Matthew Brazil
As seen in:
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Yahoo News,
The Daily Beast,
National Review,
Yahoo,
U.S. NAVAL INSTITUTE,
Jamestown Foundation,
RealClear World,
SpyTalk,
Greenhouse Canada
Covers:
Chinese espionage, the PRC surveillance state, US-China tech transfer, US-China relations
Coauthor, Chinese Communist Espionage (2019); Fellow, Jamestown Foundation. Tips and docs welcomed on China’s spy orgs for upcoming book. Former blue check.
Articles by Matthew Brazil
New Legislation Could Increase Security Presence in Hong Kong
Executive Summary: Two new pieces of national security legislation in Hong Kong introduce six offenses and six “prohibited places,” signaling closer alignment with the laws of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) mainland and raising concerns about the safety and freedom of foreigners and locals. The Office for Safeguarding National Security (OSNS), Beijing’s counter-subversion arm, is central to these efforts.
Star Hostage: TSMC, China’s Drive to Conquer Taiwan, and the Race to Win AI Superiority
Executive Summary: Talent flows uncovered between Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company’s (TSMC) operations in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and several sanctioned PRC firms constitute risks to the company’s position at the leading edge of the global chip industry. TSMC’s transition to encompass other parts of the value chain, ostensibly to avoid monopoly concerns, exacerbates these risks.
The Shapeshifting Evolution of Chinese Technology Acquisition
Executive Summary: Smuggling, a critical tool of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to acquire technology to enhance its defense industrial base, is reemerging in the wake of the US Government’s technology controls. Diversion—falsifying the end-user—is another common tactic that the Party has successfully used to acquire critical technology, including dual-use items that it would have been otherwise unable to obtain.
The Qin Gang Saga Reveals Security Gaps
Executive Summary: In June 2023, Qin Gang, the former foreign minister of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), mysteriously disappeared, with rumors speculating torture and execution. Recent reports suggest that he remains alive and has been demoted to a deputy director position at World Affairs Press under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Foreign Intelligence Hackers and Their Place in the PRC Intelligence Community
Executive Summary: Leaked files from iS00N reveal deep insights into the PRC’s intelligence operations, highlighting an intensified global security offensive as well as issues within the intelligence community. iS00N’s growth is tied to Xi Jinping’s aggressive policies and demonstrates the importance of private contractors in fulfilling the PRC’s increased intelligence and security needs.
The Lion, the Wolf Warrior and the Crossroads: UK-China Relations at a Turning Point
Introduction In early 2018, UK Prime Minister Theresa May visited China with a British business delegation, seeking a free trade deal and expressing optimism over Beijing’s “one country, two systems” formula for governing Hong Kong (Global Times, January 31, 2018; Zaobao, January 31, 2018). In her first foreign trip since moving into 10 Downing Street, she promised that the “golden era of relations” between the UK and China would be even better after Brexit (Xinhua, February 1, 2018).
How to Stop China's Spying on Western Europe
How to Stop China's Spying on Western Europe As Washington’s allies struggle to resist Beijing’s worldwide espionage and influence offensive, the U.S. can set an example. Read Full Article »
China Is Spying on Western Europe. Here’s How to Fight It | National Review
As Washington's European allies struggle to resist Beijing's worldwide espionage and influence offensive, the U.S. can set an example.
Chinese Communist Espionage
Peter Mattis Peter Mattis is a research fellow in China studies at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation and a contributing editor at War on the Rocks. He previously was a fellow at The Jamestown Foundation and edited its biweekly China Brief from 2011 to 2013. He also worked as a counterintelligence analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency. He lives in Portland, Oregon.
A China Spy Thriller 'Inspired by Actual Events'
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A China Spy Thriller 'Inspired by Actual Events'
Share What makes a trusted official or spy into a turncoat? What unravels the loyalties of a lifetime? The answers are both mundane and complex, a locksmith’s combination of greed, desperation, resentment and malevolent ambition in all their permutations. At some point, life and work become unsustainable, even insufferable. A turncoat goes over to the enemy side, often as a “defector-in-place,” staying behind as a secret agent and spying on former colleagues.
China’s Shadow in the Laguna Hills Killings
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China’s Shadow in the Laguna Hills Killings
The Laguna Hills, California church shooting on Sunday highlights a secretive and little known arm of the Chinese Communist Party operating in the United States. It was one of two shootings last weekend, both horrific. The worst of the two has been on everyone’s lips: at a Tops Supermarket in Buffalo, New York, where 10 people were killed and three injured when a lone, white-supremacist gunman opened fire at customers and employees.
