Cornucopia of Vectors of Theft: How China Is Stealing America's Economic Future

A former CIA officer on China’s espionage successes, America’s IP losses, and the growing threat to the U.S. economy.

Host John Sipher sits down with his former CIA colleague Glenn Chafetz, now Director of the 2430 Group, a nonprofit focused on state-sponsored espionage against the economy. Chafetz explains how technology has transformed espionage — from the days of clandestine meetings in parking garages where “if you didn’t get caught red-handed, you didn’t get caught” to a world where "commercial surveillance far outstrips government surveillance" and the changes the technological expansion required of the CIA.

He describes China's coordinated, party-state, intentional, and purposeful effort to steal American intellectual property (IP) calling China’s intelligence service "the single most successful intelligence organization in the history of the planet." He argues that American companies are losing the IP war because their focus on quarterly profits prevents them from calculating the significant long-term cost of stolen technology and making needed investments in counterintelligence efforts that would protect their IP.

He warns that China's informal network of autocracies — Russia, Iran, North Korea — functions as a modern "Axis of Evil," and that the U.S. is destroying its own alliance network at the worst possible time. He closes with advice for companies: You have to become sufficiently expert in economic espionage, counter-espionage, counterintelligence, because if you don't, your competitors will.

Guest info: Glenn Chafetz is the Director of the 2430 Group, a nonprofit providing research and advice on state-sponsored espionage efforts against the US economy, and publisher of the tRed Report, the organization’s recurring intelligence/geopolitical brief . He served at the State Department and the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency before spending much of his 30 year government career at the CIA which included three tours as Chief of Station.. He became the first person to oversee the Agency’s program of espionage tradecraft in the age of technological expansion.

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