The Team House - Deep Dive Into Chinese (CCP) Espionage w/ Matt Brazil | EYES ON | Ep. 12

Episode Date: March 14, 2024

Matt Brazil is a Senior Analyst at BluePath Labs and a Senior Fellow at The Jamestown Foundation. He pursued Chinese studies as an undergraduate at UC Berkeley, as an Army officer with tours in Korea and NSA, and as a graduate student at Harvard in their Regional Studies East Asia program. After a stint as the China specialist for the Commerce Department’s Office of Export Enforcement, he was assigned as a Commercial Officer with the US Embassy, Beijing, where he both promoted and controlled US high technology exports to China. Afterward, Matt spent 20 years as a security professional, performing investigations in China for a chip manufacturer, and leading the development of a security organization in China for an American specialty chemicals firm. His PhD dissertation at the University of Sydney (2013) described the place in the Chinese Communist Party of their intelligence organs. That and further research led to his contribution as the coauthor of Chinese Communist Espionage, An Intelligence Primer (2019). Matt is also the author of the China chapter in the Handbook of Asian Intelligence Cultures (2022). His next book concerns Beijing’s contemporary worldwide espionage and influence offensive.Find Matt here:https://www.mattbrazil.net/https://jamestown.org/analyst/matthew-brazil/https://twitter.com/matthew_brazil?lang=enBuy his book here:https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B0848V4X6X?ingress=0&visitId=7e133443-68a7-4f9c-a0f2-80e7e734a913------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Support the show here:https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseFind Andy here:Twitterhttps://twitter.com/i/flow/login?redirect_after_login=%2Fandymilburn8LinkedInhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewmilburn2023Substackhttps://amilburn.substack.com/Andy's bookhttps://www.amazon.com/When-Tempest-Gathers-Mogadishu-Operations/dp/1526750554#china #espionageBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Hey guys, it's Jack. I just wanted to talk to you today about a way that you can help support the podcast if you're not already. We would really appreciate it if you guys went and reviewed us on Apple or Spotify. Those reviews really help people find the podcast and help it get recognized. And, you know, if you've been enjoying the show, we really appreciate your support. Another thing that you can do to support the channel is to become a Patreon member. So we have Patreon memberships that start at just $5 a month. And when you sign up, you get access to all of our episodes ad-free. That's the big bonus for that.

I mean, we also do some Patreon bonus episodes for our subscribers. But this is the biggest and best way that you can support the Teamhouse channel and podcast if you'd like to. And we really appreciate that. So go and check us out at patreon.com slash the team house. Hello, everyone. And welcome to another episode of MyZon. before we go introducing ourselves, I'm Andy Milman, by the way, but before we go on to introduce my other August co-hosts, I want to reveal today's guest, Matt Brazil, who is, bottom line

is if there is anything to know about China, then Matt doesn't know, I would be very surprised. How's that for a mini intro and here's why? Okay, Matt's throughout his career has been a senior analyst with a focus on China right now. He's with Blue Path Labs. He's also a senior fellow at the Jamestown Foundation. He did China Studies as an undergraduate way back in UC Berkeley. Matt, that wasn't in the 60s, though, was it? But still not known as necessarily as being a staunch pillar of the establishment.

and so good on you. But that's UC Berkeley, not Matt. Matt went on to be a staunch pillar of the establishment. An army officer, intelligence officer served tours in Korea as well as with the NSA. And that is it. Yeah. So, you know, in the wake of that, Jason and Dee, please introduce yourself. Hey, everybody.

I'm Jason Lyons. I'm a former Marine, former CIA officer. now working with these skellywags, if that's the term. Over to you, Dee. Hey, I'm the producer of the team house and I's on. I'm the guy who puts it all together, semi puts it all together. And I'm just excited about this conversation today. Matt, so to kick this off, and just for the sake of our audience, Matt, feel free to contradict me here.

But, you know, Matt's specialization is an espionage, counter espionage. or rather he writes about that. Matt, please elaborate on that and a little bit about your, I didn't cover your written works and you have an upcoming book, I believe, too, right? Yeah, very true. So I'm the co-author of Chinese Communist Espionage and Intelligence Primer, co-author with Peter Mattis, who is a former CIA counterintelligence analyst, and is now the president of the James Town Foundation. And so there is a book coming up. I'm trying to finish it up now.

I've read some juicy excerpts, by the way. And hopefully we're getting into those. No, I mean, it's a serious book. So the first one was intended for law enforcement and intelligence professionals as a handbook as a reference work. This next one is intended for the general public to try to explain in normal everyday terms what's going on with the Chinese security apparatus.

Specifically how they go about recruiting spies in the West. And then I think you uncovered some very key differences between what they do and what we do. and I'd love to hear your thoughts about, you know, effectiveness. Sure, yeah. Would you like me to just launch right into it? Launch right in. Yep, stream of consciousness.