SpyTalk - The Daily Beast
SpyTalk, now in its 15th year, is where Jeff Stein leads an all-star team of veteran investigative reporters, writers, and subject-matter experts who will take you behind the scenes of the national security state. You may remember Jeff as the Spytalk columnist for years at Newsweek, and before that, at The Washington Post and before that Congressional Quarterly. This time around, however, he’s aided by a sterling roster of veteran journalists as contributing editors.
Pepper weevil studies bring new products to light
The pepper weevil is a native North American pest with origins in Mexico. While it does not overwinter outdoors in Canada, it is routinely re-introduced with pepper imports from regions where the pest is prevalent. Beginning in 2009, pepper weevil has periodically appeared in Ontario, but only in 2016 was it considered a major crop pest when it incurred significant greenhouse and field pepper crop losses.
Diplomats in Wolves' Clothing
Share China’s popular, flag-waving Wolf Warrior movies employ parts of the Rambo formula for box office success: heroic soldiers in hand-to-hand combat with foreign and domestic enemies, car chases, shootouts, and, of course, explosions. Largely absent from that formula: any stultified and ignorant government officials and politicians who hinder our hero—because, after all, the Communist Party of China is always correct.
Diplomats in Wolves' Clothing
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How China and Russia Spy on Us
Russian President Vladimir Putin shakes hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping during their meeting on the sidelines of a BRICS summit in Brasilia, Brazil, November 13, 2019. (Sputnik/Ramil Sitdikov/Kremlin/Reuters) With differing capabilities and tactics, both infiltrate American institutions Do China and Russia share a common set of opponents in world affairs? One might immediately think, yes, they do: the United States, the United Kingdom, and their allies.
A Dazzling Debut Spy Thriller Carved in Poison
Share In Smiley’s People, the KGB assassinates a former Soviet general who spied for the British and is retired in London. John le Carré’s legendary spymaster George Smiley is brought back from retirement to assess the damage and sweep the mess under the proverbial carpet. But instead of a coverup, Smiley launches an operation that bags an enormous prize for British intelligence. Sergei Lebedev’s Untraceable also begins with a Russian state-sponsored assassination.
Mystery of Top Chinese Spymaster Dong Jingwei’s Rumored Defection Gets Weirder Original
By Matthew Brazil and Jeff Stein Where is Dong Jingwei? Widespread rumors that China’s top counterintelligence official had defected to the United States last February reached a fever pitch over the weekend, propelled largely by unfounded reports in anticommunist and pro-Trump circles that Dong had brought with him evidence that the Covid-19 pandemic had originated in a leak from a virology lab in Wuhan, not from an animal source. The Wuhan lab leak theory has not been proven.
High-level Chinese Defection Rumored
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High-level Chinese Defection Rumored
Share Chinese-language anti-communist media and Twitter are abuzz this week with rumors that a vice minister of State Security, Dong Jingwei (董经纬) defected in mid-February, flying from Hong Kong to the United States with his daughter, Dong Yang. Dong Jingwei supposedly gave the U.S. information about the Wuhan Institute of Virology that changed the stance of the Biden Administration concerning the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Rumors of U.S. Secretly Harboring Top China Official Swirl
HECTOR RETAMAL/AFP via Getty Images Chinese-language anti-communist media and Twitter are abuzz this week with rumors that a vice minister of State Security, Dong Jingwei defected in mid-February, flying from Hong Kong to the United States with his daughter, Dong Yang. Dong Jingwei supposedly gave the U.S. information about the Wuhan Institute of Virology that changed the stance of the Biden administration concerning the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Novedades en la RED, Nº 816: Escalada en Jerusalén
Documentos Scottish Independence will impact the UK’s global role Entrevista a Philip Rycroft, quien estuvo al frente del Department for Exiting the European Union, y Kirsty Hughes, director del Scottish Centre on European Relations sobre las implicaciones para Reino Unido de una independencia de Escocia.
A Wild Ride into a Future War With China
Share The possibility of a future clash between American and Chinese forces, and how to avoid another disastrous world war, are among the most debated issues in Washington. Now comes 2034: A Novel of the Next World War. The story tackles the prospect of a future war head-on in a rapid-fire narrative that, in the mold of Tom Clancy’s best military techno-thrill…
How China’s Devastating Microsoft Hack Puts Us All at Risk
© Provided by The Daily Beast Michael Borgers/Getty By Matthew Brazil During World War II, the Chinese communists cultivated opium in their base area and trafficked it into Japanese-occupied cities. Mao Zedong’s man in charge was one of the biggest master spies of the period, Li Kenong. Though Mao later regretted cultivating the “special product,” which he called “that certain thing,” the drug caused disruption in the enemy rear and benefited the Red-area economy.
