The Rest Is Classified - 176. The True Story of the Spies Held Hostage by China (Ep 2)

Episode Date: July 15, 2026

A Chinese fighter jet and American spy plane collide over the South China Seas. And now a US aircrew are held hostage by their Chinese captors. David and Gordon reach the dramatic crescendo of their story exploring the downing of a US spy plane over the South China Seas. ------------------- THE REST IS CLASSIFIED LIVE 2026 at The Rest Is Fest: Buy your tickets ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to see David and Gordon live on stage at London’s Southbank Centre on 4 September: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whats-on/the-rest-is-classified-live/⁠⁠⁠⁠ ------------------- Sign-up for our free newsletter where producer Becki takes you behind the scenes of the show: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://mailchi.mp/goalhanger.com/tric-free-newsletter-sign⁠-up⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ------------------- Join the Declassified Club to 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 ⁠⁠therestisclassified.com⁠ or join on Apple Podcasts. ------------------- Get a 10% discount on business PCs, printers and accessories using the code TRIC10. Visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://HP.com/CLASSIFIED⁠⁠⁠⁠ for more information. T&C's apply. ------------------- Email: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[e-mail]⁠⁠⁠ Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@restisclassified⁠ Video Editor: Joe Pettit Social Producer: Emma Jackson Assistant Producer: Alfie Rowe Producer: Becki Hills Head of History: Dom Johnson Exec Producer: Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For exclusive interviews, bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, first look at live show tickets, a weekly newsletter, and discounted books. Join the Declassified Club at the Rest is Classified.com. A Chinese fighter jet and American spy plane collide over the South China Sea. And now a U.S. air crew are held hostage by their Chinese captors. Well, welcome to The Rest is Classified. I'm David McCloskey. And I'm Gordon Carrera. And Gordon, we are in the finale of this two-part series looking at a very dramatic aerial accident over the South China season, 2001, in which a collision between a Chinese fighter jets and a U.S. EP3 spy plane carrying all kinds of sensitive technical equipment has resulted in the crash of that Chinese fighter jet.

And as we described at the end of our last episode, the slow disintegration of the U.S. spy plane such that it has had to make an emergency landing in China, the country that it was spying on on this very mission. And so we left off last time with the crew of this plane having landed at a Chinese air base and being faced not by a welcoming party or ambulatory. but by a bunch of Chinese soldiers who are going to take them captive. This episode is brought you by HP. In intelligence work, it's rarely the obvious problem that causes failure. It's the overlooked detail or the flawed nobody quite solved. The kind of vulnerability intelligence services look for. And running a business is the same, especially when you're building or growing a team.

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The rest is classified listeners also benefit from 10% off HP business technology with code TRIC10. The Hulu original series Furious is coming to Disney Plus. Starring Emmy Rossum, Furious follows FBI agent Alice Black on the hunt for a mysterious and calculating serial killer. Both walk their own paths towards. justice, and as their lives start to intertwine, the line between right and wrong begins to blur. Don't miss the three-episode premiere of the Hulu original series Furious on July 27th, only on Hulu on Disney Plus. That's right. There they are.

They've landed. I mean, it's interesting what would have happened if they hadn't landed, and Shane Osborne, the captain of leading this mission, said that actually he was told later by someone senior in the US intelligence community, that it could have been much worse if they crashed on the way because no one would have known what had happened to them. I mean, if they died and crashed into the ocean and all been gone, there would have been this mystery about what had happened. But it's still not great landing in a Chinese airbase from a crash where a Chinese pilot has bailed out and is missing, we'll come back to him. And Shane has left the engines running.

And this is interesting as well. So they're surrounded by these armed troop carriers, these guys with AK-47s. But of course, they still know they've got crypto kind of spy gear on the plane. And Shane Osborne leaves the engines running with the propellers turning so the Chinese soldiers can't approach. And that gives him time to talk to his crew, get a message back to his base to say they've landed and say that they're surrounded. and then destroy that communications equipment and the crypto gear. And he goes then at this point and goes back to the crew and says, no one speaks unless I do.

