Science. Institution affiliated with the Church of Latter-day Saints, the Mormon Church. The Mormons. That's right. That's right. And there's a lot of Mormons who end up working at the CIA, Gordon. Interesting, I didn't know that. Yeah. Initially, after graduation, Mallory is going to work as an active duty military officer until 1986. Then he joins the State Department's Diplomatic Security Service as a special agent for three years, 1987 to 90. Then he joins the CIA.

And he's going to work as a case officer. And he becomes a China specialist, learns to speak fluent Mandarin. He's stationed in China, Taiwan, and also does a... posting in Iraq. Then in the early 2000s, he shifts across to the defense intelligence agency. How often is that the case? I mean, that seems, is it? I thought you see it as a demotion, David, to go from CIA to DIA. I don't know if that's true, though. Yes, I have a very snobby attitude toward my, my DIA analytic compagres. Sorry, DIA. Who I see, I see as definitely below the talents capabilities of CIA. So we just lost all of our DIA listeners. You've just insulted them in

one fell suit. I'm looking, I'm looking forward to hate mail that I will receive. Because I relish it. I relish conflict with the Defense Intelligence Agency. Okay, great. That's right. But are you to me? Just to make clear, that is in the McCloskey view, not the career of you. But while in DIA, Mallory's responsibilities include serving as the handling case officer for covert human assets, who referred to in the kind of legal case around him as the Johnsons, as the pseudonym for them, which is, anyway, interesting pseudonym. But then, interesting enough, he returns to the CIA as a contractor, 2010 to 2012, but then seems to lose his top secret clearance in October 2012 when he leaves government service. Some reports that, you know,

for improperly disclosing classified information, a bit murky. But he's on his own, and he sets up his own consulting firm called Global X LLC. And this is where the trouble start. All these former, like, case officers who start consultancies, they all have a name that is as anodyne as Global X LLC. That is, that is classic. Well, so, and his trouble start, as you might assume, given our banter up front of this episode, on LinkedIn. Isn't that right, Gordon? Because he's contacted, Valerie's contacted on LinkedIn. by someone who presents himself as essentially a recruiter, a headhunter, who kind of dangles possible consulting work in China. Yeah, and they have some mutual connections on

LinkedIn. And of course, it comes at a moment for Mallory, who is having trouble. He's missed at least two mortgage payments. He owes more than $200,000 on his mortgage. He's got $30,000, you know, in credit card debt, and here's an opportunity. So this recruiter over LinkedIn arranges for Mallory to then contact someone else. This is the kind of chain we're talking about. Contacts a man identified as Michael Yang, who purportedly worked for a Chinese think tank in Shanghai, the SAS. Now, Yang, the US authorities say is a spy. And they say that the Shanghai State Security Bureau, which is part of the Ministry of State Security, we talked last time about this kind of giant organization and which has lots of regional bureaus. Well, this is the Shanghai State Security

Bureau. And the claim by the FBI is that the State Security Bureau has a close relationship with this think tank SAS and uses it and its employees as spotters and assessors, which I guess means people who are trying to look out for interesting candidates, doesn't it? Yeah, and we talked last time, you know, a little bit about some of the challenges that Chinese espionage presents in the ways in which it's a little bit unique. You know, and we should not mirror image the way that, you know, the CIA or, you know, SIS think about espionage, conduct espionage onto the Chinese. And I think this is a great example of how China is able to sort of use a variety of actors for intelligence purposes that I think, frankly, maybe in particular

in the States, it's kind of hard to do because you think about the equivalent here in the states of like having an intelligence officer who has cover at a think tank. I mean, it would be like you know, a researcher at Brookings in D.C. who's actually a CIA case officer, you know, that kind of cover could be really effective. It's not used. The CIA doesn't do that. So, but the Chinese, they use it all the time. So they've got a lot more flexibility, I think, in how they cover their officers. And in this case, it makes it seem, even though Mallory, I think, kind of knows what's going on. That's just my sense. There's enough cover here. here that he could maybe convince himself that it's all above board, ish.

