Speaker 1: It's actually a place of choice. You're giving the choice
to listen to whatever you would like to when it
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Good morning, Drake and Jordan.
Speaker 2: How are you doing doing great? Thanks Ay dude, so
great er. Thanks for having us on.
Speaker 1: Well, I gotta tell you you guys are talking about
something on this podcast. And well, first of all, I
love the fact that you're doing a podcast and it's
not being stuffed into just a three minute report. You're
giving me, as the listener, an opportunity to really study
the experience because it is us an experience when it
comes to these six bureau.
Speaker 2: That's great to hear.
Speaker 3: That's great, really really appreciate hearing that row and that's
been our goal. I mean, like the podcast and it's
the first time that either Drake or I have done
a podcast series. But the deeper we got into this
reporting from more, we realized this was the podcast series
was the perfect vehicle for the reporting we got on
this Chinese spy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because the one thing that you're doing here is
that you're letting us inside something that history has chosen
to set aside, and then we walk forward because we think, ah,
if I don't know about it, then it didn't really happen.
But my god, I mean, you talk about being in
the right place at the right time when it comes
to anything associated with the sixth Bureau.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean I think basically the sixth Bureau, just
to kind of help listeners out, is a part of
the MSS, the Minister State Security, which is the kind
of the most important spy agency that.
Speaker 2: You've never heard of.
Speaker 4: It's China's main intelligence agency and they've got responsibilities that
are similar to the CIAS or the KGB or whatever.
But then they have this extra kind of portfolio which
is trade secret theft, economic espionage, and it's something that
kind of I think people are aware that it happens,
but not they don't really know much about the folks
at in China who are pulling the strings to sort
of make these operations happen.
Speaker 2: Usually it's kind of like a low level recruit.
Speaker 4: That gets arrested. So we're actually able to tell the
story of kind of like a spymaster over in China
because of the fact that he ended up getting and
this is the story we tell, like lured out of China, arrested,
put on trial in the US, and when that happens,
all this amazing information comes out about him and his organization.
Speaker 1: I mean, that was the very first time that someone
was arrested on American soil, was it not? And if
it is all of a sudden, now my eyes are
wide open, going who else is out there? Because this
is not just a one person job.
Speaker 2: That's right?
Speaker 3: Ear Yeah, I mean, this is this case that we're
that we profile that we do in the series. It
truly is one of the kind case there has never
been a case before like this, There might never be
a case like this. Again, this was the first time
a Chinese Ministry of State Security intelligence officer had been
lured out of China. Arrested in Belgium actually and extradited
to the US and put on trial for trade secret
theft that has literally never happened there at the you know,
the backstory to this is there's an incredible, creative, imaginative
FBI sting operation that gets this guy to travel, which
you know, within China, these MSS officers.
Speaker 2: Have extraordinary power.
Speaker 3: They also have essentially kind of they can operate with impunity,
but the moment they leave China, you know that that's
potentially very different for them. And you know, Drake and
I first got onto this story several years ago. We
wrote a BusinessWeek story about this case, the criminal case
that was based largely on kind of court records transcripts,
but the deeper we dug and the moment reporting we did,
you know, we eventually got our hands on hours of
secret audio and video recordings and then even more documents.
Speaker 1: I don't know about you guys, but I right away
when I heard about Chin, I'm going, ah, I'm not
trusting this dude. Something's not right here. And that's what
I love about your podcast is that I'll sit there
and talk to that speaker all the way down the
damn road.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 4: We kind of want, right, I mean, I think there
are you can sort of see, like we're sort of
trying to tell the story from various folks viewpoints in retrospect.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's some red flags about.
Speaker 4: I mean there's various people are fooling other various people.
Speaker 2: And sort of pretending to be something they're not. And
there's you know, you.
Speaker 4: Can look back now and kind of realize where people
made these mistakes.
Speaker 3: I was just going to say, you know, there's just
a piggyback on that a little bit. You know. One
of the things you learned through watching these spies operate
and then watching the spy hunters operate against them, because
you get both in the story is you learn that
like and this is true for scams as well. It's
not just law enforcement, but like people who get fooled
by something very often, all you need is one accurate
piece of information. So what you're talking about Erro, which
is our launch episode, our first episode.
Speaker 2: You know, it's this approach.
Speaker 3: Somebody is approaching somebody else on the streets near downtown Chicago.
It's part of this operation. You know, that person who
did the approach knew a lot about the person he
was approaching, But the part of the approach that worked
was he knew something about him. He knew kind of
one or two key facts, and like that oftentimes, as
kind of surprising as it is to many of us.
Speaker 2: Sometimes that's all you need.