That's what we say. Yeah, so the acronym Mice, money ideology, compromise ego is often used to describe how foreign intelligence services go after people. And in the Chinese case, the documented cases that we can read on the DOJ, the Department of Justice website, and by the way, DOJ.gov is like a great resource for this kind of thing because the Americans are, to my knowledge, are the only country that publishes in detail what happened in espionage cases. And you read the indictments. and there's an awful lot of detail there for the espionage nerd man i got a quick question for you that

had us even jason stumped the other day so you know the the government doj is very open in some cases about most cases about naming the country for which the alleged spy was spying uh but in some cases it doesn't now what what do you what what reasons might that be for for not outing a foreign government. If we are prosecuting someone for working for them. Yeah, I think it has to do, this is only speculation on my part, but I think it has to do with the content of the case.

In previous times, the U.S. was reticent to name China in cases like this because they didn't want to upset bilateral relations. There was a lot at stake not only on the commercial side, but also before 1989 and a little bit afterwards, there was a lot of intelligence cooperation to spy on the Soviet Union. After the Nixon visit, the U.S. began providing intelligence to China about the Soviet Union in a trade relationship. And then after 1979, when the U.S. and China established formal diplomatic relations, the Chinese side agreed to set up a SIG-T and Elant station in the Xinjiang U.S. U.S.U.R. Autonomous region to spy on Soviet missile tests. So that kind of thing was considered, of course, by the Americans to be of high value. Nowadays, I think it probably has to do with the details of the case and how people who are in the press or more importantly in foreign intelligence services might be able to dig into sources and methods on the U.S. side. Okay. Yeah. I understood. Sorry, go ahead with your stream of consciousness.

Okay, so you asked earlier about how the Chinese work in the United States and in other countries. And by the way, they are all over the place. I like to call it their worldwide espionage and influence offensive nowadays, which began to really expand under Xi Jinping when he came to power in 2012. But as I was saying, we like to talk about mice, money, ideology, compromise, ego. On the Chinese side, they seem to, according to the DOJ indictments, they seem to put a stress on money as the preferred method, which tracks with Marxist ideology, which is very important on their side. Because if there's one thing that the Ministry of State Security is known for, it's as a haven of true believers in, Marxism. So the idea that capitalist nations are on the decline, that people are motivated

entirely by money, which seems to be kind of on the mark, if you ask you. Someone sold out that, was it, $42,000? And then previously it was like a $12,000 case in the last few weeks, right? Both Navy guys, that's almost irrelevant. That's, you know, but yeah, not a lot of money. Small beer as far as the actual information. A lot of money to betray your country. I mean, that's very little money to betray your country, right? I mean, it's unbelievable. Yeah, and in one of the cases, these were two Chinese Americans, both of which I think had been born in China.

And in one case, the mother of the sailor was encouraging him to go ahead and remember where he's from, et cetera, et cetera. And she was in the States while doing this, of course, right? Yes. Yes. And this is something, you know, I have to say, first of all, that a very small percentage, I'm sure it's under 1% of Chinese people would really be subject to that kind of influence and pressure. That is ethnic Chinese people in the United States. And it's very important for us to keep ethnic Chinese people on side with the United States.

because not only are they American citizens or permanent residents who just want to settle down here, work, and be ignored by the Chinese government, but they're a very valuable resource. As a matter of fact, I've heard people, I've lived in China for eight years, and during that time, I was interested in this topic. and for four of the years I was completing my doctoral dissertation on this topic. And the Chinese side knew it and they were actually cooperating with me and giving me, feeding me their side of the story, introducing me to a revolutionary hero, that sort of thing. But even then, people were quietly telling me, you know, all we really want to do is live our lives and try to stay out of the crosshairs of state security and public security. And this is one of the strengths that the Americans have in China.

But that's, of course, the other side of the coin. Well, what are the, we're particularly interested, of course, in some of the weaknesses that the Chinese, and we generically use the term MSS, right, MSS. but is it the MSS or is it a subdivision and what sort of things you mentioned that kind of all over the place but it seems as though once they hit peter on one particular methodology they'll take that handler and he'll use it again maybe in a different country is that that on target i know i'm throwing a couple questions you at once but just yeah if you don't mind talking about their methodology really