That's important. I agree, because I think he can tell himself, well, it's just a think tank. People can slightly kid themselves. Maybe this guy's not a spy. Maybe it really is a great business opportunity. And so Mallory is then going to have a video call with Yang, and we talked about video calls last time. And Yang says he's looking for a foreign policy expert to write some reports, do some consulting. Mallory's handwritten notes from that call indicate that There was an interest in, amongst other things, anti-ballistic missile defense systems. So something quite sensitive, but not, this isn't give us some secret documents. It's just, you know, can you write some reports?

But then crucially, March 2017, Mallory travels over to China to meet Yang in person. And this, again, is something we talked about last time, isn't it? You start with LinkedIn, then you have a video call, and then they say, come to China to talk to us. You know, they want to do the actual recruiting in person still. They don't think they can run it all online. So it's this kind of blended digital and human operation. Then it's interesting. In advance of the trip, though, Mallory asks Yang to provide him with a cell phone when he arrives,

specifying that Yang should put it in an envelope, initial around the seals, tape over the initials, and put that envelope in another envelope to make sure it's not been tampered with. Hmm. Those are always my instructions to goalhanger when I have. arrive in the UK, Gordon, for my cell phone. My UK cell phone, I want it. It should be, there should be seven envelopes that should all, all have the initials of Becky, our producer. I shouldn't have said your last name, Becky. We probably have to edit that out. You'll have to bleep that out. Yeah, but yeah, she gets contacted. By Chinese intelligence. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

And also, the day before Mallory leaves for China, he goes to a FedEx store in Washington, D.C., purchased an SD memory card and scanned some documents on it, nine pages. So he goes to Shanghai. Soon after, Mallory sends Yang an email with some documents, nine pages of documents. He says they're examples, but they're not classified documents, we should say. They include like military intelligence acronyms. There's a document with the CIA seal on it, you know, the logo, but these are not classified documents yet. The document that's got the CIA seal on it described analytic tradecraft standards, apparently, which I think that stuff, I mean, that's like, you know, the nuclear codes. I mean, if the Chinese get to the bottom of our analytic tradecraft

standards, we're doomed. But I guess it's an effort to demonstrate value. Exactly. So he meets on this trip to Shanghai for several hours with Yang and a man who's introduced as Yang's supervisor, Mr. Ding. But Mallory then comes back home. He goes back to China again the next month, April 2017 to meet with Yang. And on this trip, Yang gives Mallory, and this is going to be important, a Samsung Galaxy Note 4 smartphone, which had been customized so that Mallory could send encrypted communications to a corresponding phone kept by Yang, and he's taught how to use it. I mean, now it's pretty obvious we're into the spy world, isn't it? There's no point hiding it. When you're given a covert communications device, what do you call it, covcom?

you know you're in the spy game, basically. But then this is where it starts to get a little bit crazy because he comes back from his second trip to China, April 21st, 2017, and Mallory at Chicago Airport is stopped by customs and border protection agents. Now, I don't know, it may have been a normal search. There may have been a tip-off, I don't know, but it's interesting. Mallory says he's returning from business and a vacation, kind of combined trip to Shanghai.

He said he met someone who he knew through his church and that he was doing some consulting with this person on anti-bullying family safety development. That is an obscure piece of like obscure alibi. That is maybe too specific. Yeah, it's a little weird, isn't it? It's very weird. And he also says that this phone he's been given,

this Samsung phone, is actually a new phone he purchased for his wife as a gift. Hmm. But crucially, he's checked no. So in these, you know, I hated these customs declaration forms. They always scared me because there's so many kind of things you have to tick. Like, you know, when you go into the U.S., when it's always like, are you carrying, you know, X amount of cash? Have you ever committed terrorism? Are you involved in, you know, Genesis was like kind of weird checklist. You always think, man, if I check. Are you carrying a bag of soil from where you came from, you know, things like that? Yeah, it's kind of weird list. Bringing animals and food back. Yeah. They don't have those anymore. No, no, no, they've changed it, haven't they, in recent years. But he ticks no whether he's carrying over $10,000 in cash. But they find $16,500 in cash in his two carry-on bags. And the customs agents later say, Mallory looks really kind of agitated or aggravated during this. But then he's actually looks incredibly relieved when he's told that he's going to be able to get away with it,