And he says it's going to be fine. We'll get through this. And in the meantime, it's so interesting because the Chinese soldiers are obviously desperate to get to the plane. So they're circling the plane. They're getting more aggressive. They're making hand gestures. Not quite sure exactly what type of hand gestures. I imagine not friendly ones.

And it's clear they're angry. And so there is this risk that this actually could escalate even though they're on the ground. So it's about 15 minutes, it sounds like, where they're on the ground trying to hold off the Chinese soldiers. But they're getting closer and closer. And at some point, I think they realize it's actually getting quite dangerous as they're pointing their guns. So they stop the engines and now they're going to have to get off the plane. And when they get off the plane, they can see it's in a much worse condition than even they thought. because of course they haven't been able to see it from the outside.

And there's kind of wire wrapped around the tail, which looked like it was holding the plane together. And I think Shane Osborne thinks if he'd flown the plane harder, that wire might have unwrapped itself. And the whole thing would have come apart and they'd have just crashed and all died. And of course, at this point now that they've landed and they've radioed back to their base, word is getting out that there's been a major incident. And word at first reaches the U.S. Embassy in Beijing where I think a key figure in this story.

So when we introduced in the last episode, the U.S. defense attaché, brigadier general Gretton, Cilock, as it goes by Neal. Seleck's a good name, by the way, for a defense attache. I like that name. He gets word that the spy plane has made an emergency landing at a Chinese air base. Yeah, and he's a really interesting character. He's still around. I've spoken to him as well. He's a straight-talking guy who looks and sounds like the US Army Infantry Officer,

you know, he first started as. But he's very interesting and very thoughtful, particularly on the US and China, because he studied Mandarin, actually at a Defence Language Institute in the UK in the 80s, and then goes to China for the first time in the mid-1980s. And then he rises up, particularly through your favourite agency, the DIA, Defense Intelligence Agency,

I think in this story come out very well, actually. I think, you know, he's definitely one of the heroes of the story. It's the only, this is the only story in which the DIA comes out well. As a general rule, I censor stories on this podcast that portray the Defense Intelligence Agency in a positive light. Well, hold it back this time, because he's the defense attache in Beijing by September 2000, which is effectively a DIA position, isn't it? I mean, these defense attaches are, it's a really interesting role because you're in a country like China, you're the military liaison, but you are there partly to, I guess, understand their military and then collect against it. So it's a, you know, you're tightly wound in with the DIA.

April 1st, April Fool's Day, of course, which I think might have led to him questions some things and a Sunday morning. And it's a holiday in China. So no one's in government departments. He's having coffee with his wife when he gets this call from the DIA. to say there'd been an incident and he needs to go to the embassy for a secure call. Takes about five minutes to get there. It gets in about 905 for the call on a secure line to say an aircraft is down. Maybe at this point they think on Hainan Island, but they're not sure.

And I guess it's not clear how serious it is at this point. We're obviously having this conversation with the benefit of 25 years of hindsight knowing what happens. But in the moment, it's interesting to think about it from both sides because this could very easily appear on the face of it as if the Chinese have shot down a U.S. plane. Yeah. Intended to destroy the plane and the plane made some emergency landing and made it through, but that the Chinese intended to shoot it down from the Chinese side.

It could also look like the fact that they lost their J8 fighter jet that was piloted by Wang Wei. That could be the result of the U.S. aggression, right? So both sides can kind of look. at this thing through a lens that the other side is the aggressor and the perpetrator. I think as well, you've got just the confusion in the initial moments because Wang hasn't been able to give his account of what happened and the US have been trying to deal with the fact they're landing on the island and they've not been able to talk to their side about what's happened. So actually, the truth is, neither side really knows why it's happened at this point. They know

something badly has gone wrong. And I guess, you know, Neil Seelock had been the one who delivered these warnings to the Chinese Ministry of Defense previously about Chinese planes getting close. You can see why he'd have that idea. And he's got contacts with the Chinese Ministry of Defense. They're away in Australia on a big trip at that point. So his normal contacts aren't around. So he tries to get hold of a duty person. And of course, that person, you know, they can't talk.

They don't know what's going on. And, you know, he tells his ambassador. And what you realize is there's nothing coming. coming from the Chinese side. There's no contact. And I think what you get a sense of is that the Chinese are scrambling to work out what's happened. They don't know what's happened, why it's happened. And I think particularly at this time, they're not very experienced at this crisis management situation. They don't really know what to do. And so they're just not returning phone calls from the US side, from Neil Seelock. Because they don't know what the process should be.

