Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.
Speaker 2: A few quick notes before we get started. It's customary
Speaker 2: in Chinese for family names to come before given names,
Speaker 2: so with Shoe yan June, Shoe is his family name
Speaker 2: and Yan June is his given name. But almost everyone
Speaker 2: we spoke to and almost every document we reviewed for
Speaker 2: this story referred to him as Shoe, So for simplicity,
Speaker 2: you'll hear us do the same for him and for
Speaker 2: a few others. Also, the series includes material originally written
Speaker 2: and spoken in Chinese. At various points you'll hear actors
Speaker 2: voicing the translated versions in English. This episode also contains
Speaker 2: strong language. Finally, this is the second episode. If you
Speaker 2: miss the first, we recommend going back and listening from
Speaker 2: the beginning. Thanks.
Speaker 1: When Jordan and I first started going through the documents
Speaker 1: of this case, we saw a bunch of the usual
Speaker 1: things we'd expect, trial testimony, emails, that kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: but one thing really stood out. Remember, Shoe Yan June
Speaker 1: is a spy working for one of the most secretive
Speaker 1: agencies in the world, China's Ministry of State Security, so
Speaker 1: it was surprising to come across something much more intimate,
Speaker 1: something that made us feel like we were inside his head.
Speaker 3: June eleventh morning, eyeglasses prescription much safe. So the whole
Speaker 3: family worshiped the Buddha at Jamie Temple until twenty ninth evening.
Speaker 3: The Fami man and his wife held banquet. April fifth morning,
Speaker 3: when we was the second one close family to sweep
Speaker 3: great grandfather's tomb.
Speaker 4: Shoe Yen June had an online calendar where he put
Speaker 4: his appointments in.
Speaker 2: This is Bradley Hall, the lead FBI agent on the
Speaker 2: shoe Yan June case.
Speaker 4: At the end of the day, he would take little
Speaker 4: notes to himself about what happened that day. Sometimes it
Speaker 4: was related to source meetings. Sometimes it was related to
Speaker 4: work conflicts. Sometimes it was about his wife or his child,
Speaker 4: or the apartment that he wanted to buy.
Speaker 3: July fifteenth, afternoon, Chase the house signed the contract. May
Speaker 3: twenty fifth morning, Family day at the shell Shell's kindergarten.
Speaker 3: Hike to the Jing Mountain. June twenty fifth, afternoon, meet
Speaker 3: out music festival.
Speaker 2: She goes to a music festival. Shoe eats lobster. She
Speaker 2: takes his grandfather car shopper. Shee wins money at cards.
Speaker 3: Lay cards one fifteen hundred.
Speaker 2: Shee loses money at cards, lost the seven hundred. Shee
Speaker 2: loses more money.
Speaker 3: At cards nineteen fifteen, last seven hundred, last twenty one hundred,
Speaker 3: last one fifty, last six hundred.
Speaker 1: She seems to have been pretty bad at cards.
Speaker 4: So it was every little piece of his life that
Speaker 4: he very diligently put down in textual form for us.
Speaker 3: It was a diary.
Speaker 1: It was a diary.
Speaker 3: November sixteenth afternoon, watched Interstellar with John Nae. October thirty,
Speaker 3: first evening, karaoke November twenty eighth, after dinner for massage.
Speaker 3: February seventeenth evening, dined with John Howell. Three rounds of
Speaker 3: drinks puked.
Speaker 4: There were highs and lows, and we saw all of them.
Speaker 3: March to third. Grandfather passed away at ten forty pm.
Speaker 4: He's a complicated fella, would be the simplest way to
Speaker 4: put it.
Speaker 5: He has a misuse.
Speaker 4: He likes to gamble, he likes to womanize.
Speaker 1: She was married, but wasn't the most faithful husband.
Speaker 4: I don't remember how many girlfriends we identified, but there
Speaker 4: were quite a few.
Speaker 1: One of them starts to dominate his diary around this time.
Speaker 1: He refers to her with an Emoji A Peach.
