Chinese Communist Espionage: An Intelligence Primer
Chinese
espionage hinges on a sophisticated network of spies focused on
state-sponsored tech theft, according to a new book that dispels
outdated theories of how Beijing collects intelligence around the world.
Why it matters: Old tropes cast all ethnic
Chinese as potential amateur spies, a belief which has led to racial
profiling. In reality, China's intelligence agencies employ highly
trained professionals who operate much like spies from any other
country. Details: Published late last year by theNaval Institute Press, doubles as an explainer of how Chinese espionage works and as a brief encyclopedia of key figures.
The
book's authors are Peter Mattis, a former CIA counterintelligence
analyst, and Matthew Brazil, a former US Army officer and diplomat.
Their main message: That Chinese espionage is neither mysterious nor totally different than that practiced by other nations. more
The Art of Investigation examines the qualities required to be a professional, thorough, and effective investigator. As the title suggests, it delves into more than the steps and procedures involved in managing an investigation, it also covers the "soft skills" necessary to effectively direct investigations and intuit along the way.
The editors and contributing authors* are the best in their field, and bring a wealth of real-world knowledge and experience to the subject. There are several publications available on the nuts-and-bolts of the process and stages of an investigation. That ground has been covered. However, little has been published on the investigative skills required, the traits necessary, and the qualities endemic to an inquisitive mind that can be cultivated to improve an investigator’s professional skill-set.
Each chapter discusses the applicability of the traits to the contributor’s own work and experience as an investigator. more *Robert Rahn (Lt. Ret.) is one of the excellent contributors.
Every engineer has stories of bugs that they discovered through clever detective work. But such exploits are seldom of interest to other engineers, let alone the general public.
Nonetheless, a recent book authored by Eric Haseltine, titled The Spy in Moscow Station (Macmillan, 2019), is a true story of bug hunting that should be of interest to all.
It recounts a lengthy struggle by Charles Gandy, an electrical engineer at the United States’ National Security Agency, to uncover an elaborate and ingenious scheme by Soviet engineers to intercept communications in the American embassy in Moscow. more
Founders and business professionals can learn a lot about the failure landscape from Robin Banerjee’s new book,Who Blunders and How: The Dumb Side of the Corporate World. The eleven chapters are written in a conversational style and span 265 pages, full of examples, analysis and tips...
(Guess what made the list.)
Some rivalries between business groups have led to allegations of unethical advertising practices, and even corporate espionage... more
It's easy to "blunder" when it comes to corporate espionage. By definition, espionage is a covert practice. Because you don't see it, you don't believe it is happening. Successful espionage is invisible. Only failures make the news. Successful corporations employ specialists to monitor for espionage.
After spending years in the CIA fighting to prevent nuclear terrorism
and other catastrophes, some old habits just will not go away for the
ex-spy Amaryllis Fox...
DC - In a previously undisclosed secret mission in 2017, the United States
successfully extracted from Russia one of its highest-level covert
sources inside the Russian government... more
Netflix - Though hampered by a few hiccups and low-hanging cliches, Netflix's new
miniseries The Spy is also awesomely anchored by an astounding dramatic
performance by Sacha Baron Cohen. more
FL - The trial of alleged Mar-a-Lago intruder and supposed Chinese “spy”
Yujing Zhang started with a bout of the bizarre that has become typical
of the case, briefly delaying proceedings. more
Switzerland - Russian spies have been operating in Switzerland under assumed
identities, using documents that change their nationalities, a former
KGB agent has told Swiss public television RTS. more
S. Korea - A former prisoner in North Korea has told German media that he used to
spy for the CIA, seeking out nuclear secrets and taking pictures with a
concealed wristwatch camera. more
DC - A former CIA officer who says she spent years under deep cover has
written what appears to be one of the most revealing memoirs ever put to
paper by an American intelligence operative — a book so intriguing that
Apple bought the television rights even before its October publication
date. Life Undercover: Coming of Age in the CIA, by Amaryllis Fox more
DC - Valerie Plame isn’t a spy anymore, but she plays one in her latest
campaign ad, which looks more like the trailer for a movie about Jason
Bourne’s aunt than the start of a congressional run. more
Book Review - Spying: Assessing US Domestic Intelligence Since 9/11by
Darren E. Tromblay.
This book is a welcome addition to the rather small literature on
domestic and homeland intelligence in the United States. It will
interest more than just intelligence specialists, because Tromblay
addresses broader homeland security issues, focusing especially on the
FBI and DHS, and the book would serve as a useful introduction to those
agencies. more
via By Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker The history of espionage is a lesson in paradox: the better your intelligence, the dumber your conduct; the more you know, the less you anticipate.