but it just has to pay some duty, I think, on the items he'd purchased in China, I guess, like the phone. stuff like that. So this is a kind of interesting incident, and we'll come back to it, because then a few days after his return, he visits a FedEx store, close to his home in Virginia, pays to have a FedEx clerk scan some more documents, 47 pages of documents, onto an SD memory card, and then shred the documents. Again, slightly suspicious. And then starting in May, he's going to use this covert communications device, this Samsung smartphone, to transmit to Yang some of the nine documents. that he'd scanned at the FedEx store.

And they're described, you know, they've got different names, handwritten kind of title of contents, claiming that there were kind of science and technology targeting opportunities, particularly targeting in China. And there's a typed page entitled White Paper, which supposedly contain classified information and two pages of handwritten notes from a yellow pad. And supposedly this was a proposed defense intelligence operation,

DIA operation involving these agents, the Johnsons, including information about that intelligence relationship. And it was all kind of notes from a PowerPoint that Mallory had used during a presentation to DIA supervisors back in his time at the DIA to do some kind of, we obviously don't know the details for obvious reasons, but some kind of unique sensitive targeting in China that he was privy to from his time as DIA. And that's what he's kind of apparently now. sending over. And so is he writing up his recollections of this for the handling officer, or does he actually have documents that he's taken out with him and is now passing to the Chinese?

I think in some cases it looks like it was his notes of sensitive PowerPoints and documentation. So it is secret material, or top secret material, but not necessarily top secret documents. The documents seem to be about capabilities of foreign intelligence services. And, I mean, they were certainly, whatever he was sending contained information classified at top secret level, you know, whether it was original documents or not. That's a bit unclear. And the text messages indicate Yang acknowledges receiving some of the documents and then asks for more. Your object is to gain information, you know, my old.

object is to be paid for, Mallory tells Yang. And Yang, or whoever this kind of real contact is, says, you know, my object is to make sure of your security, try and reimburse you. So you can see, you know, what's going on here. Mallory is also going to kind of place more classified material he'd obtained on another SD card, wraps it in Tim Forl, stashes it in his bedroom closet. But this is, I think this is where it's interesting, because this is where it starts to go because he does seem to suddenly panic about what he's doing. He seems to kind of freak out. possibly because of that custom stop, I kind of wonder, I mean, A, it may have been just a genuine custom stop. You wonder if it was a kind of tip-off custom stop. You also wonder if he over-interprets

the customs stop and thinks they're onto me. I'm in trouble now. I'm doomed. You know, what am I doing? Because at that point, he behaves in a pretty odd way, doesn't he? It's kind of bizarre because he does midstream in this relationship with Yang and the MSS. He reaches out to sort of an acquaintance who had worked with him at the CIA to get Mallory in touch with the CIA, right, to tell the agency that he'd been approached by Chinese intelligence on this business trip. And he kind of wants, it seems like Mallory wants to get this on the record, which, you know, is maybe the exact opposite of what you should do in this situation. Because he seems like he's almost going to try to spin it like he's being useful to the agency in some way. Yeah, I kind of wonder if either he's scared and he thinks I'm going to get caught, I better go to them first. Or if he's thinking he can play a kind of clever double game.

I wonder if what he's thinking is if I tell them, I've been pitched by Chinese intelligence, but not tell them I've actually started passing stuff. Maybe I'll either get away with it or they might use me as a double agent back against the Chinese, but I'll probably get away with it. But he's thinking, I can just pretend all that's happened is I've been pitched by the Chinese and I've had some contact with them, but kind of claim that there's nothing more to the relationship than that. But I agree it's odd. It's a kind of feels like a person who's panicking. You know, there's a good piece by Tara McKelvey, who is an old colleague at the BBC and a really good reporter.