Speaker 3: December thirty's evening Peach the beginning Wanda Huts. On June
Speaker 3: twenty ninth evening Peach twenty second afternoon picked up the
Speaker 3: Peach need the shelter and to give the date of
Speaker 3: August the seventh, when in karaoke afterwards, Peach was drunk
Speaker 3: and took her home in septem twenty noon Peach Nanjin Hotel.
Speaker 1: The details of she's personal life are pretty juicy, but
Speaker 1: what's even more incredible is that this spy meticulously documents
Speaker 1: his work life too.
Speaker 3: March fourteen, sixth bureau meets. January twenty fourth, held banquet
Speaker 3: with comrades of Aerospace team. November twenty fifth, worked overtime
Speaker 3: until two thirty eight, and Many thirteenth Pawnee comedian meeting.
Speaker 3: You're eleventh Matt G. Chowtree, March thirty first, Aviation briefing
Speaker 3: August to twenty fourth. My official promotion came. Waited for
Speaker 3: too long. It finally came. Took a load off my mind.
Speaker 1: It's normal enough to keep a diary, but shees recording
Speaker 1: things that are supposed to be secret, deniable things about
Speaker 1: his job and how he does it. It's an actual
Speaker 1: spies diary, and we got our hands on.
Speaker 2: It from Bloomberg News and iHeart Podcast. This is the
Speaker 2: sixth Bureau.
Speaker 1: I'm Jordan Robertson and I'm Drake Bennett.
Speaker 2: As by agencies go. China's Ministry of State Security is unique.
Speaker 2: First of all, it's massive. Estimates we've heard put it
Speaker 2: at hundreds of thousands of employees. It's way bigger than
Speaker 2: the FBI and the CIA combined, and it has an
Speaker 2: additional job. But those agencies don't industrial espionage stealing stuff
Speaker 2: from companies instead of governments.
Speaker 6: It wasn't just military information, it wasn't just US political information.
Speaker 6: They wanted trade secrets, they wanted everything.
Speaker 2: This is Matthew Mackenzie, a federal prosecutor on the shoecase.
Speaker 6: Everyone does espionage, but not every country uses their intelligence
Speaker 6: apparatus to steal commercial trade secrets. That is beyond the norms.
Speaker 1: Technically, this is correct. The CIA and FBI don't steal
Speaker 1: trade secrets, but the US government does have a history
Speaker 1: of it. In the late seventeen hundred, right after independence,
Speaker 1: the US offered bounties for anyone who could smuggle out
Speaker 1: loom designs from British cotton mills. Those mills had been
Speaker 1: built thanks to plans stolen from Italian silk spinners, an
Speaker 1: industry that Italians essentially stole from China centuries before. Fast
Speaker 1: forward to the nineteen nineties. China's economy is still recovering
Speaker 1: from the devastation of the Cultural Revolution, and the ruling
Speaker 1: Communist Party decides reasonably enough that they need to do
Speaker 1: whatever they can to catch up. Within a decade, China
Speaker 1: becomes the world's factory, churning out toys and textiles and
Speaker 1: kitchen appliances. They soon move on to more advanced technologies
Speaker 1: like smartphones and electric vehicles. Then, in twenty fifteen, the
Speaker 1: CCP codifies this ambition in a strategic plan called Made
Speaker 1: in China twenty twenty five, which is exactly what it
Speaker 1: sounds like, China making its own critical technologies and no
Speaker 1: longer relying on Western products. That policy and commitment largely worked. Today,
Speaker 1: it's safe to set they've caught up in many of
Speaker 1: these technologies.
Speaker 2: But one key area where they haven't is aerospace, building
Speaker 2: planes and helicopters and jet engines that other countries want
Speaker 2: to buy. That's where the MSS comes in. In particular
Speaker 2: one of its divisions, the sixth Bureau. Chu Yan June
Speaker 2: worked there on a team tasks with stealing the secrets
Speaker 2: of the world's top aviation companies.