Is intelligence intelligent? This is the question that runs or, rather, leaps through the mind of the reader struggling with Christopher Andrew’s encyclopedic work “The Secret World: A History of Intelligence” (Yale).
Andrew, who is a longtime history don at Cambridge, begins his book...with one of the most appealing opening lines in recent nonfiction: “The first major figure in world literature to emphasize the importance of good intelligence was God.”
The Israelites’ reconnaissance mission to the promised land of Canaan is the first stop in Andrew’s tour of four thousand years of spying; the last is the American failure to anticipate 9/11.
For anyone with a taste for wide-ranging and shrewdly gossipy history—or, for that matter, for anyone with a taste for spy stories—Andrew’s is one of the most entertaining books of the past few years. more
Longtime Central Intelligence Agency operative and former CIA chief of counterintelligence James “Jim” Olson delivered a talk on his career experiences and challenges Tuesday night to a near-capacity crowd at the Annenberg Presidential Conference Center.
Earlier this year, Olson released a book, To Catch a Spy: The Art of Counterintelligence, which he said is rooted in his three decades in the arena of counterintelligence. It offers “a wake-up call,” in Olson’s words, for the American public about why counterintelligence matters, and why America must protect its trade and national security secrets.
Olson said 50 countries are known to be spying against the U.S. currently. “The worst culprit, by far, is China — followed by Russia, Cuba and Iran,” he said.
“In my 31-year career in the CIA, I saw evil face-to-face more often
than I care to remember,” Olson said. “People I knew and trusted —
people I considered friends — betrayed us, and their treachery was close
to me. It was personal, and indescribably painful. The damage that
these traitors did to our country was devastating.” more
JUDGEMENT by Joe Finder Excerpt...
"It was nothing more than a one-night stand. Juliana Brody, a judge in the Superior Court of Massachusetts, is rumored to be in consideration for the federal circuit, maybe someday the highest court in the land.
At a conference in a Chicago hotel, she meets a gentle, vulnerable man and has an unforgettable night with him—something she’d never done before. They part with an explicit understanding that this must never happen again.
But back home in Boston, Juliana realizes that this was no random encounter. The man from Chicago proves to have an integral role in a case she's presiding over—a sex-discrimination case that's received national attention. Juliana discovers that she's been entrapped, her night of infidelity captured on video.
Strings are being pulled in high places, a terrifying unfolding conspiracy that will turn her life upside down. But soon it becomes clear that personal humiliation, even the possible destruction of her career, are the least of her concerns, as her own life and the lives of her family are put in mortal jeopardy.
In the end, turning the tables on her adversaries will require her to be as ruthless as they are..."
Inside Information: Several Technical Surveillance Countermeasures practitioners (including myself) were consulted for plot twists and technical realism. New York Times bestselling author Joseph Finderdoes this kind of homework on all his novels. ~Kevin more
Can an undercover nerd become a superstar agent? Ben Ripley sure hopes so—and his life may depend on it!
When Ben Ripley is recruited to the CIA’s Academy of Espionage, it’s a dream come true. But as soon as he gets on campus, Ben finds out that Spy Schoolis way more deadly than debonair. And given his total lack of coordination and failure to grasp even the most basic spying skills, Ben begins to wonder what he’s doing here in the first place.
Luckily, through a series of hilarious misadventures, Ben realizes he could actually become a halfway decent spy…if he can survive all the attempts being made on his life! more
Rich Roth condenses over four decades of experience as a member of the United States Secret Service, and as a private security consultant and bodyguard.
His business portfolio includes cyber security, executive protection, aircraft and airport vulnerability, threat assessment and mitigation, training, perimeter detection and CCTV systems design and crisis management.
From the plazas of Paris, to dodging the guns in the Gaza strip, to the cafes in Caracas, Roth slips out of the shadows of surveillance to inform readers about how they can protect themselves through situational awareness, adaptation, and employ techniques and tactics for survival and mitigation.
Being Your Own Bodyguard deals with physical layouts and boundaries, psychological characteristics, and physiognomic [facial expressions] clues in assessing threats. Rich draws heavily on his experience with the USSS that includes over one hundred protection assignments. more
A compelling case for the need to secure our data,
explaining how we must maintain cybersecurity in an insecure age.
Tufts University professor Susan Landau has a long and distinguished background in computer security and policy that includes several books on wiretapping and surveillance...