And she suggests in the piece she wrote about this that, you know, Mallory was. hoping to become a double agent, but his messages, you know, he's sending text messages to old acquaintances, you know, linked to the CIA, and they're getting increasingly frantic. And so on May 12th, 2017, he meets with a CIA investigator. And he now kind of goes, oh, I think these people I met in Shanghai were linked to Chinese intelligence. And I received a covert communications device and instructions how to use it. And he says he'll come to another meeting. And then comes the kind of crucial meeting. And this is a kind of wild meeting. May 24th, 2017, thinks he's going to meet the CIA investigator again.

But this time it's the Feebs, David. The Feebs are there. This is a bad sign. This is a bad sign. There's Feebs there. They're there waiting for him. And Mallory says he's been contacted on social media by a Chinese recruiter. He's traveled out twice.

He says that. And he says he's been paid $25,000 in total, which he says was in line with his billable rate as a consultant, including expenses. I mean, wow. That's $25,000. thousand dollars for, that's pretty good money for, I don't know, whatever consultants he was doing on anti-bullying or whatever it was. It was something. Yes, family development and anti-bullying. This is the going rate for this kind of... We're in the wrong game, David.

We're the wrong game. Yeah, we are. We are. We need to respond to those messages from Shirley Shen. Let me just hold the recording a minute. Let me go back. So Mallory says he was encouraged to pursue employment with the U.S. government in a position with access. which he said he was in the process of doing. He tells the Feebs he received taskings to write papers about US policy, and that he responded, he says, by writing and delivering too short, what he says are unclassified, what he calls white papers,

using information in his head, as well as open source information. And he says, I didn't retain copies of, you know, of this, I just sent it over. Well, why would you retain any copies of work that you produced? Of the work you've done when it's open source. You know, madness. But then, of course, crucially, he tells the Thebes multiple times he didn't provide the Chinese with any other documents in any format, paper or electronic, beyond these two papers.

Now, this is the funny bit. He's going to show the covert communications device that Samsung phoned the FBI agents and describe how it works. And this is where things really do go wrong for Kevin Mallory. I think, Gordon, maybe that's a good place. to take a break right when this guy, Kevin Mallory, is thinking that the solution to all of his problems is to show the Feeves, the Kovcom device that he has been using to communicate with the Chinese.

Let's take a break when we come back. We will see how in the world that wonderful idea goes terribly wrong. This episode is brought to you by Atio, the CRM for the AI era. Now, David, people think that Spy. aircraft is just car chases and secret codes, but an awful lot of it is just idling around, waiting for the action. It's a bit like starting your own business. You think it's going to be as easy as creating and selling a product, but the reality

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Kevin Mallory, Gordon is sitting with the Feebs looking at his Samsung Galaxy smartphone communication device, and I guess it's about to all go sideways for him, isn't it? Yeah, so poor Kevin Mallory, I am almost feeling sorry for him for this moment.

He sat with the Phoebes and he's saying, here's this covert communications device that my Chinese handlers gave to me. I've never used it, he says. I've never used it to send classified documents to Yang my handler. I'd only ever sent a test message. And I'm pretty sure that, you know, the device is designed to delete all the previous history. So he voluntarily agrees to show the agents how to shift on the phone from the normal message mode to a kind of clandestine, secure messaging mode on the phone. And then he appears very visibly surprised, according to people who were there, when the whole chat history with Yang turns up, including what he thought were the secure messages that he'd exchanged and which he's just claimed he never.

had, because he only sent a test message, and he's showing them how to use it. And then suddenly the whole messaging history pops up, including references to foreign intelligence services and to documents. And he just goes silent for a few moments. I mean, how bad is that? And it looks like the software had a glitch possibly and just revealed the messages by mistake. I mean, how bad is that? It's comedically bad, almost. I mean, I really, think that he almost had, it was like his conscience was overactive in a way. And he felt like he needed to come clean in some way, shape, or form. But now he's sort of, he's attempted to kind of come clean. And then the phone, the phone wrecks him, Gordon. I mean, it's just,

it's remarkable. He's come cleaner than he wanted to, he wanted to come semi-clean. Now he's come, he's been cleaned out by the phone. He's been cleaned out. That's right. Because the messages say things like, I can also come in the middle of June. I can bring the remainder of the documents I have at that time. Fairly incriminating, yeah. Yeah, and he's kind of saying, well, this is just the two white papers I'd already told you about. You know, open source stuff. The remainder of the documents, that's just me stringing the Chinese along.