Speaker 6: Everything in China is a top down approach, right. It
Speaker 6: is an edict from the government that we are going
Speaker 6: to make our own regional airliners, so we can stop
Speaker 6: buying from Boeing and stop buying from goe We're going
Speaker 6: to make our own domestic product.
Speaker 2: And Shu yan June's job is to work with engineers
Speaker 2: from China's state owned aerospace companies and get them exactly what.
Speaker 6: They need because they're the ones who are actually trying
Speaker 6: to build the plane.
Speaker 1: Which brings us to a recording that Shoe secretly made
Speaker 1: in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 6: My favorite part of the entire case.
Speaker 1: He's recording a talk by a man named Arthur Gao.
Speaker 1: This is the engine power.
Speaker 7: Therefore you have to do the power interrupt tests and
Speaker 7: EMI lightning.
Speaker 1: Arthur Goo was an engineer at the American company Honeywell.
Speaker 1: He worked on advanced technologies for both civilian and military aircraft.
Speaker 7: For control systems of helicopters, there are two very important issues.
Speaker 7: One is a rotodynamics, you have to take it into account.
Speaker 1: Arthur is originally from Taiwan, and he came to the
Speaker 1: US in the late seventies to get his PhD. He
Speaker 1: eventually wound up at Honeywell in Phoenix. He's been invited
Speaker 1: to China to give this talk in what was described
Speaker 1: as an academic exchange with the Nanjing University of Aeronautics
Speaker 1: and Astronautics. But when he got there, he wasn't brought
Speaker 1: to a university to give his talk. He was brought
Speaker 1: to a hotel room inside only a few people were there.
Speaker 6: Arthur thinks he's talking to all of these academics and
Speaker 6: students in It turns out that there are no academics,
Speaker 6: there are no students.
Speaker 1: They are MSS officers posing as people who work in
Speaker 1: the industry. There are also Chinese engineers, employees of China's
Speaker 1: state owned aerospace conglomerate AVIK, there to learn what they
Speaker 1: can from Arthur about his work at Honeywell.
Speaker 4: In particular the combat aircraft systems that Honeywell builds for
Speaker 4: the United States military.
Speaker 7: These are all military standards.
Speaker 1: They have very detailed regulation. Arthur talks to the group
Speaker 1: for about three hours.
Speaker 4: And At the conclusion of his presentation.
Speaker 1: FBI agent Bradley Hall, Shoe.
Speaker 4: Engineer, thanks him. They go through all the niceties and
Speaker 4: then they ask Arthur to step out of the room.
Speaker 3: Tuj Gal, maybe you can't head back first, Thank you
Speaker 3: so much.
Speaker 1: Arthur walks out of the room, leaving Shoe and the
Speaker 1: engineers alone. But the tape keeps rolling, and there's this
Speaker 1: amazing kind of easter egg. You know that narrative convention
Speaker 1: in movies and TV, where near the beginning of a story,
Speaker 1: some new character shows up and someone else has to
Speaker 1: explain to them, and by extension you the audience how
Speaker 1: everything works and who everyone is. Think Peggy Olsen's first
Speaker 1: day on the job in Madmoth.
Speaker 3: Now, this is the executive floor.
Speaker 5: It should be organized, but it's not.
Speaker 4: So you'll find account executives and creative.
Speaker 3: Executives all mixed together.
Speaker 8: Please don't miss the difference.
Speaker 3: Great, Hopefully you follow my lead.
Speaker 1: What we hear next on the recording is exactly that
Speaker 1: for Shoe's world. You hear someone take a sip of
Speaker 1: a drink and put their mug down on the table.
Speaker 1: You hear the door close behind Arthur, and then she
Speaker 1: turns back to the group of Chinese engineers.
Speaker 4: She and June starts describing how the MSS recruits Western experts,
Speaker 4: how they operate them, and how they found Arthur so
Speaker 4: that he could teach them about what the Americans were
Speaker 4: doing with their helicopters.
Speaker 2: She wants to know how the engineers think Arthur will
Speaker 2: be most useful to them, what kind of source he
Speaker 2: may be, So he lays out the different types of
Speaker 2: sources he brings in like a taxonomy of spies. Let's
Speaker 2: say he walks them through it.
