Transcripts For CSPAN2 Peter Mattis Matthew Brazil Chinese Communist Espionage 20240713

This discussion on i think a selfevidently important topic, and this is a great reason to be discussing this. We are obviously to highlight, promote, discuss this great new book which justte came out on tuesday i believe, the third was the official launch date. And this is about a topic which is incredibly relevant important but as the authors discuss, understudied and under emphasize its i dont want to waste too much time you with a big long intro. Ive only have an interest i can highlight the work of aruna next to me who is been doing really fantastic reporting for the wall street journal on the same topic and the going to quote from one of her stories from april of they should because us upst nicely where a piece with a colleague dustin the first sentence says chinese spies are increasingly recruiting u. S. Intelligence officersg as part of a widening sustained campaign to shake loose government secrets. Current and former u. S. Official said china has also grown older and more successful in traditional spy games including targeting less conventional recruits and then she quotes that infamous statement by chris wray, the fbi, that no country poses a broader, more severe intelligence collection threat than china. Theyre doing it through chinese Intelligence Services, through Stateowned Enterprises, through ostensibly private Companies Come through graduate students and researchers, through a variety of factors are working on behalf of of china. Finally, this is one my favorite quotes by rob joyce. He says russia is the hurricane. It comes in fast and hard. China is Climate Change, long, slow, pervasive. Hope you suspecn the stage here have disagreements both on some of these statements between each other and about this issue of chinese espionage and what we think we know about the status activity and some of the myths. Without further ado im going to turn over to the authors and we will turn to them for 20 to 25 minutes and they will walk us through the book. Then we will take some time for qanda. I will plant the seed now the qanda period is primarily if not solely about actual question so as you are thinkin were thint the comments you want to make i would ask that you email it to us instead of using precious time we want to hear everyones question so be thinking about questions to ask when we get to the qanda period and with that i will turn over. Thank you very much for hosting us today and also to the Jamestown Foundation for believing in the project and carrying it forward. A quick disclaimer since im in a government position, im speaking here in a personal capacity. Ive taken leave to be here. My views are my own and do not represent the commission on china its staff or any of its members so if you are going to quote what i say i hope that developed knowledge it is in the capacity and doesnt represent any of the people whom i work for or an associated. I hate to downplay expectations for the book. Its not a gripping spy thrill thriller. It is meant to be a bit of a reference guide and primary introduction and we made a number of choices that i think were rather conservative and what they chose to include in the standards by which there is a need to demystify the chinese intelligence and not say there is a 5,000 year history or 3,000 dependinwere3,000 depending howo count it. The invoking has a sort of mystical body of operations. Lets start with thing the thine see and know and build out from there. We try t tried to sketch out ine introductory essay what took place in the 1920s to sort of where we are today. The need to demystify there is no better place to start and the idea that its been kicking around for a very long time the approach to intelligence or any host of metaphors for describing a. It got passed around by a little anecdote saying the grain of sand on the beach or the Information Products you want to gather. They would go back and be gone bygone. The United States with partner and pick up all sorts of signals and throw in some centers along the approaches to the beach and go from there. The chinese on the other hand would send a thousand and india and china would know more about it than anyone else. There is a slight problem with that analogy. Most notably the National Security information you dont get to send a thousand. You cant even get a thousand of arrogance onto the public beach in a very easy way because of the security clearance process. So, because it has a catchy story it sort of came around. The chinese intelligence are basically not using tradecraft. They didnt use traditional methods of handling sources or maintaining that relationship tp indicates agencies and the passage of information through the communication and other things. There are certainly distinct differences in style but that isnt really true and never has been. Second with the amateurs that formed the corform the core of e intelligence did its masking the speaker a little bit to this, but in a lot of the cases if you go through the book and loo do t the hard espionage cases, you dont see amateurs leading the way. When the Intelligence Services are there the author point that i think is important about this is that it completed any chinese entity within the chinese intelligence, so when they said the chinese intelligence working in this way, chinese intelligence meant something very different than what it means when you say russian intelligence and the equivalent if you have core agencies and the community and any chinese person connected it does anything like looking at the technology or influence. For this u. S. Intelligence and j. P. Morgan and the hedge fund. It is set up differently but its the wrong way to do it and that speaks to my we talked about the conservative approach might be included. The other downside of this it creates the notion of every chinese person of the potential spy. Whatever you think of the proposition, that isnt a useful way to help you understand what parts of the system. And its not really true. To say the chinese Intelligence Services have more success. That part you can see but to say that that has been slowly the focus i dont think that accurately captures the history. This is traditional where sometimes in the late 19 forties through 1985. That encompasses the pretty long trail of chinese intelligence. Also i make the point that for years will use the chinese Intelligence Services because of the security situation in east asia and a whole variety of things with that potential impact that was a real threat and it wasnt necessarily operational sophistication but that is changing and i thank you could look at the period covering the book with our revolutionary period of intelligence the middle years of the prc not being that great and more recently the emerging sophistication that is on par. I attribute that to two things. The first in 1983 a bunch of survivors or rather a handful of survivors and a lot of Police Officers were told you work for Intelligence Services. And to give them a lot of skills so should we really be surprised that people for foreign intelligence have better luck they can communicate more directly with those cultural references . I dont think its particularly surprising but beginning in the 19 nineties with fairly significant beneficiaries the pla started major publication profit one prospects to bring out the literature to say this is what we did