And according to one of the FBI agents who was present, it was a fairly significant moment. Like the understatement, as we realized there was something very different going on here than we first thought. I mean, it does sound like the Thebes maybe didn't realize until he did that that he had actually been passing the documents. They really thought he was just owning up. And suddenly they're like, oh, this is a very different case. So it's bad. And then he's going to kind of give them the phone and allow them to make a copy of the phone, which is going to allow them to find even more messaging history in it, in which he's talking about the documents he's sent, which is, you know, even more incriminating because there's more details about messages

about money going into accounts, funds being broken into four equal payments over four consecutive days, when you get the OK to place the payment and I'll send more docs. In the future, I will destroy all electronic records after you confirm receipt. I've already destroyed the paper records. I cannot keep these around too dangerous. Yeah, that's bad. That's bad. That's really incriminating. Yeah. Yeah. And I guess when the Feebs actually look at the phone, they see that there's a handwritten index, which has sort of a description of a number of different documents. And, I mean, it's really, this is kind of, you know, the jigs up here for Kevin Mallet. Yeah, the game's over.

It's pretty clear that he's been using the device to send these documents. So then June 22nd, 2017, the FBI arrested him at the house. Interesting enough, there's a red banner covered in Chinese calligraphy that hung outside the front door. His poor teenage son is at home. and the FBI, I mean, when they do this, they go in, I mean, hard, don't they? Because there are guns, helicopters, black vans. It's the full FBI works, basically, that it's used. I think they just enjoy doing it.

That's my theory. Do you think they particularly enjoy doing it to a CIA officer or a former CIA officer? I bet you they kind of. 100%. Yeah, this is fun. This is like an FBI carnival right here. You know, this is the dream. Everyone's going like, let me do the raid.

Let me do the raid. Yeah. It also, I mean, this is, one of the pieces of this story that is also just, I mean, it's like, what was Mallory thinking is he's doing a lot of the document scanning and destruction in full view of cameras inside the FedEx store in Leesburg, right? It's just, he's, he's on camera doing this stuff, which enables the FBI to then use that as evidence at the trial. Yeah, that's right, because they've got, they've got him. scanning classified material onto the SD card. And as we said, kind of getting the stuff shredded at the store all on camera. And then they're going to find the concealed SD card, you know, the one he'd said to hide during a search of his home. And so in the trial,

they're going to be able to show all this evidence, including a recording from after he's arrested a couple of days after, where he can be heard on a call from the jail asking his family to search for the hidden SD card. I mean, amateur out. I mean, you know, it's pretty bad, isn't it? Anyway, it's no comment on the quality of people employed by the CIA in the 1990s, but it's kind of... It sounds, well, the way you just said that, Gordon, makes it sound like it's a comment

on the quality of the people employed by the CIA listeners come after me. I don't mean that, but I think he was the rotten apple. And as befitting a rotten apple in May 2019, he sent a, to 20 years under the espionage act. So he gets the full whack of the law for doing that. And it all started, you know, with a LinkedIn message. And I guess he's not the only one, is he? I mean, we shouldn't pretend that he's the only case. You know, there's plenty of others. No. And I think we will down the line want to do a few more series on kind of industrial and commercial espionage, too. I mean, in this case, you know, this is more of a straight up just you're recruiting a former

