Speaker 1: Welcome back everybody.
Speaker 2: Today we're going to be looking at Shadow at Shape,
the NATO intern spy case, and today we're talking about
something that doesn't make the using news cycle of that
well in the way a kinetic strike does, but it should.
The Canadian national Chinese origin working as an intern at
Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, Shape in Belgium was arrested
on suspicion of spying for a third country and being
part of a criminal investigation, a criminal organization. Belgian federal
prosecutors confirmed and NATO's security services tip them off. They
hit her home and her workplace inside the headquarters. She's
sitting in pre trial custody right now. Shape is not
some administrative office with cubicles. That's the military brain of
the Alliance. That's where the plans get built, the operations
get synchronized.
Speaker 1: An intern had access, maybe limited, maybe more than limited.
Speaker 2: We don't know, oh, exactly the full scope, because the
Belgians are playing this close to the chest and NATO
is saying operational readiness wasn't impacted.
Speaker 1: I've been I've seen a lot of skifts.
Speaker 2: In on my day and enough briefings to know what
the language usually means folks. The clearance process, polygraphs, background checks,
that they dig into your even your high school girlfriend's
cousin continuous evaluation. The whole machine is built on the
assumption that the people inside the wire are solid. When
the assumption cracks, even at the intern level, everything downstream
gets re examined. This woman was a Canadian citizen. That matters.
Canada has a five eyes partner, is a five eyes partner.
The trust between those nations is supposed to be ironclad.
Chinese origin doesn't equal guilt. Let's be clear, but Chinese
intelligence has a documented aggressive, long game approach to talent spotting,
co option, and recruitment. They play the diaspora, they play students,
they play interns. They play the long game better than
almost anyone. The Chinese have been running inflowid and said
collection operations against Winstern institutions for decades, academia, tech.
Speaker 1: Government contractors. But I want to know is how far
did this go?
Speaker 2: Was she tasking? Was she photographing documents? Was she social
engineering people with clearances? Was she just collecting open source
stuff that still had operational value?
Speaker 1: We don't have those answers yet.
Speaker 2: The Belgian prosecutor's office is keeping the third country unnamed
in public statements. Here's the part that should keep everybody up.
Interns in junior people have more access in the system
of events. They sit in meetings, they carry documents, they
hear hallway conversations, they see the calendar of senior officers
and a headquarters environment. The junior person, who is always helpful,
always asking questions, can become invisible in the best possible
way for a collector.
Speaker 1: This arrest also.
Speaker 2: Comes at a time when the Alliance is already under stressed.
Different threat perceptions across the members. Pressure on defense spending,
highbred warfare from Russia persist.
Speaker 1: In Chinese collection.
Speaker 2: Belgian authorities move fast once that tip came in, and
that's good, But the fact that it required a tip
from inside NATO security services tells you the detection system worked.
Speaker 1: Eventually.
Speaker 2: The question is how long the vulnerability exists before the detection.
We'll keep an eye on this case and names will
eventually come out. Details will also The third country will
be confirmed until the end. The lesson is clear. The
soft targets inside the hardest targets are still soft.