Speaker 3: If somebody approaches you and they know something that you
have told very few people, maybe nobody at all. Like
sometimes that's enough. And that's what these guys operate on,
Like that's their currency, is I know something about you,
and let's do something.
Speaker 1: Dude, I'm that guy that has screwing around with other people.
I'll walk up to him and I'll say, yeah, I
heard what you did, and they'll go what I do?
Come on, dude, I don't know if this is the place,
but dude, they will admit stuff to me that I
wasn't supposed to know. But it's such a freaking game.
And I'm sure it's a game for you guys as well.
Speaker 3: Sounds like you would be a great MSS officer FBI era.
Speaker 1: And it's pairing, is what it is. But the thing is,
it was that one of the things that really knocked
me off balance. And I know I've done this. Oh
we know the same people the very second I heard that,
I'm going, oh my god, we all say that, and
that's where we make mistakes in our own personal lives.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things that's
kind of fun for Jordan and me is realizing the
ways in which the work that an MSS officer does,
the work that an intelligence officer does, is kind of similar.
Speaker 2: To what we do, right, I mean, and some of
the tools are actually the same. I Mean, the MSS
makes a lot of use of LinkedIn of all things.
Speaker 4: They sort of like reach out to people and kind
of just see if they're interested in certain kinds of
vague opportunities and then go from there.
Speaker 2: I mean, and that's a tool we use too. I mean,
you know, so it's.
Speaker 4: Basically like finding people who have information you need and
then seeing it if they'll tell you that information.
Speaker 2: It's kind of it's kind of the same thing.
Speaker 4: And so that's been a parallel that's been kind of
eye opening for us as we've gone on the journey
of trying to figure out and then tell this story.
Speaker 1: Please Do Not Move. There's more with Drake Bennett and
Jordan Robertson coming up next. The name of the podcast
The sixth Bureau from Bloomberg. You can pick it up
on iHeartRadio. We are back with Drake and Jordan. Oh
my god. And then to find out that the person
you've been talking with has been an FBI agent. Oh
my god, how do I know? You guys aren't FBI agents?
And there's door, there's people outside my door right now?
Speaker 2: Well, I don't know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, this is a lot of people are listening
to this right now, So.
Speaker 2: Let's secret here. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Era one of the really fascinating parts for us too.
As we mentioned, you know, like we started reporting this
a while ago, several years ago. There are very few
stories that are worth kind of chipping away at, kind
of kind of longer than the initial publication, but this
was one of them. Drake and I realized, like, this
is the perfect viewhicle to tell the story of Chinese
industrial espionage. We had covered previous China spy cases and
China spy stories, and some of them were very good.
These are all great investigations by the FBI or foreign
governments or whatever, but they almost always leave you feeling
a little bit kind of let down in the sense
that the people you get you're getting the people are
being put on trial. Almost without exception, are kind of
the lowest person on the totem pole. They're the person
who is stealing information from their employer at the request
or direction of somebody back in China. You almost never
get the person in China kind of controlling the puppet strings.
In this case, you do again through this amazing, creative,
ambitious FBI investigative work. Like they got this guy to
leave China. And this is not a spoiler. This in
our first episode. They got the guy to leave China,
they got him to travel, they arrested him, they put
him on trial, and they did what you know a
great government investigation will do, which is put as much
as they can to the public record. That was our
starting point, and then we went way beyond that. We
think it's fascinating. We think it's a pretty unprecedented view
into how Chinese trade secret theft works and really the
effect on China's economy, right, and you can't separate the two.
China's economy has advanced dramatically in the last ten twenty years.
One of the ways that's happened is through the kind
of trade secret theft that we profile in the series.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but don't you think it's because they're investing in
ponds inside this tech game of chess, because you know,
put the pawns out there, see if we can get
an inch, all right, Now, next time around, we're going
to go for two inches. But they're putting out innocent people.
That's what I got as a vibe in the very beginning.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, as as we
put it at one point in the podcast, like the
MSS is in the business of making.
Speaker 2: Bets, Like they make a lot of bets.
Speaker 4: So you know, they're just making a lot of bets
and some of them turn out right, and you know,
and that's not to say that the only reason that
the you know, China makes great electric vehicles and great
phones and all that is because they stole the secrets.
I mean, there's a lot of indigenous innovation and work,
and but I mean it it's certainly helped.
Speaker 2: And there's I mean, one of.
Speaker 4: The things that was really interesting to see is just
the way in which say, an engineer working on in
our case, it was aviation technology, and then the engineers
in China work with MSS officers, so they're basically like
tasking them. They're like, you know, what we would love
to know more about is like this part of the
you know, fan blade of the engine or this you know,
part of the control system. Like we're kind of having
trouble figuring out how to do that, and then the
MSS goes out and tries to get them for them,
So it is kind of this whole system.