and one of the biographies the author talks about a meeting in the early 19 nineties that you need to write this book because our people dont know their history and what they are a part of so that we understand they have a long and glorious tradition with the Administrative State security professional. The forward to that book that says this book is for you to study and what are the lessons for you in the modern era . The other thing the Administrative State security did essentially institutes a new Training Program to realize that if those that were in Computer Science you dont have that professional skill set and there seems to have been an effort in the 19 nineties or early 2000s to start recruiting people here are the things that you should do. So they spent their time in school and i cant entirely confirm of the internship programs so that if they were going to pass this off as professional Business People that they would look and talk like a professional business person. But those that survive the meetings in their hotel rooms. For those of you that bumped into the younger generations plan ten years ago were 20 years ago. So there has been a big change. And they saw movement into cyberspace i call this the dreadnought moment. And then to pick up signals to have industrial like infrastructure and with Computing Power and to go beyond what a human being could readily uncover. And then it was largely cut off from the existence. Only in the late seventies or early eighties and then to go for late one fairly far behind but what this offered and then to invest and with that either system. Met with contractors and the benefits of the private sector and this is why everyone was yelling about the pla and nobody has figured out and that attribution came much later and then most of the pla work. And this movement is important and then to capture communications and then it is a complicated process. But that you actually had to take a photograph in the Conference Room and know the quality of your picture to recognize the word greatness when you recreated that you can come back in you had it accurately captured. You had to have the skills to create the batteries. And then to have that plan to try to save your battery so they just werent running and using up the energy while in the building and with this big shift the artisan ship and the craftsmanship from those devices with that skill set because the chinese didnt have those same experiences because when they do it domestically they control the environment with technical surveillance countermeasures so what it looks like today is in the Software Code not the delivery device. So yes you can come up with ways to hide it but it is a very different set of skills to teach where we are from this dreadnought moment if you will. It is important to understand the institutions that are involved. And then to reward particular behaviors and you may or may not be as centralized as you tend to think. Want to read some of those cases in the book to be quite effective and quite useful and some boneheaded things why are we not taking this seriously . And why its important to understand that it is the industry. With dozens and dozens of local state security bureaus. So should we really be surprised they are hiring graduates than the state Security Department . With that breath and variety and that organization that is diverse should look all over the map. And it brings up the important point to say there is some sophistication here. But if you did not understand that it may have been Police Officers first. And for those that were first rather than Something Else. They give very much also thank you to the foundation and those that sponsored us to complete this work. When it felt like we were hacking our way through the jungle but here we are. And with that path that led to today. So the years of the Chinese Communist party. In the years of the intelligence failures for the Chinese Communist party they had basically nothing in place. They had assassins and vap protection peoples and spies but not a structure. But the coup detat in april that year was a complete surprise and at the end of the year and with the canton uprising with the intelligence failure because we know virtually nothing about the enemy. So in this context founded as the first professional organization. It got off to a rocky start. But with the concrete useful spiraling which is referred to today as the three heroes of the dragonslayer, as mentioned earlier and one that survive more than a few years and went on to lead ccp intelligence in the early years of the peoples republic. And that which followed with intelligence people and analysts people who do communications and Technical Work and that survives into the present. With those that were founded at that time and that saves a lot of lives and that was a disaster. And to this day one of my distant relatives was the black sheep you cannot find a picture of him. [laughter] and by 1935 by that time really of the operations of the clever individuals and in 1935 the special Services Section was abolished. This was about the time there was a concrete Strong Influence intelligence operational focus was enemies within. You probably heard of the future and incidents where he purged the red Army Everyone opposed to him and this was one of the first the first of the three left deviations. And with those deviations that are acknowledged today and with the Salvation Campaign and of course the cultural revolution and with that gigantic purge of people and actually there was a traitor because he did not report a meeting with an agent. That left a legacy of purges to solve problems and we see that today even though paying declared the age of political campaigns over with and then to serve as the paramount leader. And then to purge the enemies of pain and left those in tact. And ndds different purges clean out the Chinese Communist intelligence with severe temporary effects. That areas during the revolution under control of Chinese Communist in the peoples republic a toxic environment for enemy spies for those who want to spy. And this was a continual drive and nearly impossible to penetrate eastern china with the beginning of the prc regime the notable exception was the ambush 1961 in the army column and then 1600 pages of classified information. But then to bed. One to that so the strong toxicity for counterintelligence texas city and then to infiltrate and spy on toxicity for the prc to recruit foreign spies. And for those that are tourist baseline of surveillance that we discuss and baseline that everybody goes through and indeed there are clear triggers that lead to focusing on an individual with any indication they are suspicious a sensitive unit that has technology if you are tibetan. So it is easier to recruit foreigners and one in china under these conditions i want to do a footnote to point to the two fbi videos people have made fun of many of you have seen or call the game of ponds one ponds there is a dramatized version of the case of company men of the industrial espionage between the two but that in the game of pawns in the case we are looking at a professional operation but in company men the industrial espionage case estate owned enterprise following amateur program to get some industrial secrets. So with that i will say one more word about influence operations because that question always comes up so there is always a mixup by the way in