And they're scrambling to work out what's happened and what their policy should be and what they say to the Americans. Don't you think a part of the radio silence on the Chinese side is because they now have possession of this crew and plane. And I would imagine from the standpoint of obtaining technical equipment, because the Chinese are not stupid. They know exactly what this plane is doing, even if they don't know all the ins and outs of the gear that's on board. I think it probably behoves you to be quiet and to take delivery of everything that's on board before you start to negotiate. Yeah. I mean, there are some really interesting accounts on the Chinese side. I definitely commend there's an online publication called The Wire, which is a U.S. publication, which focuses on U.S. China relations. And they did some really good oral history accounts of this incident. And you also get a sense that in Beijing, they're getting different accounts from the PLA Army and Navy, the People's Liberation Army, Army and Navy around Hainan, as well as party officials and the governors, all slightly different accounts about what's happening as well.

So it's only 12 hours after the first call that Neil Seelock and the US ambassador are told to go to the foreign ministry for the first official meeting. And that does not go well. because I think there's a lot of finger pointing. And what's happening is that the Chinese are saying that it's the U.S. which is to blame for the incident. You know, they will not accept the idea that it could be the Chinese pilot's fault. They are saying the U.S. plane veered into their pilots' plane. And I guess the argument is basically from the Chinese side, you invaded our airspace, you rammed our plane, you landed without permission. And as a result of all that, we want an apology and reparations for the lost aircraft and the lost.

At this point, the missing pilot. And so the U.S. Embassy in Beijing calls Washington. And they all collectively realize that they've now got a big problem because this is not going to be easily resolved. It's still unclear, I think, what's happened. I mean, you could imagine the requests that are being sent from. the White House situation room or state over to the CIA NSA to try to pick up, like, try to understand what's happened. And there's probably not a tremendous amount of good information that's come in.

The Chinese are furious and, you know, furious for a lot of reasons. But one of the major ones is that that pilot we've been talking about Wang Wei is still missing. Yeah. So suddenly this is turning into a diplomatic incident. And then back in Washington, it is interesting because George W. Bush has just taken office in January as a newly elected president. Of course, he's not that experience, previously governor of Texas, great state, but he's not that experienced in foreign policy.

And he's got a major crisis on his hands. And already people are saying this is going to be the first big test of his presidency. Can he handle it? And you're right, because one of the first questions, I think, in the White House, was whether this actually was deliberate by China. Had they engineered a crash, were they trying to cause an incident or even to take hostages. And the CIA, I think, rightly and quickly can say no. It's a mistake. You know, we've had this history of incidents, but still means you've got a hostage situation going on now. Classic, classic CIA analyst, you know, China analysts apologizing for China's behavior. We talked about this in the COVID-Lab League episodes. Remember this, that there's this kind of

theme. I think it's also true. Many case officers will say this is true on the Russia's that the agency's analysts, there's at least a, there's a stereotype that the long-time analysts who do China stuff and do to Russia stuff have kind of got a little bit native and are, are inclined to give the Chinese the benefit of the doubt. But I guess in this situation, we know that they were correct because this was an accident. This was not Chinese policy. But we have a hostage situation now. And so the first question is you've got to get the crew back, but you're also thinking, you know, we'll quite like to get our spy plane back.

Because you're right, the Chinese are probably thinking, this is our chance to have a look at what's inside a U.S. spy plane, particularly this time when the U.S. was well ahead of China in terms of technology. I mean, that is a prize. And both sides don't know if the crew have had the chance to destroy everything because the crew haven't been able to communicate. very much about what's going on. It is interesting. We might come back to what was on board, but actually the plane was only a few weeks away from being upgraded to having a whole load of new kit in it.