Sure. So in the book published a year and a half ago, spies and lies, that's spies and lies by Alex Jawski and Australian scholar, he gave some really interesting cases of state security officers, some very senior engaged in influence operations that is trying to, convince politicians in Australia and others to support Chinese foreign policy objectives. And there's a history behind that, going back to the revolution of intelligence officers engaged in influence operations sort of on the side. there are some scholars who criticize what Jawski wrote saying that he's conflating the two, espionage and influence. But I think the jury is out on that particular question. So that's one methodology of interest where we have intelligence officers or agents engaged in influence operations. And a recent example here in the San Francisco Bay Area. is a woman named Fong Fong, and that is Christine Fong, F-A-N-G,

who was being run by a state security officer out of the Chinese consulate in San Francisco. She was a student at Cal State East Bay in Hayward, and she was engaged in influence operations, including some honey operations where she had had relationships with some American politicians, which is outlined in a recent book by somebody whose name all of a sudden, Bethany Allen Abrahamian. Her recent book outlines that in detail. She has probably published the best account, Bethany, Alan,

Evahimian, of Fong Fung's operations. That was her name Fung Fung. Okay, that's that is likely to be a movie. No, I'm just wondering, because Jack and Jason always tell us this rather lame story

of a honeypot who, they suspect, who worked for a Chinese foreign service place and pursued them relentlessly. But my point is it's kind of this, urban myth almost, isn't it? A lot of people think they're being pursued. But it is something that the Chinese, you know, it's among their many methods of getting people, of coercing people

into giving up information, right? It is. And Christine Fong's modus operandi, not to get stuck on her, but her modus operandi was to get to know and be friendly with not only, for sexual entrapment, but with politicians whom she judged were up and coming, or maybe that the San Francisco consulate judged were up and coming, people who were on local board of supervisors, etc. But the money aspect has certainly been very prominent in these different cases. And it's, it probably makes up a very large percentage of, of how these cases are, are pursued. So Matt, let me ask, stepping back a little bit and to kind of dispel the boogeyman concept is, I'm going to venture to the guess that the answer is no,

but is the average person who gets on a plane in Beijing flies to the U.S., you know, know they're moving here, not just business. They're going to live here. Are they approached beforehand normally and told, hey, we're going to be knocking on your door to do some, you know, some work for us? Or is it someone who has specific access to, say, a judge or politicians? So what I'm basically, what I'm asking is, is every Chinese that comes to this country told that they're expected to do this?

or is it just a few? I suspect it's just a few, but that's just my hypothesis. There's a lot of controversy over this. There are cases that have been documented where a local state security bureau will learn that because people have to apply for a passport through the Ministry of Public Security, that's the National Police and MPS,

and MPS and MSS trade information. They have databases that they share, that they can both mutually take a look at. And so when somebody is leaving China to go to the United States and they're going to study physics at MIT, then there's a high risk that they will be approached and asked not to get in contact with a state security. officer in Chicago or anything like that necessarily. But when you come home for Chinese New Year, you're expected to come and see us and tell us what's going on with the contacts you're making and such. But I think, again, this is controversial. My friend Nicholas F. DiMiata's, for example, who studies this stuff. He's put together a compendium of cases that is now up to about 900.

where he is analyzing how they were done. And he's written a book, which I think is called Chinese espionage operations and tactics, which you can find on Amazon. So in his opinion, nearly a very large percentage of people are approached. In my opinion, the Chinese Communist Party has always considered their society to be full of enemies. And I think this probably, this probably causes them to be more careful about whom they approach. But they do operate. I think one indication that they're selective is the case that came out three or four years ago now,

of Xu Yanjun, the state security officer who was arrested in Belgium after being lured into a trap by the FBI and the Belgian authorities. And he was extradited to the United States, put on trial, and convicted and sentenced to 20 years in prison. A very interesting case. But one of the people who was in his network was a young man named Ji Chao Chun. and G. Chowtun had emigrated to the United States. Ostensibly, he was a graduate student in Chicago, and he had joined the U.S. Army under a program that the U.S. Army has to bring in people with hard languages, even if they're not citizens. And so he raised his right hand and swore to defend the Constitution of the United States and all that jazz, just like the rest of us. But he was an agent in the network of Shrian Jun, and his job was to spot Chinese people in the Chicago area who were graduate students and who were engaged in STEM science and technology engineering occupations that might be of interest to Chinese military development.

So that would indicate that certainly they ain't going after everybody as they leave. probably being selective. But again, you know, I think that my idea, even Nick's ideas about this, or at the level of hypothesis. We're not at the theory level quite yet. Well, it makes sense, doesn't it? I mean, why would they ignore this incredible potential asset? And when you look at the way they think about everything else from, you know, from integrating a market economy with the Chinese communist party. to how they controlled COVID. It's all kind of done in a very, kind of the same way, isn't it?

And they mirror image, too. You know, they figure, hey, look at what we're doing. You know, we're going after, we're using everybody we possibly can. We're going after all these different people and so on. The CIA must be doing the same thing. And this is why we're going around with our anti-spy campaigns and warning children to watch out what their parents are doing and stuff like that, crazy stuff.

