To compare how different countries gather intelligence, David Wise, an expert on espionage and author of “Tiger Trap: America’s Secret Spy War with China,” gave the following analogy of Russia, the United States, and China trying to extract information on a beach. “The Russians would send in a submarine in the dark of night and collect several buckets of sand,” he said, and “the Americans would send over a spy satellite and collect reams of data that would be analyzed back in Washington.”
The Chinese, however, “would send in a thousand tourists, each with instructions to collect one grain of sand.” Afterwards, they would “shake out their towels and at the end of that time China would know more about that beach than anyone else.”
In the international race to gather foreign intelligence, China trumps all through sheer numbers, recruiting mass amounts of spies to infiltrate all sectors of society.
And the effectiveness of China’s cyber espionage mechanism is the most alarming, particularly after the recent federal breach, in which Chinese hackers stole sensitive records of over 20 million current and former federal employees from the Office of Personnel Management (OMP).
With Americans becoming increasingly worried about the shadowy espionage threat China poses, here are 5 methods the Chinese regime uses to spy on foreign countries and steal intelligence.
1. Hacking and Cyber Espionage