And actually, in the end, it hadn't had that upgrade yet. But they still hadn't been able to destroy everything. And that was one of the problems, is they just didn't have time, or as we talked about last time, the right instructions and the right kit to know what to destroy. I also find this tidbit fascinating,

which was that because they didn't have time to destroy everything and because the Chinese, spoiler alert, took possession of it, there was uncertainty for many years over what exactly was compromised. And it was only later in the Snowden leaks, more than a decade later, that the truth of what was compromised came to light. So that's a fascinating little tidbit, which we'll come back to. But yeah, I mean, in Washington, you've got the question, how are you going to handle it? This is also interesting, I think, because it is a military incident.

Secretary of Defense is Donald Rumsfeldt, former wrestler. Former wrestler. That's the top thing on his CV that you decide to mention. But it's fair to say, I guess that indicates a certain type of personality. But instead, the White House decide we might have the Secretary of State, Colin Powell, lead on this, rather than Rumson. And of course, Colin Powell is a former military man himself, former chairman of the joint chiefs, but also a better known figure in somewhere like China than this new defense secretary. So I think probably wisely, knowing both of them, they picked Powell to lead on this.

And it's interesting, the US ambassador in China talks to Colin Powell and they say, well, we need to stop this discussion about whose fault it is. Just call it a collision. Don't say it's our fault. let's try and get beyond that and let's try and get the crew out as a priority. So Neil Seelot, the defense attache, is going to be sent down to Hainan to try and find out what's going on with Shane Osborne and the crew. And Seelock puts together a team of his crack, you know, sort of a crack team of the

best people from different consulates across the country. So the negotiation can be handled at a kind of military or a civilian consular level. he and that team are in Hainan by Monday, which I guess then given the lapse in time begs the question of what in the world has been going on with this detained aircrew because they've spent now a few nights at the military base and have then been moved. They're initially held at the military base. The Chinese, it's interesting, don't know who is aircrew and who is a spy, effectively. an intelligence collector working for the NSA.

And it's a bit hard for them to work it out. Most of the crew get interrogated just for 20 minutes. They're not going to say anything. So instead, the Chinese focus on Shane Osborne and the officers for the real interrogation. Now, Shane says he was sat in a stall for six to eight hours at a time being interrogated. He was kept awake seven to eight days pretty much straight. So sleep deprivation.

They let him doze off and then the guard in his room would wake him. him, you know, makes him jumpy and stressed, although he's had a hard time sleeping all his life. So he kind of is used to it, he says. And crucially, they want him as the pilot to admit wrongdoing and admit

that he swerved into Wang's plane. So they want him to admit that it's his fault. That is what they're pushing on the interrogation. But they also want him to admit and explain what the plane was doing, in other words, spying.

and they want him to take responsibility for that. So it's repetition of the same questions. And then accusing him, accusing Shane, of saying, you know, you're a spy, you're a murderer, you're going to prison for all your life. And he's just sitting there going, I just need to say as little as possible. Do they hit him? Is there a physical aspect of this as well? No, but he says they threaten to start hitting him.

But he decides that's actually unlikely. Because, you know, I think he thinks despite the anger that's there, They're still going to respect some of the limits. And so he's defiant and says, you know, do whatever you want. They don't hit him. So at that point, I think he knows that there's a limit to what they're going to do. It's interesting because he says the interrogators are in civilian clothes, but he's sure that they're actually military officers who'd been to school in the US,

and military school or university or college, but still use translators. But he can tell they can actually speak quite good English. Because sometimes these officers correct the translators who don't speak as good English as the officers. But they're obviously trying to do it by the book using translators perhaps as intermediaries. So it wasn't the MSS, the Ministry of State Security, who was leading the interrogations. It was the military. Yeah, PLA, it sounds like. And at one point, the rest of the crew are brought into the room to watch him being interrogated.

And most of them have not been interrogated in nearly the same way. So he looks around and he can see some of these. We talked last time about some of the crew are like 19 or 20 years old. They're not very old. And they look pretty scared because they haven't seen this kind of interrogation going ahead. But he's doing what he can to avoid giving them any real detail. It's also interesting that he uses slang to his advantage. So, you know, he's, Shane's asked about the airplane, goes into great detail about stuff that doesn't really matter.

to the Chinese, throwing military jargon back at them. So you can see how the interrogators who are probably having a hard time sorting out what's good detail, what's valid, what's useful from all the other stuff. I mean, the fact that you're then throwing highly technical terminology into this conversation

that's already happening in part through translators feels like it would be a really frustrating process for the Chinese. I mean, you're missing stuff. it's hard for you to latch on to what's just been said. You can see how he kind of danced around for a bit and was able to delay them. To delay them getting any real insight about what they were collecting and it's important. And then Neil Seelock gets down, eventually gets access to Shane and the team.