If only we were, yeah, if only we were that efficient. Hey, guys, it's Jack. I just wanted to talk to you today about a way that you can help support the podcast if you're not already. We would really appreciate it if you guys went and reviewed us on Apple or Spotify. Those reviews really help people find the podcast and help it get recognized. And, you know, if you've been enjoying the show, we really appreciate your support. Another thing that you can do to support the channel is to become a Patreon member. So we have Patreon memberships that start at just $5 a month.

And when you sign up, you get access to all of our episodes ad free. That's the big bonus for that. I mean, we also do some Patreon bonus episodes for our subscribers. But this is the biggest and best way that you can support the Teamhouse channel and podcast if you'd like to. And we really appreciate that. So go in and check us out at patreon.com slash the team house. So I'm intrigued too about, because you talk about, you know, the recruitment of their own people going overseas. And you mentioned, and this is, you know, this is being a topic that's recurring in the, certainly in the last two years, but recruiting ethnic Chinese of dual national, dual national or who have joined the military.

I'm not dual national, no, they would, but who are, yeah, in some cases, join. national, in some cases, first generation immigrants, in some cases pending citizenship. But they also, of course, target people with no such connections. And you, you know, you mentioned that with a different, kind of different approach. I thought it was very interesting. When we think of approaches, we think of kind of a more assertive bump, you know, perhaps not in a dark alley, but in a bar or this that but i was just looking at uh what it was it was it was at kevin mallory i was just uh you know when i was doing some background reading on for this kevin mallory is a CIA you know agency guy chinese turned him um and they made him he was he was contacted on lincoln the guy

the guy who contacted him was very obvious from his profile that he was you know he was had something to do or background in chinese intelligence um that's, you know, at least what the FBI reported. That's how the initial bump took place, you know. And then they hooked him with a $25,000 payment in Shanghai. And he was, you know, he was done. Yeah, you know, I would like to point out to everybody that LinkedIn, when you get an in-mail from somebody,

if you look for those three dots on the top right hand of the mail, you click on it. You have an option to report and block somebody. And that should always be done when you get these in. And I get them every day. I bet you do. Yeah, I'm sure. Really, it's really kind of goofy the way they're doing it.

And I hope they continue to be goofy about, you know, coming up, these pictures that show a woman from her nose down, you know, in the photograph. That's right. Your profile is so interesting. I would like to get to know you. I have the background in Bitcoin. Yeah, it's just ridiculous. And I hope they stick to that approach because it's so obvious and ridiculous.

But they won't. You know, they, if there's one thing that, that I think they do. It's learned from experience. And these approaches will probably improve over time. And of course, artificial intelligence will change everything quite certainly.

Just give it a few months, a few years. Do you have any question? Sorry? Yeah, I was asking D if he had anything. Nothing specific. I mean, more of a broader point, like, what's the, MSS's goal. Is it IP mostly? Is it how the U.S. goes about it? Like protecting our interests

across the globe and stuff like that? Like what's their main aim, I guess? Yeah, they used to go after a lot of different things. In 2017, 2018, there was a reorganization. And without getting too political sciencey about it. It seems to have been an effort to get MSS and the military to define their turf and go after what they're supposed to go after. That may or may not be working well. It's kind of hard to say. But now we have four different bodies doing this kind of work. We have state security, which is going after, it seems, both military and civilian technology and, of course, political intelligence and possibly probably not economic intelligence because that's all pretty much open source, the United States, unlike China. And then you have the Joint Intelligence Bureau, which used to be known as the second department of the PLA, and the Joint Intelligence Bureau of the People's Liberation Army goes after military technology.

And their, or at least in theory they do, their actual activities are a little bit unclear so far. And then you have the PLA strategic support force, which is like their NSA. So they do signal intelligence. They also do web-based hacking and other type of intelligence, too. But you know, the State Security, Administrative State Security, and the Ministry of Public Security, according to recent revelations out of a hacking contractor from Shanghai called called Aisun. They're doing hacking too overseas, and they're going after dissidents, political enemies overseas,

and they're going after political secrets in countries all over the world, the usual sort of regular spy stuff, but they're employing these hacking firms at the state security Bureau level in the provinces to go after these secrets. And sometimes it's because in the Xinjiang Uyghur autonomous region, for example, they're worried about dissidents overseas who are either training to be terrorists in their minds or who are talking too much about what's going on in Xinjiang. And so they pressure relatives and then they find out names of people and then they go after them using hacking.

