China Has the NSA For Lunch

December 26, 2007:

The U.S. recently revealed that China had done some major damage to the NSA (National Security Agency) via penetration of the NSA facility in Hawaii (which concentrates on monitoring China.) The Chinese effort was two-fold. First, the Chinese set up a Chinese translation service in Hawaii, and managed to make it appear as American owned (and able to pass a security check). Eventually, this translation company got NSA contracts to translate material obtained from China. The operators of the translation of the company were able to pass the NSA material back to China, letting the Chinese know what information the NSA was picking up, which helped the Chinese figure out how the NSA was getting certain information, and with what. This made it easier to prevent the NSA from getting certain information, or setting up a trap, to feed the NSA false information.

But there was more. Many of the NSA employees were Chinese-American. The Chinese set up a recruiting operation, that was so carefully established and run, that it was several years before U.S. counter-intelligence caught on, and shut it down.

Using a translation service? Maybe for open source intelligence like newspapers, but for real intel like intercepts? Yikes. You'd even imagine computer translation would be close enough and far safer than using an outside source.

I don't know what to do about Chinese-Americans in these situations, but I know if I was China, I'd fly a false flag operation and claim to be Taiwanese intelligence and ask the Taiwanese-Americans to help Taiwan (all the while actually passing this stuff back to China.)

For the ethnic Chinese, appeal to nationalism.

For non-Chinese, drop a honey pot or some money. I can see the cables back to Beijing "Will need two agents. Subject likes three-ways. Also, prefers C cup or larger. Must be willing to do girl on girl. Suggest hiring agents out to porn production company on the side to reduce our costs. p.s. don't forget to include two cartons of Pandas this time. We are dying here with only Marb Lights!"

By the way, this is why we only sell dumbed-down versions of stuff to Taiwan. Wayyyyy too many leaks back to China. One father-son team in the Taiwan navy were selling US equipment documentation on CDs to China for NTD 500 each.