Speaker 1: I guess the part that I'm shocked over is the
fact that it's it's it's like right here in front
of us when it comes to MSS. And of course
my mind instantly goes to TikTok because TikTok is always
under in big trouble. Oh they're Chinese, they're stealing information. Well,
you know what, after listening to the Sixth Bureau, your
podcast from Bloomberg, I'm going, you know, I think I
have a different view of what's going on here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, listen to that. First of all, ear again, thanks
for listening to. I mean, because it's you know, we
put a lot of work into it. We think it's
really interesting. TikTok's a great example of a technology that
is you know, it's when you look at China and
kind of espionage, you know that the one way to
look at it is. You know, if if the US
had an opportunity to have a version of TikTok in China,
the US would take it. We don't, America doesn't. But
if if the US.
Speaker 2: Did, you could, you would.
Speaker 3: Expect your intelligence services to use that, right like you
would expect that they, you know. And so what you
have is, you know, China. When I first started covering
a lot of this stuff, a lot of China's efforts
to kind of replicate Western technologies were frankly laughable. Like
Huawei when they when they first kind of started, they
were making kind of really bad knockoffs of like Cisco
Gear or whatever. You fast forward twenty years, twenty years now,
Huawei is the dominant network equipment maker in the world.
Chinese electric vehicles are you know, kind of on par
or even in some case better than you know, American
electric vehicles. And you can go down that list. So
now we're at a place where China is a peer
economy and by some measures maybe even a peer military.
And so we're in a very different world. There's a
new world order, you know, trade secret SUFT is part
of it. We think this case is a fascinating window
into how that works, and you know, just personally as journalists,
like we've been fascinated by the story. That's why we've
kept at it for for all these years. And you know,
we really hope that people who listen to it are
as fascinated as we are by it, because it's these
cases like these don't come around very often. In fact,
they don't, They hardly come around at all.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be the optimistic pessimist here. If if they're
stealing information from us, what are we stealing from them?
Are we getting anything?
Speaker 2: I mean, that's a really good question.
Speaker 4: I don't, you know, I think as a matter of policy,
the uh, you know, American intelligence services are not in
the business of doing the kind of thing the MSS does,
which is, you know, maybe there's some you know, I
think maybe there's a bit of a gray area around
things that are kind of like military sort of national
security importance of military technologies. But it's a very different picture,
you know. I Mean one of the questions though, is
whether there's that's kind of like a luxury we've had,
you know, we haven't had to do that because we
have been the leader in all these realms.
Speaker 2: I mean, if you go back in history. I mean,
the United States does have a history of doing this.
Speaker 4: If you look at like the industrial evolution, Like a
lot of these mills in New England, those are basically
built on designs stolen from elsewhere, Great Britain in particular,
and so you know in Great Britain stole the design,
you know, so it sort of goes back and back
and back.
Speaker 2: You know, it's turtles all the way down. So I
don't you know, I think maybe if.
Speaker 4: If we're in a situation where we really have fallen
behind and a lot of these high tech kind of spheres,
like you know, the United States might have to sort
of re examine our sort of aversion to doing MSS
style kind of collection. But right now, that is that
is still a difference between how China sees it and
how we see it.
Speaker 1: I got to give you, guys kudo and your production
team kudo on the texture of this podcast, because we
are living in a new age of texture when it
comes to putting that in our offices, in our cars,
because how you're recording, the recording devices, everything that's on there.
Really it's the one rule we have in radio attract attention,
reattract attention, attract attention. You guys master that art on
the sixth Bureau. You're always attracting my attention.
Speaker 3: That's really nice to hear Erro And we'll let our
production team know that because we you know, this is
a this is a special opportunity for me and Drake
as well. We've never done one of these before. We've
been reporters a long time. We've never done a podcast series.
And there's a really amazing team at Bloomberg you know
that we've worked with to put this stuff together, and
it's been really eye opening to see how much work
goes into one of these things, especially if you want
to make it compelling. And what we're dealing with here
is like recorded, you know, secretly recorded conversations, so the
audio quality may not be a amazing at that, but
you get to hear these.
Speaker 2: People talking to you at time.
Speaker 3: You also have voice actors, right, so you have like
Mandarin speakers of English, and like, there are a lot
of layers to it and it's it is very complicated.
We've got an amazing team to work us. I'm glad
that it's grabbed you. That's like the goal and the
point and it's it's really nice to hear that.
Speaker 1: Wow, twenty minutes with you, guys is not enough.
Speaker 4: Man.
Speaker 1: Please come back to this show anytime in the future.
The door is always going to be open for you.
Speaker 2: We'd be hard to be brilliant today.
Speaker 1: Okay, guys, thanks to