And then there's the United Front Work Department, which is a department of the party, a major department of the Chinese Communist Party. And they're the influence peddlers. Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? So the Russian, in the sense that Russian cyber activity, both, you know, cyber in the sense of OCO, offensive cyber operations turning ones to zeros, that's my, you know, grant description of this. this, but also disinformation using cyber as a domain. And the Russians get a lot of publicity about this, but I'm intrigued when you talk about the Chinese, because when we talk about Chinese espionage, and this is anecdotal, you know, I'm told by friends in the FBI that 90% of the cases they're handling are Chinese and that

they are way more, you know, they regard China as a threat exponentially more dangerous than Russia or Iran. And yet, again, we just keep hearing about Russia on the side of peace. Do you think we should also be equally, it sounds kind of a dumb question, but more worried about China? There are only dumb answers. And I'm good at them. But, yeah, I would agree with what your friends at the Bureau are saying. if only because of the developing sophistication and the quantity,

the sheer quantity of operations that are going on. And the way they're doing it is through these hacking contractors like Isome, a Shanghai-based company that's been around for about 10 years, that has offices in four other Chinese cities. And the data dump that was put on GitHub of their stuff, probably by an insider of some sort, or who was being run by a competitor, it seems, indicates that they were going all over the place,

they were running hacking jobs in India, Malaysia, Japan, Korea, Indonesia, Indonesia, Indonesia, the UK, and other places that are not immediately coming to mind. And it also indicates that they weren't being paid all that much. That typical, unfortunately, to a Chinese company that the management, was making all the money and the worker bees were not making very much money and were miserable and being overworked. There's a counterintelligence opportunity. One would think.

Yes. But one of the axioms of this problem is that running espionage in China has always been difficult. going back to the revolution, it was hard for the nationalist to run espionage in the red areas because they were so locked down. And indeed, China is... And that's with language, same language, same cultural affiliation, same language and culture. Yeah, both Han Chinese, yeah. Yeah, so it's the counterespionage counterintelligence environment there,

is the hardest of targets. And so finding somebody to approach has, it seems like a lot of it's being done over the web, just like they're doing a lot of stuff over the web against us. The counterpoint seems to be going on as well. Great, yeah, very interesting. Sorry, go ahead, Jason. No, sorry, given the, it seems. that the Chinese intelligence focuses on, as you said, tech, you know, IT, those sorts of things,

probably political as well. And seeing publicly at least that it seems like Iran is not above rendering someone who they consider a threat, assassinations, the same with the Russians as well. I don't see, I personally don't seem to see that in the Chinese. Am I wrong in that? Are they above, you know, indicting someone or rendering someone that they see as an issue? I have not, I've asked that question about assassinations to a number of my contacts.

And so far I'm not getting any positive responses. So it does not seem that way. And that's related to another problem that I'll get into after finishing answering your point. But when it comes to renditions, in the countries along China's periphery, the land border countries, specifically Laos and Thailand, there have been kidnappings of dissidents taken back to China to face trial. And this also includes people who, in Hong Kong before the recent crackdown made Hong Kong basically totally a mainland city now, almost anyway, much more of a mainland city than it used to be, of people being just abducted and taken back to China. And they do this, it seems, when it's operationally convenient to get somebody across a land border and back into China. So that's why it allows Thailand, Hong Kong, Macau, going back decades, Macau. It used to be, by the way, before 1997 and the 1999 handover of Hong Kong and Macau, respectively,

that people with security clearances could travel, Americans, could travel to Hong Kong, no problem, but not to Macau. To gamble. Ha ha. Yeah, so in countries that are more far afield, the United States and in Europe and other places, the emphasis seems to be there, there are people who, who come over here from state security and try to convince somebody to go back to China to face trial. Because if you don't, we've got your family.

And indeed, public security people have actually told me that somebody, a Chinese person living overseas is like a kite. We have the string here on the ground. They can fly around all they want, but we have the string, and that string is. their family. Wow. Thank you. Appreciate that. That's a powerful analogy.

Yeah. Definitely is. Cool. But this sort of thing goes back, you know, it's got a long history. During the revolution, the same sort of ideas were in play, where the, were espionage and influence operations were commingled at times, where families were used as pressure, where money was used to recruit people to work for the revolution, but also during that time, it was a very different time. Ideology was and appeals to patriotism and appeals to fight against Japan during that long period of

Japanese occupation and exploitation of China and foreign exploitation of China were used to appeal to people to spy for the communist cause. And they were extremely successful during that time. And the efforts of Chinese communist intelligence during the revolution were very key to the victory. And so from that, they learned that and from lessons from before that, that espionage was a core business of the party. During those times, intelligence operations had a seat at the table of this party central committee that was at the same table, if not equal, to the propaganda and military and organization departments, which are the three. key departments of the party. Now the nomenclature is a little bit different because it's all been moved over to the government side rather than on the party side.