And Shane only at that point can report back to Seelock that the crew had destroyed most of the kit. There's going to be six meetings over the coming days, only 40 minutes each time. And again, Seelock and Shailosborn speaking kind of jarga to try and confuse those listening. Interestingly enough, Neil Seleock's father had run a jungle survival school. See, that's what he's doing. Shane also realizes this is suddenly a big deal because he's being shown a China Daily newspaper, which says the US had invaded China by landing the EP3 there. So I think that's a sign.

This is maybe a big deal diplomatically. One of the big problems, though, which is unresolved at this point in time, is the fate of Wang Wei, the missing the down Chinese pilot. So maybe there, let's take a break. And when we come back, we'll see what happened to Wang after he ejected over the South China Sea. Hello, everybody. We've got some very exciting news to share with you. That's right. If you're thinking about joining the declassified club becoming what we call a secret squirrel, then you're in luck.

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Welcome back. At this point in the crisis, the Chinese are still searching for their downpilot Wang Wei, who we last saw, or the air crew on the EP3 last saw him actually floating down toward the ocean, having ejected, a parachute lifts out. But what's happened to him? Have the Chinese found him at this point? No, and that's the problem. And it's monsoon season, this force five or six. winds, there's three meter high waves. China is going to send boats and planes to look for him with thousands of people, they say, are involved in this search, which is going to go on for days and days and days. The US offers to help with the search, and the Chinese say no way. There's a lot of publicity around it. It's interesting because they're probably also looking for some of the spy gear, which the crew throughout. So they're looking for Wang, but they're also thinking, we wonder if we can recover some of the kit that got thrown out by the crew, although that's in

metal cases, which must be at the bottom of the South China seas by then, and hard to find. But after two weeks, they're going to give up on Wang. And on April the 14th, he's given, you know, they give up hope. He's declared a revolutionary martyr in a big ceremony at the great hall of the people. Chinese leader Zhang Zemin attends. And it's interesting because there's a lot of anger about it in China through the search. Because the story that's going around is he was killed by the Americans. It was an American plane which swerved and hit him.

And so he was killed by Shane Osborne and his crew. And there's this nationalist upswing in feeling in China. And so one of the questions I think they're trying to understand in Washington is, is the Chinese state fueling that nationalism, that anger? There is a fight, isn't there, in kind of inside Beijing over who will handle the negotiation? Is it going to be the military? or will it be the civilian ministry of foreign affairs? And I guess, you know, maybe it's a little cartoonish,

but you kind of think there's this, maybe this conflict inside the government over whether you use this incident to kind of stir up nationalist fervor or whether you want to, whether you want to dial it down. And there's no consensus right away. And imagine that's also a feature of these kind of incidents, isn't it? where the big, there's sort of, is it an opportunity to be used or is it, is it a crisis to be

diffused? Yeah. And it's interesting because even with that tension between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the People's Liberation Army, the military guys in China, it seems as if they're not on the same page. Because at one point, the US diplomats explain how it would be impossible for the US plane, which is so slow moving, to have veered into the Chinese fighter jet from the angle. at which it happened. And when they do this, the US diplomats can see the Chinese foreign

ministry guys look surprised because they've clearly been told by the military that it was definitely the Americans fault. So the negotiations are ongoing and that China is making these demands. The US has to apologize for the event, promise it won't happen again, pay compensation. The Americans are refusing to do this. And the only thing they're willing to do is pay the cost to the room and board for the crew stay in Hainan and the cost of dissembling it. But it's interesting because if you go back, there's some accounts from that wire article as well about how the CIA was watching the Chinese media to try and understand that point you made about are they dialing it up or not.