history between the underground and the intelligence people. By 193839. Intelligence had become a core, a core operation, a core business of the party along with propaganda, military work, and organizational ork. And so, in the offices that the pr that the ccp had in National Cities in the beginning of the united front period which were like little embassies, there were people from each of those departments, including each of those intelligence. The people in intelligence then were often in influence operations, red star over china which many of you may have red by edgar snow is an example of an extremely successful influence operation. And who was involved in that, nobody less than, at that time not only trying to influence people to see the benefits of the communist revolution, but she was also passing code books to local agents and one of her chief contacts, indeed, was wu, an agent of the special Services Section. So, with that, ill conclude and lets do some questions. All right. Well, i want to bring this into conversation and broaden it out. First, a couple of followup questions based on, matt, what you and peter have been talking about. Peter, one of the things you mentioned is about bureaucratic politics or bureaucratic rules and behavior. So my first question is broadly looking at chinese intelligence as a system, its obviously operating under a political system controlled by a markist Leninist Party that will give it particular characteristics. Can you talk about what its like to be an Intelligence Service operating under the communist party of china is this whats distinct about how its bureaucratic incentives are than in say, modern democratic systems . I think there are two that i can speak to that come directly out of the research for this, for the this book. The first would be, you know, for example, if youve read the news about whats been taking place in hong kong or the spokesperson for the ministry of affairs or daily. Theyve painted owl of the disturbances as coming from the United States. And we offer attribute this to some sort of paranoia, but its actually kind of an outgrowth of the system. They have a unique grasp of the Political Trends that its theory therefore gives them policy insight to policies at the time. If something goes wrong, it wasnt the theory, it wasnt the science, it wasnt the analysis, somebody must have done something. So, that mentality creates a drive on the part of the Intelligence Services to essentially ask paranoid questions and its not where the difference is is not a question of what is taking place, its a you know, where is the interference happening . Who is interfering and where are they doing it . And theyre just searching for a piece of evidence that may or may not exist and they may or may not have the willingness to pass that up the chain to say, look. You know, we looked, we had good sources and they tell us nothing and they say nothing like this is taking place, but because i think of the ideological system, thats a very difficult thing to do. And the second piece of it thats interesting, when you look at, say, the ministry of state security, i am unaware in any of the organizational charts, i found in any of the ones i tried to build up from interviews with people, theres nothing there that says theres an analytic department, an analytic bureau, right. The china institutes of contemporary internationalizations more closely resemble the joep source than they do at ncia. And in that absence of analysis, theres i was told by a former Intelligence Officer from outside the United States that in his Services View analysis was done at the ministerial level or sun there a long time and was trusted and at least the level of a viceminister that thats where analysis could be done and put through the system. So what this what happens at sort of a more practical level is that you can see and i think a couple of these cases are discussed in the book you can see pitches to people who are academics, who are journalists, who are other kinds of investigators and people ask, why would i get pitched or why would this take place . The answer is because you can talk to people and therefore, when you write if you write a report from the ministry of state security saying this is my assessment of these things, the ministry can say look, were just the messenger, not the source, so dont blame us if the answer is wrong. I just want to follow up on that and read from page 21. The language chinese intelligence uses reflects its marxists leninist heritage, and officials had routine contacts with chinese counterparts. That are bastions of faith. This may be a naive question, is that an asset or a liability, having that level of firmness of belief in the period and its ideology . Both. The downside are the two things i talked about. The upside is that you dont get a lot of you dont get a lot of defections, right. The question for you is, as i was reading through the book over the weekend, the evolution of intelligence and the Intelligence Services through the mao period, but what i found was through the open and reform period, can you talk a little as chinas opening up to the we see jinping is the man of the year and cocacola, the whole thing, what was Intelligence Services more cuddly and friendlier or is that a misnomer. And seen today as a martyred hero of logic and so on was the person who made the speech advocating the founding of a ministry of state security and talking about all of the enemies that were coming into china because of reform and opening. Indeed, if youd step back a few years to 1973 when there was a party congress, i think it was 10th that affirmed maos goals and affirmed the cultural revolution, everything who was brought in for the congress was brought in on underground passages and the reason they did that seems to be by that time the Beijing Hotel was full of americans and others and they could look out and see people coming into the great hall of the people and they wanted to keep that Congress Nice and secret. So as people began to as more foreigners began to come into china, i think this was a turning point that then was followed, of course, in 1985 by the defection of chung shun which was a big problem, first big traitor from the chinese side. I just want to bring us up to the very present now and the introduction to the book you talked about this period in 20102012 where the United States found suddenly that its chinese assets went dark and in the book you said that thats because this had been a compromise and upwards of 20 chinese agents who were working for the cia were executed. You know, youve been covering this some of the cases that are now being prosecuted here in the United States and what i wanted to ask you about, because it may or may not tie directly into that, is the case of jerry lee, who was just sentenced to 19 years in prison just a few weeks ago. So i wonder if you could talk about that case, why its important and i wonder if you could hazard a guess as to the connection between jerry lee and this pretty disastrous intelligence failure of 2010 . So this is an important case of a long time former cia officer charged and pled guilty to conspiring to provide classified information to the Chinese Government. The connection it the deaths of these sources for the cia is not totally clear, but at his sentencing a few weeks ago, prosecutors made the case that he had the names of eight sources written in his notebook that