It's still important. But interestingly, the party doesn't like to admit that they do foreign intelligence operations at all. They will talk about doing stuff in time. Taiwan, certainly, and Taiwan is, along with the United States, those two are the main enemies, where most of the attention, I have to say, is focused and historically has been focused on both Taiwan and the U.S. But, you know, they don't do spy trades at all, in spite of the fact that the U.S. has at least one of their officers in a federal penitentiary. only one right now used to be two there used to be Chi mock

who's they were smart enough to use diplomats as their case handlers or just smart not to get caught yeah that's true well you know the the ones that were caught the really prominent ones were Larry Wu Tai Chin from 1984

85 who who was a long-term non-official cover officer. He was actually an officer of Chinese intelligence. And he was not a traitor. He was infiltrated into the U.S. by the Chinese services. And so the U.S. begrudgingly acknowledges that, you know, when you talk to people about that. case. But they let him, they did not acknowledge him. They did not try to trade him. They let him

kill himself in jail after he was sentenced or before he was sentenced after he was convicted. And then there's Chi Mok, who was also a military intelligence officer who went first to Hong Kong and then emigrated to the United States and set up himself as an employee of a, of a, Navy systems contractor called Power Paragon, and he was engaged in sending export-controlled technology relevant to naval operations, including quiet propulsion systems to China for 20 years until he was caught, and I think it was 2006 or 2005. There was a really good article. and the New Yorker that came out about a year and a half ago that outlined that case in retrospect. But they let Chimak rot in prison and die there at the age of 82 or 83.

In October of 2022, he passed away at Lompoc Federal Penitentiary. So it's really, it's a very odd sort of thing that they, It's one way, one way loyalty. Sorry. It's one way loyalty, right? Loyalty to the party. The party, and you get caught, the party is not going to help you out. You're on your own.

If you were caught, the secretary will not, will disavow knowledge of your actions. Good luck, Jim. Or Joe. Matt, as we are, you know, so just rounding up, oh, guys, before I do, anything more for Matt, I had a question that's. No, you answer. I was actually going to ask about Taiwan, but I guess a branch off of that would be, given the tensions between the two,

yeah. So would anyone, I'm assuming that they're already Chinese intelligence working on Taiwan, you know, on Taiwan, but given the tensions, are those coming into Taiwan from the mainland automatically suspect?

And does the Taiwan have the intelligence apparatus the numbers to be able to keep up with that? It's a tough problem. So when I was in Taiwan last April doing reporting for this upcoming book, you know, usually as a former commercial officer, I'm able to approach a U.S. diplomatic post and talk to the RSO, the regional security office, and certainly talk to the commercial section and ask some questions about the local scene and all that.

But not in Taiwan. They did not want to speak to me. And I understand why. You know, I understand why. The relationship between the U.S. and Taiwan right now and the military assistance, which is very well documented, by the way, if you've ever heard of a guy named Wendell Minnick, M-I-N-N-I-C-K, you can find him on the web. Wendell, I like to call him. I tell him, Wendell, you're the purveyor of doom. I'm going to look him out now. Yeah, you should definitely look him up. He just published a really interesting summary of how China has locked down the South China Sea with Elynt and other

capabilities. Very detailed and very interesting. But When I was in Taiwan, AIT wouldn't touch me, even though I'm personal friends with one of their former senior officers who tried to get me in to talk with them. But former and current Taiwan intelligence and military officials did talk to me. And their outlook was not rosy. They talked about how their mainland organization is set up in Taiwan, for example, to, introduce Taiwan men to mainland women. There are organizations that are Buddhist-based organizations that go back and forth between the two parts of Greater China there.

And also one of the things that was said to me by more than one person is that they're not dumb enough to use electronic means of communication to do their reporting back to Beijing. They use couriers. And that's really interesting because it underlines the uneven nature of state security operations, where you have some really sophisticated officers who are language capable and know what they're doing and follow careful tradecraft. And you have others like Sri and Jun, the state security bureau officer who was arrested and Belgium, who brought his cell phone with him that was full of all this information. And the FBI got a hold of it. And that's why we know all about him because of what was in his cell phone that he was carrying. Like this is like we tell him, we're going to try to don't take your cell phone for God's sake. Don't take your laptop.

It's going to be compromised as soon as you check into your hotel or as soon as you get off the plane. But he did that. So very uneven. But in Taiwan, they seem to have a tighter operating. where they don't do dumb things and they use better trained people. That's just a hypothesis. Thank you. So Matt, kind of had a concluding question.

And it's quite a broad one. And basically it comes to this. You know, all of these efforts are cases of China, you know, making sense of the world for its own gain. And yet, you know, we talked a little bit about Li Ming and Fu Fu, you know, the appearances on the rather amateur approaches that we see on LinkedIn. But this all brings to mind, I think, a concern. I'd be interested to hear where your thoughts are.

So we have on one hand now with the internet combined with AI, the potential for Chinese type approaches to be successful, just to just increase exponentially, right? I mean, especially with integration of AI, you can see potential for, you know, for coercion for blackmail. On the other hand, as we see Xi's party, his administration, become increasingly isolated, right? I mean, so they're making all these efforts to learn about the world, but culturally, arguably, they're learning, they're understanding less and less.