In Listening In: Cybersecurity in an Insecure Age, Landau considers the changing world in which law enforcement must operate with exceptional clarity. She begins with a brief history of cybersecurity. The first known cyberattack was in 1986, when Clifford Stoll began trying to understand a 75-cent discrepancy in computer time; he told the story in detail in his book The Cuckoo's Egg.
The next, and the first proper internet attack -- although it wasn't really intended as such -- was the 1988 Internet Worm. Despite these early warnings, Landau writes, quoting from a US government report, "security lost to convenience in the 1980s. And then it kept on losing". It wasn't until 2008 that cyber-threats began to be taken seriously. more
via VOA... Colleges and universities are not the first places most people would think to find government spies. But reporter Dan Golden said that is not the case.
“There’s an awful lot more international students, international professors at American universities. Some of them are here to gather information for their countries."
Golden recently spoke with VOA about his book “Spy Schools.” In the book, he gives examples of spying at U.S. colleges and universities. He says the free exchange of ideas and mix of cultures at universities increase the chances for spying to take place.
Charlie McGonigal leads the counterintelligence division at the Federal Bureau of Investigation in New York. He said spying at universities is a big problem.
“There’s a lot of research and development at major universities in the United States that a foreign government would look to exploit by sending students to study at these universities.”more
Ever read a really good book that you wish would become a feature-length Hollywood movie? Or, a television series, because you wanted to see the main characters in more of their adventures?
Loose Ends, by David B. Watts, is that book. I read it today in one sitting. It left me full of time well spent, yet hungry for more.
Loosely based on an actual case, solved by a real-life private investigator, it’s a multiple murder mystery set in New Jersey.
Geographically, it’s all true. You can almost smell the exhaust coming from the trucks on Route 22, in Union County; see the plushness of a wealthy defense lawyer’s conference room; hear the gasps in the courtroom as the surprise ending unfolds. This read creates a mental movie as the eyes pull the words off the pages.
Total verisimilitude, especially when it comes to private investigations, attorneys, police, prosecutors, and the courtroom.
If you are at loose ends for a great read, yes, tie up with Loose Ends.
A cybersecurity expert and former Google privacy analyst’s urgent call to protect devices and networks against malicious hackers.
New technologies have provided both incredible convenience and new threats. The same kinds of digital networks that allow you to hail a ride using your smartphone let power grid operators control a country’s electricity—and these personal, corporate, and government systems are all vulnerable.
In Ukraine, unknown hackers shut off electricity to nearly 230,000 people for six hours. North Korean hackers destroyed networks at Sony Pictures in retaliation for a film that mocked Kim Jong-un. And Russian cyberattackers leaked Democratic National Committee emails in an attempt to sway a U.S. presidential election.
And yet despite such documented risks, government agencies, whose investigations and surveillance are stymied by encryption, push for a weakening of protections. In this accessible and riveting read, Susan Landau makes a compelling case for the need to secure our data, explaining how we must maintain cybersecurity in an insecure age. more
The Counter-Espionage for Business Travelers Course
is a two-day seminar designed to educate those individuals in your
organization who may become targets of espionage, whether knowingly or
unknowingly, from an economic competitor or a hostile intelligence
service.
Unfortunately, most business travelers are untrained, and thus unprepared, to handle even the most common espionage tactics, such as:
Elicitation
Bribery
Blackmail
Extortion
Electronic Surveillance
Electronic Exploitation
Physical Surveillance
Hotel/Office Covert Intrusions
A small sample of the topics covered include:
Economic vs. Industrial Espionage
Foreign Intelligence Collection Methods
How to Recognize Elicitation and Recruiting Techniques
Operational Security (OPSEC) Awareness
Communication Security (COMSEC) Awareness
Data Attack and Intrusion Methodologies
How to become an "Invisible Traveler"
Surveillance Detection Techniques
If you can't go for the course, at least go for some good books on the subject:
Car Wars- An "astonishing...eye-opening chronicle" (Publisher's Weekly) of backstabbing, infighting, and industrial theft and espionage in the world's biggest business. It makes empires; it destroys economies; it shapes history.
Welcome to the world's biggest business--the automobile industry. A hundred years ago there were six highly experimental cars. Today there are close to 400 million cars on the planet: set bumper to bumper on a six-lane highway, they would stretch well over 200,000 miles, more than eight times around the earth.
With hundreds of billions of dollars at stake, is it any wonder that the major car companies wage a relentless war against one another, where (almost) anything goes? Here is the story of all the schemes and deceits, treacheries and shady deals in the battle for the world's car markets since the dawn of the global economy fifty years ago. more