he had kept with him and had with him when he was at a hotel in the United States, when his room was searched and they also made the case that he had gotten around 800,000 in cash that he had deposited into his bank account in hong kong over the course of 60, 70 deposits. He could not really explain who gave him this money, why he got it and so they were allege prosecutors were alleges that he must have given the mss information at least about these sources and other information to get that much money from him. His attorneys were denying that he did actually give them any information and so what the connection is is a little unclear. The attorneys were saying that the government never gave them a harm assessment and to their knowledge, the sources that he had listed in his notebook were not actually harmed. We dont exactly know if thats true or not. The government said they dent perform harm assessments until after these kinds of cases are closed. So the actual connection to this pretty catastrophic leak of sources for the cia is a little bit unclear, but some officials are definitely drawing a link between the two. You know, the sudden upsurge in, i think, concerns you see coming out of the u. S. Government is a question for everyone. Id like matt and peter, if you have any thoughts on this 2010 period, but is this because were seeing an uptick in actions by the chinese . Weve got the cases of kevin mallory, weve got ron hanson, got a number of these cases that are now being prosecuted. Is this an uptick or do we know more now and are paying more attention to activities by chinese intelligence . Ill start with you and if you have any thoughts. I think there are seems to be definitely an uptick in the number of cases and this seems to be driven in part by chinas specific effort to get a lot of information about American Government employees, like the opm breach, get a lot of information and combine with that credit card information that they get, financial information, they know who to target. All the people you mentioned had financial problems and were specifically targeted with offers of cash, and so i think theres been a really big concern that chinas gotten better about figuring out what the pressure points are in the system and who might be vulnerable, but i dont think they can draw a very clear distinction between the two. I would put it down to more aggression, more money, and more sophistication and certainly the its been a fairly significant part of chinese intelligence practice or if you chose the use the word doctrine, if you will, to build up massive data bases of people of interest. This is actually the original. Well, its now the name used in security to describe the front work and the ministrys contribution to that mobilization and influence as social affairs, and social affairs work back in the 1930s meant basically mapping Chinese Society for journalists for academics, for, you know, other intellectuals who had a public who had a public platform and how do you find them and influence them, who are the important donors in the kmt. Who are the ones who keep things working. And in dealing with the United States, for many years, they never had this, you know, they were cut off and then there was access and then how do you start mapping the society that youre not necessarily that familiar with. You can pick out the elite that youre coming in contact with, but necessarily knowing what it is at the sort of lower levels is a much more difficult proposition. And you know, where before they sort of worked on retirees as sort of a key focal point because theyre not going through another security background check. Theyre not having to report their finances. Theyre not having to go through serious scrutiny. This is a way that they could try to get that same understanding, but its a slow process, you know, and on taiwan they had essentially 70 years to do it. And whereas for dealing with the United States they didnt have that. And when you take the compromises of opm, and also anthem insurance and the company that holds the largest federal insurance, the united breach, you know, all of a sudden youre putting together a much, much different data set of people and youre able to map that onto who are employees and certain government agents dont hold their Personnel Data inside opm and you have to map other things that are available and you can identify who they are and where they were, and once you have that kind of mapping, its a lot easier to go out and start chasing. Next, i think a question that is not only about not only about chinese intelligence operations, but this larger question dealing with influencing operations and this is this tension between having an open society, but also protecting National Security and one of the threat factors which has been identified by u. S. Government in particular has been Chinese Students and chinese scientists so, i know youve been working on this as well. I want today i wanted to get where the debate is in the u. S. Government in terms of how big the threat is. What actions are being taken . And i think importantly id like to get everyones thoughts on this. Have we accurately calibrated the risk or are we spilling too far into overreaction phase . I think on the fbi side, at least, the concerns about talent programs and the efforts at u. S. Research universities are one of their biggest concerns. I mean, you saw them you saw the fbi get up at a Senate Hearing a couple of weeks ago and basically say that they had been slow to understand this threat and they wished they had recognized the scope of it sooner and you dont often see them come out and admit any missteps like that. I think that probably speaks to just how big a threat they think it is. In terms of state of play, the past couple of years theyve spent a lot of time going out to u. S. Universities, trying to talk to them about these issues and kind of not quite calibrating their message correctly because they keep talking about concerns about theft and then you have the universities ask them, well, show us what youre talking about. What is this theft . When what we do here is essentially for the public. And given the nature of a lot of the stuff theyre looking at, they dont want to get into specifics. They doesnt want to share classified information so i think you have a bit of talking past each other and i think youve seen the fbi try to recalibrate how theyre talking about this and getting other u. S. Government agencies to kind of take the lead, the funding agencies to be talking about it more as conflicts of interest and concerns about Research Integrity and things like that, but i do think it is one of the biggest concerns that even fbi director wray has talked a lot about. You know, just following up on that, what solutions do you hear fbi, u. S. Government, giving to universities to fix this problem . Are they essentially saying this is just tighten up the ship or are they actually coming with Practical Solutions that universities can implement . I think as a baseline, theyre at least asking them to have a full accounting of the kind of Research Funding that all of their professors and scientists are getting and to be very upfront about what funding they might be getting from these chinese talent programs because a lot of it was not disclosed previously. So i think thats kind of a baseline that theyre starting with and then kind of escalating from there. And do you have any