And you're going to get a new generation, kind of the wolf generation, right, of, of spies who've grown up in this very kind of muscular vision of China, aggressive China, but not necessarily one, but arguably one that understands the Western world less. So you see this divergence and on issues like Taiwan that that kind of lack of understanding, but that aggression, aggressive desire to get ahead and learn more is concerning. I'm not asking for a solution. I'm just saying that, you know, that to me is the real problem here. It's not that China or the United States are going to be irrational enough to go to war. It's as that understanding diverges more and more. And as China gets increasingly kind of xenophobic,

aggressive, you know, cracks in the facade, this kind of increasing existential fear of enemies, the potential for a misstep that causes escalation grows. I think one of the main problems is that Xi Jinping, according to people who know more about Chinese politics, elite politics than I do, seems to be people like David Shambaw, for example, the scholar from George Washington University, who's now out here at Hoover and others, seem to have concluded, and they have a lot of contact with people on the Chinese side, seem to have concluded that Xi Jinping has surrounded himself with yes men, and that his view of the United States is one of disrespect and huge.

So that's certainly a problem. Although it doesn't seem like he is about to just go to war with the U.S. over Taiwan in the near future. There are too many disadvantages. There are too many problems that could result. It seems like we're kind of in a space in between the two. possibilities when it comes of that. I think that China no longer feels that time is on their side, nor do they really feel overly threatened by the current situation to the point,

like in 1989, when they felt that the party was in danger, they decided against the instincts of everybody in the West who thought that China would never shoot itself in the foot by cracking down. And so to many people in the West, the crackdown on June 4th, 1989 was a big surprise. It wasn't much of a surprise to people who knew that the party was always interested in maintaining its power and was always felt threatened and still today feels threatened by even the slightest organizing against it. So we're in between those two poles where China feels threatened enough to do something drastic or feels that time is on its side. And that's the dangerous part of that.

So remind me if I'm answering your question. Yeah. Yeah. You are and I realize my question kind of answers itself as we talk through. this. Yes, absolutely. There's reason to concern. I know that's, I said that was my last question, but you brought up a blightly Tiananmen Square. My brother and Laura was actually arrested there. He was a

correspondent. In any case, the total, total divergence here, but how many people were killed in Tiananmen Square? Because I know there's the true number of, well, we in the West probably don't know the real numbers. And I only ask that question, not at a prurient interest, but it was indeed.

I mean, it was, yes, it wasn't the cultural revolution, but it was a tectonic event, right, in Chinese society. Yes. Yeah, it was. Where the state proved to everybody who was paying any attention that if you oppose us, you're dead meat. Yeah, you know, in the aftermath, the embassy sent people around, I heard these stories, because I arrived in 1991 as a commercial officer. So I heard these stories about how embassy officers went around to hospitals looking for dead Americans, but while they were doing that, they were also counting the dead.

And the official number that the U.S. came up with was relatively low, as I recall, but I don't recall. call the number. The number that I actually trust was in a book by my friend Jan Wong, W-O-N-G-J-A-N, who was the Toronto Globe and Mail correspondent in Beijing at that time and who I met when I moved there. and she cited the Chinese Red Cross figure that was initially issued of 3,000 dead, which they later retracted. And her reporting indicated that that was the most reliable number. Yeah, a phenomenal amount when you think a relatively short period of time that the actual shooting took, you know, the shooting took place. I bet he gives you some indication. Yeah, well, civilians came out onto the streets because they were mortified and outraged at what was going on.

And they were mowed down with automatic weapons. A very difficult situation. Same understatement. Just to close out quickly, like, how does the U.S. respond? What do we do to, like, counter what China is trying to do to us? Great question. Well, we have a problem. There's a real imbalance between China and the U.S.

when it comes to one understanding the other. In China, English is available and often required as a subject beginning in the fourth grade, primary four. in the United States, people typically begin studying Chinese if they're interested in that topic at the age of 18. I got to jump on that at the age of 17. But it was too late, in my opinion, to begin learning the language, which I've struggled with for decades. And I can use, but I'm only of average competence when it comes to learning languages. I think what we need to do not only language, but also area studies, we need to redouble our efforts there. It's possible nowadays to get a scholarship to study the Chinese language and major in East Asian studies or Russian studies, etc.