Speaker 3: There are a few aspects to all collaborations.
Speaker 4: He actually has what he calls four levels of expert participation.
Speaker 4: The first level are high ranking experts.
Speaker 3: This expert is ranked highly and is reliable. The expert
Speaker 3: can directly participate in the design of the project.
Speaker 4: These are folks who have direct involvement in design both
Speaker 4: in the West and in Chinese systems. They have access
Speaker 4: to class out information in China and their long term
Speaker 4: sources as in These are the people that they keep
Speaker 4: on the books for fifteen twenty years and they call
Speaker 4: them in when they need them.
Speaker 3: This is our highest level of collaboration.
Speaker 2: A lot of the stories you hear about China. Stealing
Speaker 2: trade secrets involve hacking, breaking into computer systems, but spying's
Speaker 2: ultimately about something way more ordinary, cultivating relationships or using people.
Speaker 9: They invite people over under some kind of innocent sounding pretext.
Speaker 2: This is James Olsen.
Speaker 9: We'd like to invite you to China to give a
Speaker 9: guest lecture or to meet with our experts, just for
Speaker 9: a get acquainted a session, and we will compensate to
Speaker 9: you for that. There will be a stipend and we
Speaker 9: will cover all your expenses. And most people fall for it.
Speaker 2: James knows this because he was a.
Speaker 9: Spy in the Central Intelligence Agency for thirty one.
Speaker 2: Years, eventually the agency's chief of counterintelligence. So James has
Speaker 2: a pretty good idea of what a spy like shoey
Speaker 2: On June does, and he says, there's kind of a
Speaker 2: universal playbook on how to do it.
Speaker 9: It sounds cynical, but in the intelligence profession, we know
Speaker 9: that every human being has needs, and our job in
Speaker 9: intelligence is to identify what your need is. And our
Speaker 9: hope is that need is so compelling, so urgent, so
Speaker 9: important for you, that if we satisfy that need, you
Speaker 9: will assist us. You will violate your own country's laws.
Speaker 9: You will give us technology. It sounds terrible, but we
Speaker 9: are in the business of exploiting your weakness, your needs,
Speaker 9: your vulnerabilities, and we're good at it.
Speaker 1: Sometimes exploiting vulnerabilities as a matter of carots, but sometimes
Speaker 1: it sticks.
Speaker 9: People fear the MSS. Generally, they will put that in
Speaker 9: the frame of your family back in China is dependent
Speaker 9: on the government, and we would not want to do
Speaker 9: anything to make their life more difficult.
Speaker 6: I've seen cases where family members are arrested. I've seen
Speaker 6: cases where family members are sent by the MSS to
Speaker 6: deliver messages to people in the United States see either
Speaker 6: get in line or come back to China to face
Speaker 6: whatever consequences there are for them there.
Speaker 1: We don't know exactly why Arthur Gou did what he did.
Speaker 1: We tried multiple times to contact him for this series,
Speaker 1: but we never heard back. We also reached out to
Speaker 1: his former employer, Honeywell. They never responded. But we do
Speaker 1: know that when the MSS came calling, it was hard
Speaker 1: for Arthur to say no, and they came calling more
Speaker 1: than once. That talk in the hotel room wasn't a
Speaker 1: one off. The MSS first targeted Arthur two decades before.
Speaker 2: The first invitation came to Arthur in nineteen ninety seven
Speaker 2: from someone at the Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics
Speaker 2: or NUAA. You're going to hear NUAA a lot in
Speaker 2: this series because its staff worked really closely with the MSS.
Speaker 9: They allowed themselves to be used as cover to invite
Speaker 9: and to host foreign visitors so that they can assess them,
Speaker 9: wine them and dying them, develop them when they're making
Speaker 9: their trips to China. So it's a very very valuable
Speaker 9: relationship in the mssies.