thoughts on this idea of scientists and students and how we might balance protection with openness . Or if thats even the right tradeoff to be thinking of . Well, the infrastructure thats been set up by the chinese side to bring people back is apparently very extensive, it includes helping people move their stuff back, it includes recruitment efforts for scholars who are in the middle of research. Of course, besides professional operations, theres probably a great deal of operations that are entrepreneurial in nature, and so when its that way, then it looks a bit less suspicious, but i think the key element that i hope is developed further is that when a Government Agency pays for resear research, that its made clear to the researchers that they shouldnt be doing anything that runs against the contract. Ill just say that from my perspective, were in a better place than we were 10 years ago in the way that the u. S. Government is able to talk to outsiders about this. The fact that so much of it is saying, well, trust us, this is in the classified realm, i dont think sort of fits well because theres an awful lot of this information thats completely available from unclassified source and that is not presented to excomplain in concrete terms is a significant shortcoming. There arent easy answers how to handle visas, say, for example. The u. S. Government asks universities to take a look at what at who is coming. And the university says, well, you gave them a visa, thats on you. But if you know how the visa process is done, you realize that thousands of these things get flagged as potential problems. I think out of the, you know, Something Like 350,000 Chinese Students that are in the United States, sometimes sort of automatically flag should be followed up and measured in the 60 to 80,000 range, theres no human way to follow that up. Its being put on to people with fulltime jobs, hey, can you look at a handful of these . If were in this place where people throw up their hands and say, well, were not even going to bother, all of a sudden were talking about a presumption of denial and all of a sudden 10,000 go away. Some fairly, some probably not and that system for flagging things is a relatively blunt system. So if were not able to find some medium in that conversation, i dont think were quite there yet because if we were, wed be able to the u. S. Government would be able to talk in a much more open way at an unclassified level about the nature of the talent programs and whats taking place. Is there still an interagency process with a time limit where you can object or say nothing . Im not entirely sure. I want to open up to questions, just one final one because the quotes good and i want to see if its actually true, which is this we see this dichotomy brought up a lot and the contrast between russia and china and supposedly qualitatively different feel to the way that russia does things, versus china. This quote, that russia is the hurricane that comes in fast and hard. Chinas Climate Change long and pervasive. You can ignore the russia part of it if you dont have an answer to it, but on the china side, does that accurately describe what were dealing with and more importantly, is that the static way we should be looking at this Going Forward or do we expect an evolution in how china is going to be looking at the u. S. Since were entering this much more volatile fracturous period which is going to be a new permanence for a while . Anyone . Anyone . So ive been asked the question more than a few times over the last couple of years about how to sort of compare and contrast the u. S. Or china and russia and on the intelligence front, its, i feel like the distinctions are small. Theres little bits, little differences on trade craft, but when you look at traditions that are exploited. You see people to coerce people to spying, and pay people into spying, if you do that you want results. You dont put 800,000 down because you think youll get something some day. If you put that money down you think youre getting value. Its know the necessarily a 10, 20 years vision of how we cultivate someone and maybe get something out of it. On the influence side though this, this issue of political influence is that on the russia side and in the soviet days, the Intelligence Services played a much more important role. They were sort of some of the main sort of executors of the policy. They played a crucial role in planning it. They had a lot of the capability to push ideas out there. On the chinese side, i think you have to say that the Administrative State security or the military Intelligence Departments play a supporting role and that its held at more senior levels within the party, handled at the pollitt bureau level from the central departments and know from the ministries. You can see the ministry of state security, ministry of culture, ministry of foreign affairs, ministry of education does contribute to this work and they can play a Critical Role in it, in part because theyve got capabilities to, say, the ministry of education wouldnt have. Theyre not the leading pole and not the designer of the policy. The other point id make is the only time the Chinese Services ever acted like the kgb was 1942 to 1944 and after that theyve been under much stricter party control. They havent been purging the party although lately, of cost, mss has been involved in some anticorruption investigations. Parting thoughts, comments, criticisms, anything . All right. Well, why dont we go right into q a, capital q question. Sir, right in the third row in right in the aisle here, mics coming down your way. Im jim mann. I wanted to come back to the late 70s, 80s period and ask cause that was a period when the United States and china were engaged in very specific intelligence cooperation. Afghanistan, cambodia, and in setting up a missile tracking system in some obscure province called shinshen. My question was, to what extent did the u. S. Help . And people like bill casey are making secret trips to china. To what extent to the United States help in the development of chinese intelligence either technically or in managing a new ms schmss. Well, i can only give the limited answer. Certainly, on the technical side, yes, there was help from the u. S. As far as goes i was not aware of any such help, i believe the two sides have always kept in touch, but i dont think the u. S. Has ever trained the chinese side like the soviets did in the early days of the prc. Prc. Wait for the talking stick to your come your w to come your way. Thanks, alex boeing. You said earlier in your remarks, china has worldclass intelligence capabilities, in chapter six with human and technical means. Can you explain what you mean by worldclass, does that mean parity with the u. S. Or something we cant do . Yes, i would describe worldclass as being able to, you know, one, handle sensitive sources in sensitive Government Departments that you have to undergo the Security Check and might be subject to serious v scrutiny and do that within a who hostile environmentment and secondly its not limited to a certain geographic place, but there is sort of a global scope. Maybe not everywhere all the time, but certainly on an able to operate in a variety of different contexts. And on the issue of mingling human and technical, its, you know, i guess the way that i would put it, i think of the way you would get to an air gapped network, right. You need to recruit a source