But the amount of money that's pledged to that effort should probably be increased. we should probably have more programs at the high school and younger levels to study the language. And one place to look for this as a model is DOD and the Department of State. So when they identify somebody to work on China or Russia or Saudi Arabia, the Arab world or whatever, somebody who's already cleared, already professionally trained, they send them off for one or two years for intensive language study. And then they send them to a graduate school for a year to do an area studies degree. So that's a three-year investment. And then we pass them over for promotion, Matt. Maybe we do, yeah. But the point is that

is that the FBI doesn't do that. They rely on linguists who are not field agents, and therefore you have field agents who do not speak the language, but they are required to go out and recruit sources of information in the community. And there's some. I've met one in particular who went to Taiwan, was really interested in China, got the language. married a local gal, came back, and he was recruited by the FBI, and immediately he was put on organized crime. But eventually, he was put onto counterintelligence and foreign counterintelligence squad and did great things.

But he was an exception. Yeah. I mean, you think that I'm sure it's happening that the FBI would, make a concerted recruiting drive. Now they are. They're trying to recruit people who already have the language, and that's great. But I really think that they have other law enforcement. We have other law enforcement out there too.

We have the Commerce Department, the Labor Department, etc., the Department of Energy. As you point out, it's more than the language in particular, right? As you point out, it's a cultural understanding. it's an understanding of what factors are at play for people to do certain things. I mean, the problem is that once we start going through U.S. education system, which I never did, by the way, but once people do, then they become, it's hard for them then to imagine.

I didn't word that very well, but it's a whole problem with human. You can learn the language, but it's just, even if you learn it picture perfect, pronunciation, and speak it like a native, that's only part of the puzzle. I think that's correct. And because we are such a culturally powerful nation and economically powerful nation, Americans do not feel, in general, do not feel the same compulsion to learn about foreign countries that foreign countries learn. People in foreign countries are compelled to learn about the United States.

That's true. But I think there's something to be said about like, you know, second generation kids where, you know, they do get targeted probably because they have family in China still, but there's got to be someone. in that generation where they'll be our biggest asset in terms of working at the FBI, working at the CIA. Yeah.

Fear has to be overcome. That's that's exactly. Yeah, understanding that fear and then overcoming it and being able to balance aspects of American life culture against that. Along with that, too, I think we also need to tap into working, which I've done, working with local law enforcement and not just local law enforcement, but also ethnic law enforcement officers. One, you know, Chinese American,

Iranian American, whatever it is, because they're the ones who are literally on the street. And they're the ones who are not going to stick out like a sore thumb. If you send that FBI agent into that neighborhood where he or she is not known, you have that local law enforcement. It's like, oh, that's, you know, officer X or Y. You know, I see them patrolling every day. We need to start using those folks a little bit better as well.

Yeah, that's fair point. Great. It's always, you know, we always try and end these episodes on a little bit of a constructive, positive point. So that was brilliant. Right. Matt, the whole conversation. Yeah, well, I'm sorry we went over, but we went over because this is, you know, we've got you. I mean, this is a nugget that we're going to, I'm not going to be able to finish this metaphor,

but clean all the information from it. Anyway, thank you so much. Matt, please plug your book when it's coming out. Any other previous works you've done, feel free. The floor is yours. Okay, well, please take a look. If you're interested in this kind of thing, my website is mat, Brazil.net, M-A-B-R-A-Z-I-L.net, where I try to post as much as I can.

I have a newsletter. If you go to the website that I just named, you can sign up for the newsletter. And I also write for the Jamestown China Brief. There's stuff available there, jamestown.org, as well as SpyTalk,spytock.com. CO, which is an interesting little online newsletter run by a veteran journalist named Jeff Stein. Yeah, we've had Jeff on the team house before.

Oh, have you? Yeah, very good. Yeah, so I do my best to cover China angles for his audience. And it's also good to just try to do ordinary web searches that will bring you to a lot of this stuff. but the one thing I would caution everybody when they look at Wikipedia. Wikipedia can be very useful, but you should always check out the footnotes

because quite often the footnotes lead to absolutely nowhere. As many frustrated thesis writer finds. And I'll put all of Matt's links in the description and the show notes, so you guys can just go down there and click it and find your way to Matthew and his work. Thank you very much. You've all been very kind. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Awesome. So everyone, I don't know if you had a chance to see the team house kind of, what was it called, the intermission, but it's a very short video that released by Jack and Crowdie was on it. But anyway, bottom line is this. Please subscribe. Jack made the point that a lot of people will click. click subscribe, but they don't get sent reminders.

And for Eyes On, that's particularly important because we know when the next episode's coming out kind of the day before when we, but generally twice a week, either when news hits or we have a great guest. So please do. Anyway, in support the Team House, please do just click on subscribe even better. Consider joining Patreon, which is $5 a month, which is poultry. I mean, that's a tip, right? Yeah, and you get ad-free episodes. Yeah, that's a tip. D drops that every time he spends over 100 bucks on a meal.

That's a bad tip. Tell us the way to not to spend it all at once. But yeah, my point is it's a D-tip per month. That's nothing. Okay. All right. Hey, great. See everyone in a couple of days.

All the best to you. Thanks, everybody. Thank you, man. That was brilliant.