Speaker 2: So the invitations from NUAA kept coming, and Arthur gou
Speaker 2: kept accepting them. He'd come give a talk, there'd be
Speaker 2: fancy meals, luxury cruises down the Youngs River, all expenses
Speaker 2: paid trips to visit tourist attractions. Then after he got
Speaker 2: home from a trip in two thousand and three, his
Speaker 2: contact followed up asking for very sensitive information. Arthur seemed
Speaker 2: to get suspicious and he cut things off. That worked
Speaker 2: for a while. The MSS, though, could be patient, like
Speaker 2: unbelievably patient. Eleven years later, his contact, who was actually
Speaker 2: an MSS officer named joh Wrong reaches back out like
Speaker 2: an old friend checking in.
Speaker 8: Come fries it has been eleven years.
Speaker 2: He mentions things about Arthur's personal life that only a
Speaker 2: friend should know.
Speaker 5: I heard that you had a son recently. Congratulations.
Speaker 2: He wishes Arthur's family a happy New Year, stay healthy,
Speaker 2: and invites him to return to China. If I were Arthur,
Speaker 2: I'd be creeped out, so he replies, but he doesn't
Speaker 2: commit to another trip.
Speaker 1: Two years later, in twenty sixteen, John nudges him again.
Speaker 1: This time Arthur caves. He tells Joe that he does
Speaker 1: have a trip to China coming up, a personal trip
Speaker 1: to see some friends. Jaw offers to pick him up
Speaker 1: at the Beijing airport. In the car, he introduces a
Speaker 1: supposed university colleague, it's actually shoe Yen June. During that visit,
Speaker 1: John Hue come up to Arthur's hotel room late at
Speaker 1: night and hand him three thousand dollars. Arthur's confused. This
Speaker 1: has been a strictly personal trip, no presentation, no meetings.
Speaker 1: He didn't even bring his work computer. They basically tell
Speaker 1: him keep it use it for the next trip. On
Speaker 1: the next trip, though, in twenty seventeen, when he gives
Speaker 1: that talk in the hotel, He's handed another envelope of money,
Speaker 1: this time it's five grand. At the time he gave
Speaker 1: that talk, Arthur gow was thinking about retirement. In a way,
Speaker 1: this only made him more useful. It meant he could
Speaker 1: come over for even longer periods of time and they
Speaker 1: could possibly even hire him.
Speaker 3: He said, he may retire in two years or so.
Speaker 3: He also wants to write he has the ability, he
Speaker 3: is competent, he has a desire to achieve something. We
Speaker 3: can also design it that way.
Speaker 2: Arthur Goud. He was the longest running assets in the case.
Speaker 2: I mean he what twenty years. What does he represent
Speaker 2: to you in terms of, you know, this organization's ability
Speaker 2: to run people for a long time.
Speaker 4: Both the long term nature of the operation and then
Speaker 4: the significant amount of damage that can happen over that timeframe.
Speaker 4: Bradley Hall with Arthur's example, when he did choose to disclose,
Speaker 4: he disclosed things that could hurt us. The helicopter that
Speaker 4: the Marine Corps is going to fly, the next level helicopter,
Speaker 4: there's no reason that the Chinese government needs to know
Speaker 4: the specifications of that. There's no reason an employee of
Speaker 4: any American companies should be prepared to pass that sort
Speaker 4: of information over.
Speaker 1: In twenty twenty one, Arthur Goo was indicted and pled
Speaker 1: guilty to exporting controlled information without a license. He was
Speaker 1: sentenced to three years probation in order to pay a fine. Okay,
Speaker 1: back to Shoo's taxonomy of the types of sources he recruits.
Speaker 1: Level one is kind of like having someone who works
Speaker 1: for you directly over a period of time. Level two
Speaker 1: that's more like having a consultant who's on call for
Speaker 1: specific one off jobs.
Speaker 4: These are folks who examine specific models, they solve problems.
Speaker 4: They usually come to China for a one month period,
Speaker 4: but fairly when frequently because they are working in companies
Speaker 4: in the West.
Speaker 3: If we have specific questions, we can't ask them. For instance,
Speaker 3: if we come across any problems in the project, we
Speaker 3: can present them with the questions directly in a very
Speaker 3: specific effession.
