Asian Security Studies. London; New York: Routledge, 2013. xvi, 296 pp. (Figures, tables.) US$39.95, paper. ISBN 978-0-415-82142-1.
During the Cold War a debate developed within the Allied counter-intelligence community which could be summarized by “ten-foot-tall Russians” and “the monster plot.” Briefly, there was a view taken by some professionals that interpreted Soviet operations directed against NATO in Machiavellian terms, and saw the Kremlin’s strategy as akin to a diabolical game of chess in which an adversary had adopted every kind of devious scheme to mislead its opponent about its true intentions. This was the era of Jim Angleton’s “wilderness of mirrors,” when the defection of the KGB officer Yuri Nosenko fueled divisive arguments over his authenticity, and led to a kind of doctrinal schism within the Western security and intelligence apparatus that remains relevant today, even in a Chinese context.
The new variant of the old arguments centres on the nature of the PRC’s espionage methodology. Just as there was general agreement at the height of superpower confrontation, when all agreed broadly on the inherently malevolent nature of the regime, the issue was the extent to which a rather dysfunctional and artificial society could pose a serious threat to its perceived enemies. Today, few would dispute the scale of Chinese ambitions, nor the factual evidence of escalating statistics relating to stolen technology, copyright infringements and wholesale theft of proprietary intellectual property. Put simply, there is a major espionage offensive underway, and the crux of the matter is not so much the need to recognize it for what it really is, as few attempt to conceal the obvious, but rather to define the precise methodology that has been adopted by Beijing to achieve the government’s goals.
On one side you have the perspective taken by the former FBI analyst Dr. Paul Moore, who identified several distinctive characteristics of the Chinese cases he studied, which see a threat encapsulated by the “thousand grains of sand” theory: that the Ministry of State Security (MSS) conducts its overseas operations in a very different way to its foreign counterparts, and therefore enjoys a considerable advantage. It takes a wide “blunderbuss” approach, in preference to the narrow sniper’s rifle, and makes a pitch to thousands of potential sources, instead of focusing on just a few targets. The MSS is fragmented, without conventional rezidenturas or stations operating under diplomatic cover, so it is harder to monitor by routine physical or technical surveillance. The MSS prefers to exploit “clean skins,” not flawed personalities, and rarely pays its agents, but allows them to enrich themselves by acting as intermediaries for highly profitable but illegal business transactions, often dealing with embargoed material. The MSS opts for ethnic Chinese, invariably resorts to supposed latent patriotism for the “middle kingdom” and relies on the cultural appeal of guanxi, or family obligation, to leverage cooperation.
The authors call such views “Old School,” but even when attempting to demolish some alleged “urban legends,” such as the Cox Report’s oft-quoted 3,000 front companies established in North America by the PRC and the various component parts of an illicit procurement program, they convey the impression that previous surveys have generally under-estimated the scale of the espionage tsunami. They also rehearse the arguments deployed in the charges of racism directed at the FBI, which has often faced allegations of racial profiling when in pursuit of ethnic Chinese. In the most notorious example, that of Wen Ho Lee, the authors tend to muddy the already murky waters by referring to his “actual innocence or guilt” as though the issue is in some doubt, when the record clearly shows that the physicist pleaded guilty to a felony and was sentenced to time already served in prison, having spent 227 days in solitary confinement.
The historical record also shows that in the case of Qian Xuesen, there was no “genuine injustice” and that far from being a victim of “McCarthyist excesses,” the missile scientist lost his security clearance at the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950, when he had attempted to return to China, and then in 1955 was deported in return for 11 American airmen captured in Korea. McCarthy, whatever his faults, played no part in Qian’s lengthy house arrest in California.
The alternative view to Moore’s is that the tradecraft employed by the Chinese is a distraction from the problem of nearly 200,000 Chinese students at liberty in the United States, subsidized by Uncle Sam, who are, or have the potential, to loot the country’s industrial secrets. This is not a series of case histories, as exemplified by the Chi Mak exposure or the Katrina Leung scandal, but rather a thoughtful analysis of a veritable haemorrhage of sensitive, commercially valuable information, ranging from atomic weapon blueprints, systems algorithms, and even entire jet engines. This short-circuit of international trade restrictions and tariff barriers has, so we are told, kick-started an economy that Mao all but razed to the ground. Worse, American politicians have failed to grasp either the hideous reality, or what is required to restore that much-contested arena, the level playing-field.
However, the authors conclude that the comparatively chaotic, uncoordinated Chinese intelligence and scientific monolith makes it impossible to reassemble the myriad pieces of information “for maximum exploitation and gain” (192). In other words, the Chinese are stealing secrets, so they assert, but do not benefit from them because of an intrinsic failure to prevent them from being “likely stove-piped and fragmented” (192). Thus we are now in the realm of speculation, rather than analysis of verifiable facts.
The authors have sidestepped a potential minefield by paying lip-service to the prevailing views on profiling by asking the rhetorical question: “How does the strategy explain Chinese recruitment of non-ethnics?,” of which there are certainly a few (198). The obvious response is that the MSS, like anyone else in the intelligence collection business, will be opportunistic when gift-horses materialize. It seems unlikely that the MSS invokes a house rule not to recruit Indians, Malays or Caucasians, and the statistical evidence supports this, but this does not obscure the common denominator in the overwhelming majority of espionage cases.
Nigel West
Centre for Counterintelligence and Security Studies, Washington, DC, USA