A Memoir of Sleuthing Out Trade Cheating
By Matthew Brazil I first realized we were going to China while sitting at a bus stop outside the Commerce Department. It was late on a sunny spring afternoon in 1990. The Washington Monument rose high above as snarled rush-hour traffic inched along Constitution Avenue. I was reading Life and Death in Shanghai, by Nien Cheng.
A Detective in China: A Memoir of Sleuthing Out Technology Cheating
Share I FIRST REALIZED WE WERE GOING TO CHINA while sitting at a bus stop outside the Commerce Department. It was late on a sunny spring afternoon in 1990. The Washington Monument rose high above as snarled rush-hour traffic inched along Constitution Avenue. I was reading Life and Death in Shanghai, by Nien Cheng. Not really a beginner in Chinese but still st…
China’s Top Spy is a Working Class Hero
Share Chen, Wenqing Chen—never a 007, no martinis shaken or stirred, no tuxedo or Aston Martin. He’s just a working-class guy—and the star of China’s civilian spy apparatus, the MSS. Tall and athletic-looking—according to official photos that only show him from the waist up—with a square-jaw and the black dyed hair common among Chinese leaders, Chen has the looks of a hero in a Chinese spy flick.
Can Intel & Nvidia Escape Blame for China's Vast Repression?
Share Silicon Valley semiconductor giants Intel and Nvidia are deeply enmeshed in China’s repression of its Uyghur minority, despite their insistence that they don’t know about or shouldn’t be held responsible for the end-use of mass surveillance systems with their advanced computer chips, a SpyTalk analysis finds.
Exposed: Silicon Valley's Hand in Chinese Surveillance
Share Silicon Valley semiconductor giants Intel and Nvidia are deeply enmeshed in China’s repression of its Uyghur minority, despite their insistence that they don’t know about or shouldn’t be held responsible for the end-use of mass surveillance systems with their advanced computer chips, a SpyTalk analysis finds. The typically close technical coordination be…
China's Spy Plot is Full of Holes
Share As spy stories go, China put on quite a show this week. Problem was, the plot was full of holes. As if dreamt up by a cinematic maestro, Chinese broadcast and print media announced a startling development over October 11 and 12: Beijing’s State Security forces had “recently” “captured several hundred Taiwan spies.” Not so recent it turned out. And the details were scant: nothing on when the operation started and ended, nor about the actual number of spies captured.
Is China Preparing to Attack Taiwan?
Share Worries are growing that China is going to take advantage of U.S. election chaos and seize islands belonging to Taiwan, raising the spectre of a military clash with the U.S. Navy that could quickly escalate into a larger military conflict—one that war-gamers say Washington cannot win. Analysts consulted by SpyTalk point to Beijing’s growing impatience wi…
Is China Preparing to Attack Taiwan?
Share Worries are growing that China is going to take advantage of U.S. election chaos and seize islands belonging to Taiwan, raising the spectre of a military clash with the U.S. Navy that could quickly escalate into a larger military conflict—one that war-gamers say Washington cannot win.
Thinking the Unthinkable: Are American Organizations in China Ready for a Serious Crisis?
Since the 2016 General Election, American relations with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) have followed a rollercoaster-like trajectory. Days before his inauguration, President Trump briefly reversed decades of predictable American conduct in a telephone conversation with Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen and hinted a departure from the “one China policy,” (CNA.com.tw, December 3, 2016; Reuters, January 12).
China's Spy Plot is Full of Holes
Share As spy stories go, China put on quite a show this week. Problem was, the plot was full of holes. As if dreamt up by a cinematic maestro, Chinese broadcast and print media announced a startling development over October 11 and 12: Beijing’s State Security forces had “recently” “captured several hundred Taiwan spies.” Not so recent it turned out. And the details were scant: nothing on when the operation started and ended, nor about the actual number of spies captured.
China’s Counterintelligence “Trinity” and Foreign Business
As the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) pursues a domestic anti-spy campaign and new espionage laws, PRC national security concerns and greater suspicion of foreigners may trump foreign business complaints about unfavorable treatment, rising trade barriers, and feeling unwelcomed.
The Stable Door and Chollima: Chinese Computers and North Korean IT - Jamestown
In early 2016, Chinese border authorities reportedly cracked down on exports to North Korea due to irritation over Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons and missile tests. Despite these and previous sanctions, computers and electronics appear to be freely available in Pyongyang. Such electronics play a vital role in enhancing the strength of the North Korean state, in particular its own cyber capabilities and advanced weapons programs.
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