CIA officer who's got political national security information that you might want. But in in so many other cases, the targets are very different. You're right. I mean, it is interesting because the way in both the Parliament Alert and the Mallory case, it starts off with this offer of kind of consultancy in writing reports. And it is, that's what LinkedIn is there for, is for connecting people to kind of be able to ping in a pitch work to each other. So, you know, the platform, which, you know, and we should say LinkedIn says it's working

with governments to try and deal with this, has offered. a new way of doing something that intelligence services have been using for some time. So it's not a uniquely Chinese thing, I think, to try and build relationships that way through that kind of cover. And I mean, China's Ministry of State Security, not often we're going to quote them, but, you know, they say that West does this to them. So January 2024, the MSS posted on WeChat, which is the Chinese messaging kind of service, alleging that MI6 has established contact in 2015 with a foreigner in charge of an unnamed overseas consultancy and they recruited this guy from a third country without being clear and then use this person in China to kind of

gather intelligence and to recruit more people and train them. And so the MSS was basically making the point, hey, everyone does this. So there is a sense in which using this process is something that intelligence agencies do, the kind of consultancy as cover. to try and lure people into a relationship, which then builds. So I guess the question is, is what China does different? Absolutely, it's different. I've never liked this. We spy, they spy, everybody spies.

Anytime a Chinese intelligence case is sort of unearthed Kevin Mallory or whatever, right? You sort of get this reaction that, okay, well, this is just part of the game, right? Everybody spies. I think that statement is, it's true. true and at its heart though it's completely misleading because because of i guess a couple things the scale is totally different it's totally different we talked about this i mean throughout both of these episodes that the the chinese can throw so many resources at this um that it's not it's not fair quote unquote it's not the same it's happening they're bigger than a very different

level. They're bigger than us. I think that the targets, I mean, but the second thing is, is like, we talked in this series about more typical intelligence targets, you know, political types, try to get into, allegedly, into parliament in the UK. The reality, though, is that the Chinese look at sort of security competition, I think, across every possible domain, right? Scientific, commercial, economic, political, cultural. This is not how, I think, the CIA and SIS would sort of view the spy game with China, right? It's a much more narrow set of targets. And then the last point is just like, again, the strategies that the Chinese employ to steal IP, to capture networks of elites in the West, like, these are not strategies, I think, that are widely deployed at scale by Western.

intelligence services. So I think it's like this everybody spies thing is just, it's ignoring the reality that the Chinese are spying differently and at a greater scale than everyone else. Let me come back to you a little bit, because I agree that actually China is different in the way it spies. You know, I think they go after different targets. They do economic espionage in a way we don't. They do, I think, political interference in a way that we don't. There's a bit, though, of me which goes, why do we get to decide what's acceptable spying and what's not? You know, who gets to set the boundaries of why some things are, because basically, recruiting a Kevin Mallory, that is exactly what I think the Brits or the CIA would do to

an MSS officer, an ex-MSS officer if they could get it. Kind of political intelligence, counterintelligence, military intelligence, using consulting cover to try and get them. that case, I think, is actually very hard to go, hey, you know, you can't do that. It's a bit like saying China's going to use an embassy to spy, well, shock horror, we might do similar things, you know, who'd have thought? So there's certain types of intelligence, which I think we do the same. There's definitely another category which China does, which we don't do.

I think that is true, and I agree with you there. And they do it at a scale and with impact that we don't do. I think there's an interesting question is, who sets the rules in espionage, who gets to decide what's allowed and what's not allowed. out. And I think it's right that we complain about it. I think particularly for me, the kind of political interference, I think that feels a big deal, the economic espionage. I agree. I think we should be complaining about it. Don't get me wrong. I don't think it's right that it happens. It's quite interesting from a moral perspective to decide where the boundaries are. But I definitely

think we should be calling it out at the very least. Well, sure. I guess I'm not saying that I think it's even unfair. I don't think fair. has anything to do with it. I just mean that when when these Chinese spy cases come out and you hear the inevitable refrain that, well, everybody spies, you know, it's just sort of It's too simple. It's too simple. And it's it's analytically misleading about the nature of the problem. That's my that's my concern. So it's missing the the difference. It's missing the differences. And yeah. And it makes it harder for us to then deal with the problem. because we just say, oh, you know, it's just everybody spies.