Speaker 1: Level three that's even less of a commitment.
Speaker 4: The third level he called topical experts. These are individuals
Speaker 4: who answer questions in person only or they provide reports
Speaker 4: that they only come into China for very very short
Speaker 4: durations of time because they're experts in their field back
Speaker 4: in the West, and it would be unusual or raise
Speaker 4: concerns if these people stay there for more than a
Speaker 4: week or a weekend or something like that. Shee indicated
Speaker 4: that this was the most common type of source, that
Speaker 4: he is an individual ran.
Speaker 3: This is something we've done quite a lot in the past.
Speaker 1: Arthur Goo was probably a level three. So is a
Speaker 1: man named Lee Young about meeting with Lee in his diary.
Speaker 3: April twentieth afternoon, pick up Lee from train station, check
Speaker 3: in Too Jinging hotel.
Speaker 1: We don't know that much about Lee Jong, but we
Speaker 1: do know that he was an expert on fighter aircraft
Speaker 1: and how to make them like the Lockheed Martin F
Speaker 1: thirty five, which is one of the world's most advanced
Speaker 1: fighter jets. We also know that when Shoe invited Lee
Speaker 1: to come give a talk in Nanjing, the MSS officer
Speaker 1: used in alias. When Lee arrives in April twenty fourteen,
Speaker 1: Hue and Jah Rong host a banquet in his honor.
Speaker 4: There's a level of rapport building. There's a level of
Speaker 4: whining and dining that's often involved with this, but it's
Speaker 4: not just.
Speaker 2: About rapport building. During the banquet, Shoe's colleagues sneak into
Speaker 2: Lee's hotel room and try to hack into his computer,
Speaker 2: but they run into problems and they can't get everything
Speaker 2: they want, so they invite Lee back a few months
Speaker 2: later for another visit. They want him to give a
Speaker 2: talk about electric takeoff and landing systems, and they want
Speaker 2: to take another crack at hacking into his laptop.
Speaker 3: December seventh, d Jones coming to Nanjing entertaining.
Speaker 2: Shoe brings lead to the hotel. Lee drops his stuff
Speaker 2: in his room and then heads off to dinner with
Speaker 2: Shoe's boss, Joe Wrong, who's waiting for him in a
Speaker 2: private dining room.
Speaker 5: I'm in the private room and the dishes have been order.
Speaker 2: Then Shoe and another colleague go to Lee's room to
Speaker 2: try and hack into his computer again. At six forty
Speaker 2: nine pm, Shoe texts his.
Speaker 10: Boss laptop but you're seeing sleepmoat one partable hot drive
Speaker 10: and then two small drives.
Speaker 2: The hack is taking longer than expected, and his boss
Speaker 2: gets impatient.
Speaker 5: It's too slow.
Speaker 2: Spit it up fifteen minutes later.
Speaker 10: If it doesn't work, copy it with your own computer.
Speaker 2: Now it's eight thirty nine pm. The operation has been
Speaker 2: going for almost two hours. Shoe updates his boss.
Speaker 10: The copying will more or less be done in fifteen minutes.
Speaker 10: Restoring the scene and documents who will take roughly twenty minutes.
Speaker 2: Hurry up, hurry up, because remember, Shoe's boss Jah Wrong
Speaker 2: is having dinner with Lee, and even a fake honorary
Speaker 2: banquet can only go on for so long.
Speaker 10: Finally, the cabbing is completed, restoring is in progress.
Speaker 2: After two hours and twenty two minutes, Shoe's.
Speaker 10: Done restored, exiting.
Speaker 4: You can let him toddle back up to his room.
Speaker 4: At this point.
Speaker 2: The next day, Lee gives his talk totally clueless. He's
Speaker 2: been hacked. We were never able to reach Lee Gum.
Speaker 2: As far as we know, he was never charged with
Speaker 2: any crimes.
Speaker 1: The fourth and final level of Shoes experts are called spotters.