And there have been a couple of years earlier, the US in what is still a very odd incident, had mistakenly bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade during the war with Serbia, the bombing campaign against Serbia. been absolute outrage in China at that time. And people have posted messages about, let's go out and attack US embassies and consulates in China to get revenge. But this time, the CIA analysts can see that when people are expressing outrage about the Hainan incident, this new incident, the censors are taking those messages down. So that's a pretty good sign, isn't it? That what the intent is is to try and resolve this in some way.

It's probably worth stating if it's not blindly obvious that the situation that the Chinese state was in 25 years ago is very different for the one it finds itself in today. Because at that point in time, Shang Zemin wants to get China into the World Trade Organization, the WTO. That's not done yet. And the Chinese are hoping to host the 2008 Olympics. And I don't think had the location been confirmed as Beijing at that point? So there's some real incentive on the part of the Chinese leadership to just dial this thing down.

And the CIA analysts are saying to the White House, you look, don't antagonize them, right? Because if you get into an argument about who's at fault, it's going to go nowhere. And this thing can actually get settled. But I think this is the interesting thing is how do you settle this? Because the Chinese demand an apology, a public apology, the U.S. doesn't want to give it because Washington says, look, we have nothing to apologize for. You guys caused this incident. Your fighter jet caused this incident. And so what ends up happening, I think, is it's a very clever, essentially formulation of words in a statement, which I think is, it's known as the

letter of two sorries, which is, you know, I like to get a letter like this from you at some point, Gordon. Just to let you with the two sorries. A general apology. And it allows, importantly, it allows both sides to kind of interpret it and spin it however they want. Yeah, I think it's a really interesting example of how diplomacy can be very effective at resolving a crisis. You could see actually how the CIA analysis about what's going on in China can then support that diplomacy. But then the diplomacy is coming up with a form of words in which the U.S. writes a letter saying it was sorry for the death of the pilot and for the loss of the aircraft and sorry that China had not been able to approve the entry of the EP3 into Chinese airspace and had landed on their territory without permission. So what they're saying is we're sorry for what happened, but it's

not a formal apology or admission of responsibility saying we were at fault and it was our fault. And also they have the letter signed not by President Bush or by Colin Powell, but by the ambassador in Beijing, so also at a lower level. So it's just a clever, formulation in which Beijing can go around claiming, well, we got an apology from the Americans, while the US can say, well, it's really just an expression of regret about what had happened. So it's the, you know, it's classic diplomacy, isn't it? That's what the diplomats are for. Well, it allows both sides to save face, doesn't it? I mean, because you can, you can walk away and spin it however you want. And it effectively ends the crisis. The air crew come back home in a few days.

the now disassembled aircraft. I'm sure the Chinese just left all the sigant equipment inside, Gordon. I'm sure they returned all of it, all of it inventoried and sent back to the NSA. The aircraft comes home a few months later after the Chinese have exploited all of the comms. The crisis had lasted 10 days. Shane Osborne has awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, and President George W. Bush also writes to the widow of Wang Wei, the Chinese pilot. And what I think is, that's a very classy, classy move by the former president. Yeah. And it's interesting is the US decides it's not going to stand down the flight.

So they stop for a couple of months and then they start again. They still want to collect the intelligence. You're not going to stop. But they now have US fighter jets nearby. And they also say that Chinese are much more disciplined afterwards about approaching and getting too close. You raise the Snowden leaks point because it is interesting because we do get a sense of the damage from those Snowden leaks 10 years after the incident.

And they say, despite the best effort to the crew, there were some compromises in the way, for instance, the way US encrypted its communications. There were some details of how they processed communications, collected signals of PLA submarines. Some of the computers on board, their signals processing software was compromised. But actually the view overall, though, the kind of damage assessment is that it wasn't catastrophic damage. It's rated medium to low in severity of damage in terms of the compromise. So it could have been a lot worse. Is that a formal scale?

Yeah, I think there is. Yeah. So I guess it's not catastrophic. It's medium to low, which is still not great, but it could have been a lot worse. And, of course, the US definitely starts training people better on how to deal with. that kind of incident. I guess this brings us to the big question facing us today, which is, what if something like this happened in 2026? I mean, surely, Gordon, surely the Russians would never do such, would never provoke NATO jets

over the Baltic, right? And obviously the Chinese have, you know, everything's called in the South China Sea. So it seems like there's little prospect for this to happen, right? Yeah, unfortunately, unfortunately, this kind of stuff is still happening. It's interesting. I started looking into the incidents. If you take the South China Sea first, the US 2023 put out a public warning listing a load of incidents, which had just happened. So it said June 22, a Chinese J-16 fighter jet, assume that's twice as good as a J-8, cuts across the nose of an Australian, an Australian P8A Poseidon. aircraft that was operating in, once again, international airspace over the South China Sea.

