In an even more whatever-that-is (unsurprising international surprise?), a Chinese spy has just been sentenced to 24 1/2 years in the US.
Chi Mak spent 20 years living in LA, advancing up the corporate/engineering ladder until he got to a place where he could courier U.S. naval secrets back to China.
According to U.S. intelligence and Justice Department officials, the Mak case represents only a small facet of an intelligence-gathering operation that has long been in place and is growing in size and sophistication.
The Chinese government, in an enterprise that one senior official likened to an "intellectual vacuum cleaner," has deployed a diverse network of professional spies, students, scientists and others to systematically collect U.S. know-how, the officials said. Some are trained in modern electronic techniques for snooping on wireless computer transactions. Others, such as Mak, are technical experts who have been in place for years and have blended into their communities.
"Chi Mak acknowledged that he had been placed in the United States more than 20 years earlier, in order to burrow into the defense-industrial establishment to steal secrets," Joel Brenner, the head of counterintelligence for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, said in an interview. "It speaks of deep patience," he said, and is part of a pattern.
Other recent prosecutions illustrate the scale of the problem.
The article goes on to list quite a few recently prosecuted spies & information traders.
So I don't think China is "just having a smoke". |