Speaker 4: So these are people that we have living in the
Speaker 4: West whose job it is to identify engineers who might
Speaker 4: be susceptible for working with the MSS.
Speaker 1: These people are crucial for Shoe because they live in
Speaker 1: places like the US, places that are too risky for
Speaker 1: Shoe to go. Gi Chao Chun, the guy who was
Speaker 1: secretly recorded by the FBI in Chicago, G was a spotter.
Speaker 1: G was first approached by the MSS back in Beijing.
Speaker 1: It was twenty twelve. He was about to graduate from
Speaker 1: college and he was checking out a job fair on campus.
Speaker 1: He'd also applied to some grad schools in the US
Speaker 1: to get a master's degree in engineering. He wasn't sure
Speaker 1: exactly what he wanted to do next. At the job fair,
Speaker 1: he meets Jah Wrong, who's on a spotting mission of
Speaker 1: his own. The MSS officer introduces himself to G as
Speaker 1: a college professor and tells him about some vague opportunity
Speaker 1: in a quote confidential unit. This is G texting his
Speaker 1: girlfriend about that first conversation.
Speaker 5: He indicated that they wanted to train me to do
Speaker 5: things on their behalf because they are not able to
Speaker 5: leave the country.
Speaker 1: G was a perfect candidate for the sixth Bureau. He
Speaker 1: was already planning to go to the US for legitimate
Speaker 1: reason an engineering program, and so didn't need a cover,
Speaker 1: and he was psyched to be a spy. Once the
Speaker 1: MSS came clean about who they really were, he was
Speaker 1: all in. He got into a university in Chicago, signed
Speaker 1: official paperwork with the MSS, moved to the US, and
Speaker 1: got to work.
Speaker 9: His job was to provide background information and hopefully some
Speaker 9: assessment information on Chinese Americans who were working in high
Speaker 9: tech companies the United States.
Speaker 1: Former CIA Chief of Counterintelligence James Olsen.
Speaker 9: He was fired up. He really wanted to do this.
Speaker 9: It's kind of fun being a sply.
Speaker 1: And G had fun, a little too much fun. In
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen, he reaches out to a friend he knows
Speaker 1: from China. The friend is studying aeronautical engineering in Washington, DC.
Speaker 1: G wants his help finding potential sources, and he starts
Speaker 1: off by texting a photo of a bunch of one
Speaker 1: hundred dollars bills. It's operating fun from shoe Yan June,
Speaker 1: who's now his handler.
Speaker 5: Hucker, are you even there to photograph this? Photograph this?
Speaker 5: Sneakily delete after you see it.
Speaker 1: Then G eventually gets down to business in his own way.
Speaker 5: Fuck you ask around for me. Your school does anyone
Speaker 5: study engines or aircraft design? Yes, that's the major. I'ming
Speaker 5: help me out and befriend people in the field. When
Speaker 5: does spring break start? I'll give you funds for asshole.
Speaker 9: Yeah, halfway half to like him, you know. He flashed
Speaker 9: the money around. He bragged about what he was doing.
Speaker 9: He loved being kind of a boy.
Speaker 5: Spy, you know.
Speaker 2: And that's exactly what he was, a boy spy. I mean,
Speaker 2: imagine being fresh out of college and doing this job.
Speaker 2: You might act a little reckless too. And when you
Speaker 2: look at gez texts from around this time, you're like,
Speaker 2: oh right, he is still a kid. Take these messages
Speaker 2: with his dad.
Speaker 5: Dad is good c cucumber available now?
Speaker 2: Asking him for advice at the market.
Speaker 8: Only dried ones in this season. Good wines are available
Speaker 8: all the time, but no fresh ones in this season.
Speaker 8: Do the dry ones?
Speaker 5: The last updating him on his travel through customs. Got it.
Speaker 8: Put away your belongings, put on your slippers, and take
Speaker 8: a nice rest after you bought the plan, baby, do
Speaker 8: your best.
Speaker 2: And and the money he gets from the MSS I received.