The Chinese jet released surround of chaff, which is this material used to confuse radar, which then gets ingested into the Australian aircraft's engine. December 2022 and a Chinese Navy J-11 pilots, not quite as good as a J-16, flew 20 feet from the nose of the US Air Force RC-135, which had to manoeuvre a way to avoid a collision. May 2020, Chinese J16, performs what was described as an unnecessarily aggressive maneuver

during an intercept of another U.S. R.C. 135. The PRC pilot, the Chinese pilot, flew directly in front of the nose of the U.S. plane, forcing the U.S. aircraft to fly through its wake turbulence, U.S. officials said. That is exactly what Wang Wei was attempting to do before he clipped the B3. So the same kind of stuff is happening.

I think the interesting question is on that U.S.-China side, if there was an incident today, what do you think would be the consequences? If you had a similar incident in which two planes collide, Chinese pilot killed U.S. plane lands on China. One of the things that I found remarkable as we were getting the story ready is how few of these incidents actually lead to conflict. the risk is there, certainly, but there seems to be the dynamics of the crisis seem to lend themselves toward, you know, crisis management, conflict resolution, something that, and both sides walk away with ill will, of course, but there's like a desire to kind of, you know, bring the intensity level down and deescalate because, because this is all happening in this spy world of signals intelligence collection. And nobody wants that to erupt into open war. I could see an

incident like the 2001 spy plane crash kind of going in a similar direction, although you do have to wonder, you know, if the Chinese state would, I mean, would they hold, would they hold the hostages for longer? Would they try to extract the higher price? Because the relative power differential has closed in the past 25 years. They're more confident in some ways. Could they get more more than kind of an apology? Could they get concessions on something else? Yeah, it's interesting because Neil Seelock, the defense attach at the time, has been involved in contact with China ever since. I mean, he's been doing what's called Track 2, which is parallel diplomacy, non-official contacts. And one of the things he worries about, I think, is that there's less military to

military contact now than there was at that period that actually at that time you had quite a few officers who'd be trained on, who'd go to military schools or do exchanges on each side, whereas there's much less official contact now. And when we've seen some instance, you know, the hotlines, there was, famously those Chinese spy balloons flew over. over America. And there was, I mean, it wasn't a big crisis, but the kind of military to military contacts didn't seem to be working very well. People weren't picking up the hotlines, which is what you need. And then I think the issue is whether the nationalist further on each side would kick into gear and whether you'd have the US and the Chinese governments be willing to defuse

or whether they'd want to play to their domestic publics. I think that's where maybe you'd worry about it. Well, what about Europe? Because that's the other theater where this type of incident has been happening with a lot of regularity. And that's where I think perhaps some of the greater risks are, which is Russian jets, particularly flying into NATO airspace sometimes over the Baltics, skirting it, getting close, doing intercept.

I mean, I've been to a NATO base in Estonia where some of the Italian jets, actually, I saw it had gone up and had to fly alongside Russian jets, which were coming into or towards NATO airspace. And there'd been a couple of really worrying incidents. Just a few months ago, you had, just in May of this year, you had a UK spy plane flying close to Russia's eastern flank, So doing a bit like the EP3, skirting in international airspace, but close to Russia, and two

Russian warplanes repeatedly and dangerously, according to Britain's Ministry of Defense, intercept this unarmed RAF spy plane that's over the Black Sea. And, you know, a Russian SU35 fighter jet approaches this RAF, British rivet joint surveillance aircraft, gets close enough to trigger its emergency systems, disabling its autopilot. And an SU. 27 Russian jet carries out six passes in front of the RAF plane getting as close as six meters. I mean, that's, you know, 20 feet away. So it's not quite as close as Wang was, but pretty close. And there was one other incident, which I think was really significant. Back in 2022, a Russian pilot actually tried to shoot down a British RAF spy plane after believing he had permission to fire.

