HUGE scoop from @zachsdorfman: Remember how people speculated that China's hack of the Office of Personnel Management might allow China to identify and track CIA operatives abroad?

Well, that's EXACTLY what China did.

Read more at @ForeignPolicy:

foreignpolicy.com/2020/12/21/chi…
Starting around 2013, one year after the US govt became aware of the OPM hack, the CIA became aware that undercover CIA personnel, flying into countries in Africa and Europe for sensitive work, were being rapidly and successfully identified by Chinese intelligence.
U.S. officials believed Chinese intelligence operatives had likely combed through and synthesized information from these massive, stolen caches to identify the undercover U.S. intelligence officials, @zachsdorfman reports.
Read the entire article. Widespread corruption in China made Chinese govt officials especially vulnerable to CIA recruitment, Zach reports.

So Xi Jinping's anti-corruption drive was motivated in part by a very specific counterintelligence element.
It is exceedingly unclear to me why NYT hasn't scooped up Zach Dorfman yet.

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More from @BethanyAllenEbr

22 Dec
A couple of weeks ago, an employee of a CCP-run think tank asked me who my sources were.

I gave him the names of two characters from the Simpsons.

Seemingly impressed, he then offered to pay me for more.

A thread on CCP ineptitude:

axios.com/chinese-commun…
Aaron Shen (沈岳 in Chinese) sent me a request to connect on LinkedIn. He claimed to be the assistant director of international liaison at the China Center for Contemporary World Studies — the in-house think tank of the International Department of the Chinese Communist.
He and I exchanged messages for a couple of weeks. During that time, I saw his list of LinkedIn contacts grow from 55 to 72. The list included political risk analysts, a current U.S. Defense Department employee, a top exec at the US-China Business Council, and similar people.
Read 29 tweets
12 Dec
A whole generation of China hands in America, myself included, dedicated lives and years to the hope that the Chinese government could perhaps become as good and wise as the people it governs. It's really hard to accept that we were wrong. It's a profound grief.
I want there to be a better superpower than the US has been. I want there to be a country that doesn't act like the US too often has. But just because I want that, doesn't mean I can fool myself into believing that China will be that better, kinder superpower.
The Chinese government isn't evil incarnate; neither is the US government of course. But I believe we are far, far past the point where anyone can hope that China will bring a better, fairer, and more just international system.
Read 4 tweets
8 Dec
Exclusive: A suspected Chinese intelligence operative bundled donations for Eric Swalwell’s 2014 re-election campaign.

The operation targeted politicians in California & across the country.

Read Axios' year-long investigation, by me and @zachsdorfman:

axios.com/china-spy-cali…
The suspected operative, a Chinese national named Christine Fang, enrolled as a student at Cal State East Bay in 2011.

Fang’s friends and acquaintances said she was in her late 20s or early 30s, though she looked younger and blended in well with the undergraduate population.
She was the president of the Chinese Student Association and the campus chapter of APAPA, an Asian American civic organization. She was really, really good at running these clubs, and held a flurry of events that raised their profile -- and hers.
Read 22 tweets
24 Nov
As Americans were distracted by the election, 3 Chinese-American activists found themselves literally under siege on U.S. soil by masked protesters who claimed to support exiled Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui.

With Axios' @shawnarchen.

axios.com/chinese-activi…
This is one of the most bizarre (and alarming) stories I've written about in a long time. Bob Fu, a well-known Chinese-American Christian pastor in Midland, Texas, had to go into protective custody with his family as Chinese protesters surrounded his house for weeks.
Wu Jianmin, now living in California, was threatened by a man wielding a toilet plunger, and another man punched him and kicked him in the face multiple times as he crouched on the ground to protect himself.
Read 5 tweets
20 Oct
Right-wing outlets and commentators have recently spread a false claim linking the Chinese Communist Party to the Black Lives Matter movement.

This tweet thread will debunk that claim. For a summary, read my article for Axios:

axios.com/right-wing-med…
First, the non-factual claims: The Heritage Foundation published an article claiming that a Chinese-American organization, the Chinese Progressive Association of San Francisco, was working to "push the agenda of China’s communist government here in the United States."
The article's author, Heritage Foundation senior fellow Mike Gonzalez, also said that CPASF espouses a "desire for world communism."
Read 30 tweets
23 Sep
I remember when I was 12 feeling so helpless that i wasn’t legally allowed to work. My family had no money and I would daydream about working at a fast food restaurant, and how relieved my parents would be.
I spent summers working on our land and selling produce at the farmers market. I remember one year we had a bumper crop of onions and our stand became known as the place to buy the big onions good for onion rings.

Those onions paid for our house note one month.
In high school I participated in a summer vocational program for low income students. They had speakers come and talk about their jobs as construction workers and truck drivers. There was a summer job placement program but I wasn’t interested in what they offered...
Read 25 tweets

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