Speaker 8: Six thousand, that is good. Stay safe, be vigilant, Try
Speaker 8: to understand others' agenda when you interact. Be grateful in
Speaker 8: US dollars, not remen b.
Speaker 2: These texts with his dad are all in twenty fourteen.
Speaker 2: A year later, Ji gets another text from Shoe, are
Speaker 2: you there?
Speaker 10: I have a favorite to ask.
Speaker 5: I'm here. Please go ahead, brother, Shoe.
Speaker 10: Here are three websites look up with these people separately.
Speaker 2: These people being engineers at Boeing, Lockey, Martin, Nasa, and Ge,
Speaker 2: all of whom were born in either China or Taiwan,
Speaker 2: and we're working in the US. She wants background checks
Speaker 2: on them, home addresses, phone numbers, who they're married to,
Speaker 2: sensitive stuff.
Speaker 3: A fee is required for the search, and he needs
Speaker 3: to be paid using a foreign visa card.
Speaker 5: Okay, I'll give it a try.
Speaker 2: A week later, G sends you the background checks he
Speaker 2: bought on the internet. He puts a password on the file,
Speaker 2: zips it, and gives it a cheeky code name Midterm
Speaker 2: Exam Paper.
Speaker 1: Honestly, these background checks, they're a small job for a
Speaker 1: rookie For now. G's pretty low down in shoes taxonomy,
Speaker 1: but it seems like he's trying to rise through the
Speaker 1: ranks and make himself more valuable to the MSS. After
Speaker 1: he completes grad school, G enlists in the US Army
Speaker 1: as a fast track to get American citizenship and a
Speaker 1: security clearance. So he may be young and reckless, but
Speaker 1: he's also pretty strategic. He has potential. The MSS is
Speaker 1: in the business of making bets. Some are big bets,
Speaker 1: like grooming engineers working abroad over the course of decades.
Speaker 1: Some are quite small, like giving a twenty something a
Speaker 1: bunch of cash and sending him out into the world
Speaker 1: to see where he ends up. But together, if enough
Speaker 1: of these bets pay off, they add up to something
Speaker 1: much bigger, a more powerful China, which is ultimately shoot
Speaker 1: Young June's mission. Near the end of the recording, after
Speaker 1: he's gone through his taxonomy with the Chinese engineers, he
Speaker 1: brings it back to what this is all really about.
Speaker 3: At the end of the day, we're all serving the state.
Speaker 3: We're all serving the state, right everyone, we all share
Speaker 3: the same go.
Speaker 6: That recording was almost dumb luck. I cannot believe they
Speaker 6: didn't turn that recording off before they dropped their pretenses.
Speaker 6: It really shines the spotlight on Chinese tradecraft.
Speaker 2: Shoe and the engineers. Is Boss joh wrong? Even the
Speaker 2: sources he's handling, g Chao Chun, Arthur Goo, Lee Giong.
Speaker 2: They're cogs in this giant machine. The talks at n Uaa,
Speaker 2: the hacking, the carrots, the sticks, the cash. This is
Speaker 2: what that machine looks like from the inside. So yeah,
Speaker 2: she is this cog, but this is also his life.
Speaker 2: And in the days after he records this meeting, he
Speaker 2: decides to take on a high risk, high reward operation,
Speaker 2: one that will completely upend his life and disrupt the
Speaker 2: machine for years to come.
Speaker 1: On the next episode, what about spy so vice.
Speaker 2: There's no question, there's no question, you know, and it's John.
Speaker 3: Reject AMW received today. An ungrateful person like him has
Speaker 3: no shame. I would have my revenge.
Speaker 4: He would have an amazing case and get a beautiful
Speaker 4: end of the year review and then be crushed a
Speaker 4: week later because a decimal point was wrong on a receipt.
Speaker 4: So that that yo yoing between your great and you're
Speaker 4: terrible clearly was having an impact on his state of mind.
Speaker 9: When Chiu saw Jang's LinkedIn profile, he said, Bingo Jack
Speaker 9: bought exactly what they want, and I'm going to go
Speaker 9: get it,