What espionage looks like today, according to America's counterintelligence chiefExBulletin

The days of cloak-and-dagger espionage look a little different in the digital age. But the espionage sector itself is very active and is becoming more and more so.

AILSA CHANG, HOST:

The spy business has changed in the digital age, but the spy business is only becoming more active. Mike Casey is the director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, and he spoke with NPR justice correspondent Ryan Lucas, who sends us this report.

RYAN LUCAS, BYLINE: Before Mike Casey took over as America's top counterintelligence official about seven months ago, he was staff director of the Senate Intelligence Committee. So he was already well aware of foreign spies, hackers, and general bad actors trying to steal America's secrets. What has changed in his new job, however, is that it is now his responsibility to keep these secrets safe.

MIKE CASEY: Fortunately for me – probably unfortunately for everyone – it turns out that counterintelligence is a growing business. More and more players are going at it with more tools, chasing more targets.

LUCAS: Top of the list of concerns, he says, are the usual foreign adversaries: China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. But other actors are increasingly getting into the game. This includes people in the private sector and cybercriminals.

CASEY: It's not just the Russians stealing secrets from the State Department anymore. It's everyone trying to steal all kinds of intellectual property, attacking critical infrastructure. It's just that the list goes on and on.

LUCAS: Despite all these changes, one foreign adversary still stands out, he says, for the ambition and scale of its espionage efforts: the People's Republic of China. Casey says Beijing studied 20th-century American history and came to the conclusion that the United States achieved its greatness in part by helping to create the global system that emerged from the ashes of World War II and the rules that governed it. govern.

CASEY: And they have a vision of national greatness that basically says if we can supplant the United States and key technologies, military and non-military, and help establish some sort of international regulatory system for all of that, then we will become the preeminent actor. on the international scene.

LUCAS: And that, he says, has influenced the way Chinese intelligence operates and the type of targets they pursue in the United States.

CASEY: It's not so much – you know, no guy in a black hat breaks into the factory and steals the armor from the tank in the back. This is much more like a hacking operation or hiring a scientist.

LUCAS: He points to a recent Justice Department case accusing a former Google engineer of stealing the building blocks of the company's AI technology. The accused, a Chinese national, allegedly worked secretly for two China-based technology companies at the same time he stole files from Google. The case is just the latest in what U.S. officials say is a relentless campaign by China to try to steal U.S. trade secrets, cutting-edge research and technology, and intellectual property in order, as Casey said, to overtake the United States as the first country. first World power.

U.S. lawmakers and officials, including Casey, have spent a lot of time in recent years meeting with U.S. companies and universities in an effort to brief them on what officials say the Chinese government is up to. Casey says the conversation has changed over the past five years.

CASEY: The question you asked yourself then was: really? How bad is it? I'm not sure I believe you. The question now is: what should I do? And that’s a fundamental change.

LUCAS: Russia, of course, is another major counterintelligence problem, but Casey says the Kremlin doesn't target U.S. economic secrets the way China does.

CASEY: Certainly not to the same extent. I mean, they're still much more in their classic model of government secrets, military secrets.

LUCAS: Although China and Russia are two of Casey's biggest concerns, a recent Justice Department case demonstrated that smaller countries can't be neglected either. A former US ambassador, Victor Manuel Rocha, was arrested and charged late last year with spying for Cuba. He has since agreed to plead guilty. The fact that a former ambassador spied is bad enough, but Rocha did it undetected for about 40 years. So how big was this counterintelligence failure?

CASEY: It's obviously not a small problem, but we don't know how big it was until we assess the damage. The IC will carefully examine everything that was compromised and the type of damage caused. But certainly, somewhere, we missed the ball.

LUCAS: Rocha's spying predates Casey's time in office. Still, it brings home a point Casey makes about the espionage business: Never assume you know everything and have everything under control. We do counter-espionage, he said. Paranoia is kind of what we do.

Ryan Lucas, NPR News, Washington.

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