Zach Dorfman, a senior contributor to the National Security Project at the Aspen Institute, a U.S. think tank, recently published a series of investigative reports in Foreign Policy magazine. Zach Dorfman recently published a series of investigative reports in Foreign Policy magazine, revealing the inner workings of the intelligence and data race between the United States and China over the past decade. He was interviewed by our reporter Tang Jiajie about the findings of the investigation, which took more than a year.
Foreign Policy magazine began publishing three consecutive exclusive investigative reports on the 21st. In the first article, “China Steals Hundreds of Millions of Data, Undermines U.S. Intelligence System,” the author discusses how China has rebuilt its intelligence and data analysis teams since 2010. The second article focuses on how the U.S. is beginning to confront the Chinese threat after the destruction of the U.S. intelligence network in China under Obama.
How China’s intelligence community is “bear-hugging” technology companies
Reporter: Hello, Mr. Dorfman, this is the last in your series of investigative pieces that just came out today, and it focuses on the cooperation between the Chinese intelligence community and technology companies in the Trump era.
Dorfman: I want to make it very clear from the outset that the background of this investigative reporting is my interviews with over thirty current and former U.S. intelligence and national security officials.
The main finding of the third report is that Chinese intelligence services are increasingly involved in bear hug relationships with Chinese companies. Some of this is public information, such as the National Intelligence Law passed in 2017, which requires Chinese companies to cooperate with the requirements of Chinese intelligence services, such as the Ministry of State Security and Public Security.
What I also learned through my research is that Chinese intelligence services are essentially “outsourcing” their data processing needs to major Chinese technology companies. For example, if a Chinese intelligence unit wants to target someone and does not have sufficient capacity or resources, it will hand over to a major company to handle the cross-analysis of the big data, allowing a capable Chinese company to serve the intelligence unit.
U.S. officials told me that by the Trump era, they had more evidence of this type of activity.
There are no “ordinary companies” in China
Reporter: You quote a very vivid analogy in your report from a U.S. intelligence official who says it’s like the U.S. intelligence community being able to freely direct Google, Amazon, Microsoft and say, “Here, we need this analysis, give it to us next week,” and that China has Baidu, Alibaba and others helping the Chinese intelligence system grow in size, which he says is It’s not going to happen in the United States. So what does this relationship between the Chinese intelligence community and Chinese technology companies mean for the United States?
Dorfman: I think the big point is that these large Chinese technology companies are not likely to be operating as “normal companies” by U.S. or European standards. Even though these companies may have significant operations that are not related to intelligence gathering, because they are embedded in a political system that requires them to be auxiliaries in defending the (Communist) system when necessary.
It also means that U.S. policy makers, the American public, must view these Chinese companies differently than they view companies from other countries.
Reporter: What does the U.S. national security intelligence community think of the controls that the Trump administration has imposed on Chinese technology companies over the past four years?
Dorfman: I think there is a broad consensus in the U.S., and even in Europe, that there needs to be more vigilance and control over the potential security threats posed by Chinese companies operating overseas. But there is still disagreement on the level of threat identification and specific approaches.
When we’re talking about ByteDance, huawei or ZTE, they are different entities and in different businesses, and may pose different levels of threat. Another point is that people are also hesitant about the Trump administration using the crackdown on Chinese tech giants as a trade war bargaining chip. For example, Trump’s repeated ban on Chinese telecom company ZTE (2018) and the (2018) hint that the U.S. might drop the extradition of Huawei’s treasurer Meng Wanzhou as a trade war bargaining chip.
This sounds as if there is actually no concern that Chinese tech companies are a real threat. A frustrating situation for those who support a decisive approach to Chinese companies.
“This is a competitor the U.S. has never had before.”
Reporter: To summarize your three reports on the U.S.-China big data intelligence war, what do you most want readers to read? What kind of discussion could there be?
Dorfman: That’s a good question. I’d like to make two points, if I may.
First, the Chinese intelligence community has capabilities that the U.S. has never had as a competitor. Over the last decade, Chinese intelligence has placed a lot of emphasis on developing data and weaponizing it. When data is just singular, it is worthless. But when you have the ability to connect the data together and add sophisticated artificial intelligence and analytical systems to the construct, it becomes a new, dynamic, and continuous competition. And the United States has never faced this type of competition.
The other thing I want to say is that as I was covering this event, I started looking at what did the U.S. and Chinese intelligence agencies do? And what did the leadership of both countries do? It got me thinking about a problem where both sides are taking action and each action is influencing the other.
For example, when the U.S. CIA network was figured out by the Chinese government about ten years ago, China was so terrified that they started taking all the actions to prevent a repeat of the same mistake. When China started operating, there was a new reaction from the U.S. It was like ping pong balls reverberating between two very powerful countries. My reporting just shows how the last decade has unfolded, and none of us can fully anticipate the future.
Reporter: I’m curious, you say you’re not a reporter for China Line, what made you spend over a year doing this story on China?
Dorfman: I’m an intelligence correspondent, and I do national security and intelligence-related stories, so I’ve focused on countries like Russia and the Middle East. But I think the U.S.-China relationship is going to define the world for the next 50, 75 years, and it’s the most important bilateral relationship in the world.
I try to get a window into where that relationship is going from my little corner – intelligence and espionage – and that’s a window into the big issues.
Reporter:Thank you for the interview.
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