![]() On April 26, Charles Lieber, the former Harvard chemist, was sentenced by a court in Boston for lying about his ties to China in a case of economic espionage.Īs the U.S. Also in April, New York lawmakers exposed that Chinese police had set up an office in Manhattan’s Chinatown from which they ran intimidation campaigns against ethnic Chinese who hold views divergent from those of the Chinese Communist Party. policymakers heading into an election season. Then, in April, a national security leak by a young Massachusetts Air National Guardsman touched on China, amplifying fear of Chinese spying and once again making Beijing into a political football for U.S. and watched as a bipartisan committee in Congress grilled TikTok’s CEO about the ways the Chinese social media platform famous for teenage dance videos might be threatening American Democracy. In March, the world tracked a Chinese spy balloon floating across the width of the U.S. In the spring of 2023, Chinese spying is having a moment thanks to a series of events that have further exposed American fears about the rising power across the Pacific. ![]() Illustration for The China Project by Alex Santafé America’s spring season of paranoia LinkedIn declined to comment for this article. ![]() This last report did not point the finger at China, but the recruitment efforts sounded similar to those in the U.S., France, and Germany. In 2021, the British government warned that spies had tried to contact more than 10,000 U.K. German security services concluded that at least 10,000 German citizens were contacted by Chinese spies on the social network, warning the number was probably a significant undercount. A French report claimed that Chinese spooks approached 4,000 members of the French government and business elite on LinkedIn. is not the only nation being targeted on LinkedIn. law enforcement and doing “everything we can to identify and stop this activity.” Counterintelligence and Security Center, told Reuters that LinkedIn’s website was the “ultimate playground for collection” of intelligence because government officials frequently post about their security clearance status, making it easy for Beijing’s spooks to spot targets.Īt the time of the Mallory case, LinkedIn Vice President of Trust and Safety Paul Rockwell said that the company was talking with U.S. In 2018, William Evanina, then America’s top spycatcher, said China was running a “ super aggressive” effort on LinkedIn to recruit spies. Screenshot from Kevin Mallory’s LinkedIn page, which is still live is unsure how much spying Mallory did for the MSS, in 2019, he was sentenced by the Virginia Eastern District Court to two decades behind bars, a term he is now serving at the U.S. The “research” they asked him for turned out to be classified information. The Yangs told Mallory they were looking for an expert on foreign affairs to help them with research for the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences. (Their Chinese names could not be confirmed.) Richard Yang then passed Mallory to Michael Yang, likely a member of the Shanghai bureau of the Ministry of State Security (MSS, 国安部 guó’ān bù), China’s main civilian intelligence agency. Mallory’s training led him to suspect that Yang was likely a Chinese spy, and court records show that Mallory replied, “I’m open to whatever. ![]() In February, 2017, Mallory found himself out of work, behind on his mortgage and $200,000 in debt when he received a message on LinkedIn from one Richard Yang, inviting him to become a part of his network. From 1987 to 2012, Kevin Mallory worked in a variety of intelligence jobs, including as a Central Intelligence Agency case officer recruiting spies. ![]()
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