So the RF plane was doing it, which has a crew of about 30, so pretty similar to the EP3. And it was flying a surveillance mission over the Black Sea in international airspace when two Russian SU27 fighter jets appear. The communications from those fighter jets showed that one of the pilots thought he'd actually been given permission to target the British aircraft following an ambiguous command from a Russian ground station. Then it's not great. and the second Russian pilot doesn't think that

and he actually, you know, the two have an argument you know, after the first pilot fires his first missiles and he fires two missiles and one missile misses and the other one malfunctioned. So, I mean, that is, I mean, that's not an accident. That was nearly, well, it would have been an accident but, you know, a shootdown. You've got missiles fired at some of these spy planes.

So in a way it's the Baltics which and the Black Sea and the Russian flank, which I think almost is more worrying today, because you could imagine if that happens, if you get a shootdown, the way things are between Europe and Russia, that could escalate, I think, and turn nasty pretty quickly. Yeah, and maybe with so much of the tension over Ukraine kind of in the water, the, I think, historically reflexive desire to kind of settle these, you know, when accidents happened to settle them to negotiate maybe maybe isn't there. I do think there is I mean I went back and took a little

a look at some of these past incidents. I mean for example even in the midst of the Cuban missile crisis that you know there was a U-2 shoot-down that occurred and president Kennedy is thinking oh do I have to destroy surface-to-air missile sites you know in Cuba in retaliation for the shootdown and he even you know in the midst of that crisis decides to de-escalate. There's another interesting example of, you know, remember back in, I think it was 2015, when the Turks shot down a Russian fighter jet and tension spiked like crazy, but eventually it kind of goes into this tit-for-tat of sanctions, diplomatic freeze.

Eventually, it's resolved over time between Moscow and Ankara. So I think the pattern for a lot of these incidents is usually de-escalation. But I think that for, you know, from my end, the Russia dynamic today that we've been talking about, you know, around the Baltics, one of the concerns I would have is if, you know, the Russians almost deliberately provoke to start an incident that allows them to justify whatever, a move on the Baltics, on one of the Baltics, a slice of one of the, so it's almost like a. incident, a supposed accident or a provocation that then turns into an accident where you end up with, you know, potentially a shot down Russian aircraft could be exactly the kind of trigger if you're potent that you'd want to use for further provocations. Yeah, I think that's right.

I mean, these intercepts are inherently dangerous when they're going that close. So there is certainly a risk of accident, but you could also stage one to become a provocation for an incident. So I think it is possible something could happen in the South China seas again. There's a lot of naval activity there as well with boats from the Philippines and China getting close, but also this air activity over Europe. So I think that's why this story of Hainan is so interesting, because it shows what can go wrong, and it shows how difficult it is then to diffuse it.

And in this case, it was successful, and the letter of two sorries worked, but I'm not sure Putin would be writing or accepting the letter of two sorries. So the letter Yeah, I think if you look at his writings on Ukraine, he's not a man given to writing two sorries in a letter, much less one. So there won't be any,

there will be no sorries from Vladimir Putin. Well, Gordon, I think maybe that's the spot to end this, this fun two-parter we've done on the Hidon spy plane incident from 2001. As a reminder, if you haven't already, do go to the rest is classified.com. and join the Declassified Club, where you'll get early access to series, bonus episodes,

early access to live show tickets, a whole bunch of other goodies, a reminder that we do have a live show coming up in September. Gordon and I will be on stage, the South Bank Theater in London, will also be on stage with none other than the mooch, Anthony Scaramucci, who's going to attempt to, I think,

beat me in some. some kind of debate over America's role on the global stage. Gordon will be attempting to moderate that. Do check that out at the rest is classified.com. Yes, and of course, Declassified club members are getting a really interesting bonus this week, which is with Nigel Inxter, a former deputy chief of MI6, who's also a China specialist. We'll be talking about some of these issues to do with the U.S. and UK's relationship with China and how it's changed over the 25 years since Hainan. So if you're not a member, do sign up because it's a really interesting interview, but otherwise, we'll see you next time. We'll see you next time.

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