that has access to that network and can carry a device across it and either deliver a sort of program themselves or to access that network and bring things out and to be able to conceal that activity. And there were a couple of taiwanese cases where the chinese Intelligence Services showed that they could do that. Im david crandall, retired from department of energy and the National Nuclear security administration, where i worked on the science side of Nuclear Weapons part of the time. And i now work with some Chinese People, chinese scientists who work on the Nuclear Weapons side, but do open science as well. We work on exchanges, only open science. My security clearance information was stolen twice through opm. But its clear that the people ive worked with have never seen it. So im interested in how do they use it and are they as compartmentalized as we are . The answer would be like we are, yes and no. In part because i dont think we have a clear draft of how things get shared across the entire system. Everyone who has interacted with Chinese Government interlocutors at some point has seen a little bio across the table thats been prepared so theres obviously some sharing of that kind of information that its accumulated across government, not just the Intelligence Services and is put in. When you look at the sort of classics of chinese negotiating behavior, theres discussions about how the chinese side seems to be quite prepared in dealing in who theyre dealing with and that they focus a lot on trying to identify detail. So we know Something Like that, information like that is conceivably shared across the system, but we dont know what that classification is or how they classify it, depending on what kinds of information that they have. And if they are talking about information about your clearance and what they stole, you know, is that something thats necessarily shared with everyone you come in contact with . Well, it sounds like not, but you know, you could bump into someone if you were in china, thats a colleague, who is, in fact, very wellinstructed on those things. There are a number of odd Little Things in the system where i think if you take a mature policy system like Taiwan Affairs or in macao affairs, its likely that the information is shared because all of the Different Party departments and the Intelligence Services actually share cover organizations. The united front work department, ministry state security, the Political Warfare people and the pla, military intelligence they can actually you will be in the same organization and using the same platforms for operations. So to presume that that, you know, the fact that they might be sitting in some of the same spaces some of the time, that information would be shared more readily. What that means in a less mature policy system where the different agencies are not necessarily as wellintegrated, i think would be anyones guess. The other thing is that the chinese side has a history of denying everything. I think if somebody, one of your interlectors was given that information, dont hint that you know this. Im bethany allen. A reporter. I was talking that you would talk about wan lee chung i believe thats his name, the detector in australia right now, if he is who he says he is . I think that one is on me. So there are, i think, a few things to keep in mind about whats been put out there in public about wan lee chung. First, there are a number of arguments against him being this, saying an Intelligence Officer would never act like this. First of all, he never claimed to be an Intelligence Officer, he was five eyes for parliament, a coopee, picked up by the Intelligence Officers themselves and integrated into what theyre doing. Thats the key part of his claim. s not someone you know, what we know from other cases that are sort of out there in public of these types of people, since they will be involved in operations, they will be close to the system, but theyre not going to know bureaucratic information because theyre not connected by through professional linkages back to the service themselves. What they have access to is basically what would be taking place around them. So, he could be opening envelopes to have read things, he could have been keeping an eye on sort of the comings and goings and also, to be able to discuss what kind of things he was personally involved in. So that, i think, is an important piece to understand about who he is and who he claims to be. The second is that some of this the questions that have been raised about him from, for example, the former Deputy Director of military intelligence in taiwan, his argument was because of single line handling in the Intelligence Services, this was an impossibility, that he was connected in any way. I think in the research for this book, its clear that chinese intelligence operations are not operating along the li line, that one person knows in the chain. It might be a feature of other sensitive cases, but we have a lot of other examples, not to mention that the state department oms, candice clayborne, where its clear one of the people who was in the case worked for the Business Bureau and the other person who provided kind of the services or the resources for that intelligence person to chip in. So, its you cant say that the chinese intelligence operations are just this clean, you know, professional only handled by the service in this very narrow specific way, that this that this part of his story does actually compare favorably to other contexts. So, the other the question about whether or not hes reliable, now, the taiwanese things that he said are things that you could have said from reading off the press and having a very close read. We dont necessarily know what his claims are about australia because as part of the court case thats been taking place in the last year, or two years, the truth was ruled out as a defense for an australian people on the libel thing. So if youre the age, why would you put the specifics in there . And we dont know why there was a connection, what the connection is with azo or asis. The final point if the person is in Intelligence Services he would know if you went strictly to the Australian Government wed like you to go back in, go do this and come back out and well take care of you. It would be much better having someone in place instead of out of operations and only capture a certain moment in time. If youre part of the system and connected obliquely as he was, why would you want to and you want to get out, why would you try to keep it why would you try to keep it quiet . Its know the a clean answer, but i think those are some of the things that think about. You know, its still, because we dont have access to everything that he said, were not able to interview him. We dont necessarily have full visibility into the Due Diligence that the Australian Government performed or that the age performed in looking at him. I dont think theyre babes in the woods. And there are people in australia inside government and outside of government that know how to do this sort of work. Well have to wait and see, but he cant discount it on its face. Face. With the china scope, we know the big unique part of espionage, they use nontraditional actors, Chinese Students and scholars, so i have two questions okay, right. Do you think that this has to do with Chinese Governments brain washes Chinese People with socalled patriotism . I myself brought up