And it's assuming the game is the same. And in fact, there are vectors, threat vectors that the Chinese intelligence services use to gain access to the information, the resources, and the people in our societies. And we're not defending ourselves properly against them if we don't analytically look at it in sort of a clear-headed way. That's my point. And I agree with you very much that we need to be clear-headed about it, and we need to be able, and this goes back to some of the discussion we had earlier, to call it out and to be open about it and to say, this is what they do, this to our, whether it's Parliament or businesses, this is what you need to look out for, because this is what they're trying to do to us. I think we absolutely need to be kind of clear-headed about that.

And I do, you know, I think the scale point is really interesting because I think, you know, the reality is they don't have to choose, are we just going to do political intelligence or are we going to do economic intelligence? They could do everything at vast scale enabled by digital technology and having, what, if it's 600,000 people, maybe even more in their kind of security and intelligence services, compared, you know, if you're in MI5 or the FBI and you're kind of looking at that scale that you see in, coming, that has a kind of strategic effect on your, whatever you think of the morality of it,

on your economy and your political life, if they can do it at that scale, and you don't necessarily have the resources and the ability to defend it against it. That is a kind of strategic risk for Western countries, I think, if they're not alert to it. And it's a pretty hard one to defend against. I agree. I'm glad you said that, Gordon, because I was nervous that you were drifting into your classic, sort of your chummy approach of sort of anti-Western. actors, like you did in our Stodotid series, where you sort of, you know, Gordon, the swan song, the swan song of this, you know, this sort of anti-Western access is, it's appealing to Gordon-Garra, I think.

It's possible to care about civil liberties, David, and human rights, and be critical of Chinese espionage and Russian espionage. That's, that's all, that's, that's, that's, it's, it's not either or. That's what I, I would, I would say. In fact, it should be and, anyway, that's a, that's a, that's a, that's, we've, you've opened up a big one there. That's right. That's right. At the very end, I also think, I mean, you know, there is a, there is a great, and Becky, our producer has typed into the chat here. Do you think we would ever spy like this? And I think the answer is something we haven't really talked much about in the series, but is really actually an important piece of the way the enabler of the way China spies is in part because it has a very close. closed political system. And it is not an open society. And so what do you think about the ways

that Chinese intelligence agencies, state-owned enterprises, et cetera, can get access to our IP, can become investors in U.S. or Western companies, can target for acquisition companies that are in bankruptcy, and can get access to sort of politicians and elite networks all over the West, The way you do that is because we have a very open system, and it's not reciprocal. So, like, if we tried to do the same things back, we would have no purchase, right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It's just, it's out of the question, I think.

That's a challenge for us. It is. It's a structural challenge that you just can't, I think, do much about at scale. Yeah. So if we have one message, though, from this two-part series, I think it's think before you link. When you get that request, think carefully. However, however tempting it may seem for that consultancy deal, I think, just think twice,

isn't it, David? If you're being paid $25,000 for anti-bullying consulting, you might be working. Then something else might be going on. Yeah. For the Chinese Ministry of State Security. Well, this has been a fun little journey into the world of Chinese espionage. We hope you have enjoyed it. Do go ahead and go to the rest of class.

And join the Declassified Club. We should also say, Gordon. We'd be remiss if we didn't yet again mention that we are doing a live show. We are doing a live show. So if you want to hear more about Edward Snowden, hero or villain, and our differing perspectives on that and some other issues. We may find calls to disagree. disagree agree. Anyway, disagree agree.

We're going to agree with disagreeably. We're going to agree disagreeably. Yeah, exactly. No, no. Alive on stage. We are going to disagree, disagreeably on stage. Are we? Yeah, it's going to be an extended struggle session between me and Gordon Carrera.

So this could be the first and last live show that we ever do. So you better come. That's right. That's the 31st of January at the South Bank. So do get tickets. Only a few left. So do sign up if you want to come. But otherwise, we'll see you next time.

We'll see you next time. Thank you.