Politico: How Silicon Valley turned into a spy den

Spies here are “very much a part of everyday life,” a former US intelligence official told the author.

Фото: Depositphotos

The open business culture of Silicon Valley has contributed to the emergence of a new, “soft”, unconventional espionage, the main purpose of which is trade secrets and technology, the journalist writes Politico Zach Dorfman, translation of which is provided by the site InoPressa.

“What complicates the situation, many former US intelligence officials say, is that many foreign intelligence “gatherers” are not spies in the traditional sense. They do not work in embassies or consulates and may be associated with a government business and research institute rather than an intelligence agency. It is particularly common for Chinese employees to coax or even threaten Chinese citizens working or studying there (or American citizens with family members in China) to hand over valuable technological information to them,” the article states.

“If we want to understand a world in which the Russians and Chinese are ramping up their spy games against the United States, we need to look at what's happening in San Francisco,” Dorfman said.

The heightened interest of Russian intelligence in San Francisco dates back to the beginning of the Cold War. Then the Russians are mostly collected information about military facilities.

Since then, Russian operations have become bolder, except for the period immediately after the Cold War.

“The only moment when everyone felt relieved about Russia, like, maybe things have changed, was under Gorbachev,” said former counterintelligence officer Laray Quai. “We even put up a big ‘Closing Down’ sign at the Palo Alto station.” But optimism quickly faded with Putin's election in 2000, Kuay recalls. “Russia has steadily increased its efforts since then,” he said.

Russian spies began to increasingly focus on information about technologies that are valuable or potentially having dual uses. The traditional center of espionage was the consulate of Russia in San Francisco, closed by the Trump administration in September 2017.

Photo by wikipedia.org

But Russian intelligence has alternative ways, the article notes.

One potential mechanism is Rusnano USA, Rusnano's only American subsidiary, according to former intelligence officials. It was founded in 2011 and is located next to Stanford University.

An ex-intelligence official told Politico: “Some of the activities that Rusnano USA has been involved in are not just about getting technology, but about getting people into venture capital firms, developing relationships in Silicon Valley that would allow them to spread their tentacles all over the place.” . And Rusnano USA was a kind of mechanism for this.”

According to a former intelligence official, Rusnano was interested in technologies for both civilian and potentially military purposes. US intelligence officials were very concerned about contacts between Rusnano USA employees and alleged Russian intelligence officers. “The Russians viewed Rusnano USA as an intelligence platform on which they deployed their operations,” the source told Politico.

Russia is also using old-school methods, the author reports: "Intelligence officials suspected that Russian spies were recruiting high-end prostitutes from Russia and Eastern Europe, using the classic Russian honey trap method to obtain information from executives of technology and venture capital companies in the San Francisco Bay Area." (and about themselves)."

It was found that Russian intelligence officers could have been informed by sex workers in elite bars and nightclubs. These include the luxury Rosewood Sand Hill hotel, located near many leading technology companies, and the upscale Redwood Room bar at the Clift Hotel in downtown San Francisco, the article says.

According to former intelligence officers, in the long term, no less, if not a greater threat, is China. In terms of economic espionage, Chinese intelligence uses a more decentralized strategy compared to Russian one.

“China, to achieve its goals, relies on a much larger pool of population and uses self-interested businessmen, ardent nationalists, students, travelers, and so on,” the article says. One former intelligence officer likened China's approach to an "Oklahoma land rush": an attempt to grab as much patented technology or intellectual property as possible, as quickly as possible, through as many channels as possible.

Although the lion's share of counterintelligence resources in the Bay Area goes to China and Russia, a number of friendly intelligence agencies are also active in Silicon Valley, Dorfman continues. In the field of economic intelligence, South Korea has become a “thunderstorm”, especially sophisticated in cyber espionage. US officials were forced to give South Korea a “stern warning” about US hacking, a former intelligence official said.

Israel is also active. He uses the information gathered to encourage private Israeli firms to acquire certain start-ups or other technology companies in Silicon Valley. In 2000, French intelligence used a similar strategy, the author reports.

There is disagreement in the US intelligence community over how much resources should be devoted to soft espionage by allies. One former senior intelligence official noted: “My understanding is that they are trying to profit from economic espionage. But is French espionage worth the emotional cost, given what the Russians are up to?

Many cases of economic espionage not only do not come to trial, but often are not registered at all, a Politico journalist reports. “The biggest problem we have with many companies is their reluctance to go to trial,” said former FBI agent LaRay Qui, who retired in 2006. — Their employee sells technology, say, to the Russians or the Chinese, and instead of notifying his shareholders and investors about this. Well, we've got a guy, or we have information, and we'd like to take it to the next level, and they don't want to go ahead with it because of the bad press. It's the most unpleasant thing in the world."

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