to think its better than my mom. And serving the party, and loving my country and hate america taiwan. And the majority of the students get information from chinese media, so, i just wonder what your thoughts are to this. Well come back to that and well think about that. Why dont we open it up to another question while folks are thinking. To my far and left. Hi, mary. Quick question, ministry of Public Security. Weve mentioned for the Intelligence Services mss schm pla. What role do they play in the apparatus and what role will this he play Going Forward . After 1949 they were the primary counter espionage and the Intelligence Service. The counterespionage was to join the ministry of state security. And the ministry of state security didnt become a National Organization until probably the mid 1990s so there were an awful lot of Public Security people who had espionage type roles and they were moved as departments changed. So theyve had theyve always had a certain amount of the role. I guess its hard to figure out what the ministry of state securitys access is, to the amount of Surveillance Systems going up in china. But a number of those are primarily done, owned by or sort of guided by the ministry of Public Security so it gets to that question of bureaucratic coordination and how much do they share and get along and that might be something that changes based on the locality and the relationship of the individuals, but i dont think we know on face. So if they sole control those resources inside china, that means they have an incredibly important capability that that would be crucial to Counter Intelligence and counter he is pee espionage and take a more significant role. They were involved outside of china, the ministry of Public Security that was in burma and laos trying to track down the perpetrators of the 105 incident in october, october 2011 where 13 Chinese River sailors were killed. It was the mps not the pla, not the ministry of state security that had its people sort of on the ground contributing to the hunt. So for a number of the anticorruption investigations outside of china, its ministry of Public Security has also been there. If theres a comparison to russia it might actually be similar to the ssb, yes, the ssb is internal and other is internal, but the ssb is moving around quite a bit. I dont think theres and i dont think we can draw sometimes a clear distinction between what the state security threat, versus whats a Public Security threat and therefore, who actually gets jurisdiction. I once worked on a case where an mps officer demonstrated to me that he had knowledge of an mss arrest of an american businessman by sitting behind his desk at his computer and just dialing it up. And when i asked him about that, he said, well, were the ones who are responsible for for taking care of the foreigners in our district so they have to keep us informed to a certain level. So thats just a single example, but indicates that they talk, anyway. Gentleman in the back just in front of the computer. Dan garrett, security llc. Countries in the moments of existential crisis activate Intelligence Services, what does the history of chinese intelligence tell us how china may surge intelligence apparatus now to deal with the existential crisis with the u. S. China relations and also the situation in hong kong. Thank you. I dont i dont think we have a good sense of how fast that takes place. You know, one of the points that matt raised was the strong Counter Intelligence serve as a base for foreign intelligence and of the public examples that are out there. I think we only have two cases that are public where the recruitment and the handling of the source was done completely outside china. And so thats not necessarily a good capacity to surge overseas if youre trying to address some of these issues. What does that mean . I guess, the way i would interpret that is until theres much larger of foreign capacity to a human level that sort of collection in cyber space and computer exploitation is going to be the primary means for trying to get out because thats the easiest way to have a global capability and to reach out as quickly as possible. The historic case i can point to is the loss of the cashme cashmere kazmir princess flight i think in 1955 and during that time, the whole prc government, especially the Intelligence Services were involved in a intense investigation in hong kong that ended up showing at that taiwan was, indeed, behind it. [inaudible] im with reuters. I just want today ask i guess more on the corporate side of things, theres been a lot made about the National Intelligence law, i think from 2017 and how it could require the government could require companies to hand over data or spy on their behalf. I wondered if theres any clarity how much its been invoked or what the government has really done with that particular law. Thank you. Well, the propaganda that has been reported on, for example, by the new york times, the cartoons, the videos, indicate that one should never hold back any information from state security and then you look at every company thats big enough has a party committee. So that the discipline that would naturally come with that indicating that, indeed, people do what theyre told and they cooperate and i just find it conceptually impossible that anybody would try to push back. Now, ive heard that, i think, 10 cent supposedly push back, but i just dont believe it. Just say, when i had a visit or a discussion with the china institutes of contemporary national relations, theyve more or less can you explain who kicker is, for folks who may not know. Theyre one of the mss bureaus and they do open Source Research and open source interviews simply for the purpose of analysis and serve as an International Relations Training Program for the rest of government and for the rest of ministry of state security and i asked, you know, wed had a discussion about u. S. Intelligence reform five years before and this time, it was time to say, you know, now its your turn to speak about chinas intelligence law and he says, you know, the thing that you need to understand about all of this National Security legislation is that its basically putting into law what was already the rule, right, and making it clear that everyone understood that, you know, this was the way it worked implicitly before. Its going to work this way explicitly now. Which is also a great way to cut back on corruption because if its in the law, its easier to prosecute somebody. Ill take three questions. Start there in the middle and, sir, youve been waiting. One, two, three. Hi, sorry, adam cozy with crowd strike, glad to see the second book. Yeah, peter, you had mentioned earlier that there was kind of a lack of an analytic bureau or that kicker was kind of the ones doing the analysis, didnt bend and contrast to what we think of the u. S. Intelligence community. Who in your mind comes up with the intelligence requirements . How developed is the relationship between Stateowned Enterprises and mss to create the requirements that then go down to what they collect on since they dont have as robust analytic capability . [inaudible] congratulations, by the way, on this book. Its timely and its overdue in some cases, but my question to you is, you described this as a primer with the notion there should be Something Else coming down the road that would expand upon this and i wonder what you would consider to be the Priority Issues that should be addressed and who should address them . [inaudible]. Marcus tucker, i just retired from the u. S. Commerce department. Got your book about a week ago. Its phenomenal, really, really insightful. The question, the fbi says that theyve got investigations about chinese espionage going in over one of 50 of the states, a have an array of chinese espionage, detailed well in your book, grains of sand and many others. How many chinese spies would you estimate are working currently for the u. S. Government that are em about he hadded . More than 500 . More than 1,000, more than 5,000 . Just a range or a guess, a number . Thank you. This is how the mccarthy era started, by the way. With a simple question. More than you can shake a stick at. [inaudible] like soes who may be able 0 fill in analytical gap. What research do we have Going Forward to form the second core of your book on this, and then the last question, how many spooks in this room. [laughte [laughter] i guess id first, ill take the last question since its the easiest to respond to which is im not going to guess. Its this is the kind of thing that has to be quite careful of and you know, part of the point is the way that we structure this book is to start on the conservative side so that theres a hard center, if you will, that you can work out from. And theres a lot of there are a lot of questions that i think that come up about the informal system thats at work in the Chinese Communist party. As matt pointed out, theres a distinction between undergroundwork and intelligence work and undergroundwork was much, much larger and the people who were in the underground section of the party versus, is one of the biggest splits in the party, you know, from the 50s up until today. And you know, we should, this is one of the things you have to remember that history so that theres a level of operations inside the party thats not necessarily trusted to the bureaucracies, and thats something that helps answer the second question, where should we be looking in try to explore it, trying to take, okay, what do we know about the formeral systems and how do we understand the informal piece that is come across it. As for the generation of requirements, the minister of state security does have a requirements bureau. All of the organizational source, and charts analysis, discussions with former officials and current officials and other governments has, you know, sort of said, yes, theres something there for the central generation and coalition and distribution of them. But you can say, the Security Department says where you have an Intelligence Officer working for the Security Department. s employing people to hack into ge aviation and hes working closely with a university to basically develop the requirements because thats the ultimate customer for the information out of ge aviation. So it seems to be a direct connection thats generating it. Whether that was sanctioned and your job is to figure out how to help these guys or whether theres a personal connection . How that developed, what is available its anyones guess. Theres something central, but something that seems to be ad hoc and customer driven with respect to that. And the final issue of analysis, americans like to talk a lot about intelligence analysis in this sort of allsource strategic assessment vein, but i hate to point it out, but its a strictly american invention and most services didnt mimic that for a very, very long time. And the to the extent that this he did pick it up, they didnt pick it up on the same scale of the u. S. Intelligence. I wanted to bounce back to the question about chinese abroad from the back of the room. So i live in san jose, california, the restaurant situation is vastly improved because of all the chinese and indian people who live there. I have chinese friends and the ones who are over 35 and who studied here, and who were involved in Chinese Student associations, they dont have the same experience that more that younger people do, with the involvement of chinese officialdom in their business. And so, that certainly seems to have changed. Theres a much more focused effort to harness the influence of Chinese People and they dont have to be brainwashed because theyve been raised in when i was based in beijing, my daughter was in chinese schools and she heard all about the how the americans were actually responsible for the opium that started the opium war, et cetera, et cetera. They already have a view of history which is conducive to harnessing their influence. And as for what were doing in our next book, i just want to say, im not imitating anybody here, beijing, if youre listening, we dont yet have from you a Chelsea Manning or an edward snowden. We need that, we need those documents. Ante up. [applause] any final thoughts, comments, conclusions . Yes, obviously to the poor mss analyst awake right now at 4 30 having to watch this and write a memo, im sure hell that may be the Chelsea Manning, this may be the spark. Thank you everyone for up on the stage, thank you all of you who came. Although not technically an exit tax, we are selling the book outside so you can leave without purchasing although we will make it difficult because peter will be downstairs in the lobby looking at you expectantly. We encourage you to buy it and i dont know if you can hang around for a few minutes and sign copies. Thanks again and hopefully well have them back in 12 months when theyve finished and published their next book. So, thank you. [applause]. [inaudible conversations] youre watching a special edition of book tv. Now airing during the week, while members of congress are in their districts due to the coronavirus pandemic. Tonight, biographies, Robert Wilson editor of the american scholar, recounts the life of 19th century showman p. T. Barnum the cofounder of the barnum and bailey circus. And then earliest 20th century immigrant and then later, journalist, janice kaplan, enjoy book tv now and over the weekend on cspan2. Cspan has around the clock coverage of the federal response to the coronavirus pandemic and its all available on demand at cspan. Org coronavirus. Watch white house briefings, updates from governors and state officials, track the spread throughout the u. S. And the world with interactive maps, watch on demand anytime unfiltered at cspan. Org coronavirus. Cspan. Org coronavirus. And on capitol hill the senate about to gavel in what is usually a brief pro forma session. Last week the republicans tried to pass additional 250 billion for the Small Business Paycheck Protection Program to add funding to the 2 trillion aid package, which is projected to run out of money soon. The democrats blocked that additional funding and attempted to bring up their own plan that would provide money for the Small Business fund and additional money for local governments and hospitals. The senate was scheduled to return for legislative work next monday, that could change because of the ongoing covid19 pandemic. Communication to the senate. The clerk washington,d. C. , april 13, 2020. To the senate, under the provisions of rule 1, paragraph 3 of the standing rules of the senate i hereby appoint the honorable dan sullivan, a senator from the state of alaska to perform the duties of the chair. Signed chuck grassley, president pro tempore. The presiding officer under the previous order, the Senate Stands adjourned until 3 00 p. M. On thursday, april 16, 2020