The Shadow War between the US and China is heating up

Welcome to the Crime Fiction Files. I’m CIA veteran Carmen Amato, sharing the encounters, experiences and current events behind my crime fiction thrillers, including the award-winning Detective Emilia Cruz police series set in Acapulco.

When I retired from the CIA, I set up a LinkedIn account, thinking to connect with other retirees and perhaps get a part-time job as a government contractor. Within days, scores of China-based accounts had pinged my profile, no doubt harvesting all the info I had shared. That was 10 years ago. Now China has the goods on all of us.

Please read on.

This week, the White House announced that China has obtained voter registration and political preference information for over 200 million US residents. This information was publicly available but use was restricted and certainly not intended for foreign exploitation.

Along with the announcement, the White House released declassified material from 2020 regarding China. If you wade through the trove of materials, you’ll see communications between CIA’s Counterintelligence Mission Center (CIMC), the National Intelligence Officer for Cyber (NIO/C), the Director, Election Threat Analysis—another National Intelligence Council entity, and NSA’s Cryptologic National Intelligence Officer for Cyber and Election Threats & Security. Lots of redactions, but some interesting nuggets, too.

Leaving the politicians and the news pundits to argue amongst themselves, let’s focus on the main point, which is this is just the latest event in an established pattern of China gobbling up bulk information on Americans:

In 2024, a Chinese hacking group called Salt Typhoon infiltrated 9 US telecom providers (Verizon, AT&T, etc) to steal millions of cell phone records, geolocate phone users and collect calls and text messages. China’s motive was reportedly to eavesdrop on senior government officials.

In 2018, hackers for China’s Ministry of State Security breached the Marriott hotel chain’s system and made off with records of 500 million guests, including credit cards and passport numbers. The global Marriott chain owns Sheraton, St. Regis and other popular hospitality brands around the world. Speculation is that Marriott was a target because US government folks often stay in the company’s hotels.

In 2017, Chinese hackers hit the credit tracking firm Equifax to scoop up personal data from 147 million people, including social security numbers, birth dates, and addresses.

In 2014, China began a sustained operation to steal data from the Office of Personnel Management and made off with 22.1 million personnel records, probably the biggest theft of US government data ever. These records pointed China toward US government employees and applicants including their security clearance status.

The back cover of my latest release, DRAGON CARTEL, says

The plot was inspired by the 8500% rise in encounters with Chinese nationals at the US-Mexico border.

Now “shadow war” may seem like an easily dismissed conspiracy theory sort of phrase until you realize how much personal information China is harvesting/stealing.

And why.

All the granular information plucked from databases and social media can be combined to build a profile showing a person’s vulnerabilities (in debt, bad relationships, perverse habits, etc.) or the sort of message they’ll respond to (political, emotional, social pressure, etc.)

While everyone gets vacuumed up in these online efforts, China is primarily interested in intelligence officers, government officials, scientists, engineers and military personnel. Once a profile is created, ways to gain access to the person and compromise them become more apparent.

Big trends can be identified from crunching this data, too, which can be leveraged to target large groups like teachers, students, political parties, social movements, those in key industries, etc.

Actionable intelligence, as the saying goes.

I’m no longer an intelligence officer but for laughs, let’s see what China could have on me:

• Everything I’ve ever posted on social media: LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram,

• Calls and text messages—my cell phone service provider was hit by Salt Typhoon,

• Passport, credit cards and travel dates from stays at Sheraton hotels,

• Job history records held by OPM, and

• Voter registration including address and who my Congress critters are and how I voted.

I hope this gets you thinking.

What could China have on you?

A big thank-you to David Bruns, co-writer of addictive military-espionage thrillers including ALPHA STRIKE which releases this Tuesday, for his review of DRAGON CARTEL:

I’ll be thanking David in person when I interview him and co-writer JR Olson tomorrow at the sold-out Minnesota Mystery Night dinner in Minneapolis.

The audiobook edition of NARCO NOIR, the 8^th book in the Detective Emilia Cruz series is now on Audible. It’s the 4th Detective Emilia Cruz mystery voiced by the incomparable Leanne Maksin.

Emilia goes undercover as a taxi driver to catch a killer but in this 4-minute excerpt she identifies a troubling twist.

Before I sign off on this week’s newsletter, I want to thank so many of you who sent condolences on my brother’s recent passing. A retired first responder, his battle with esophageal cancer was a grim fighting retreat. I was lucky enough to spend a week with him just before he passed—watching endless episodes of Gunsmoke—but my best memories will always be of days before that dreadful disease took its toll.

If you or a loved one are battling cancer, my prayers are with you.

Until next time, Carmen

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MY BACKSTORY— I learned a few things about danger, deception and resilience during a 30-year career with the CIA focusing on counterdrug and technical collection. Now a mystery author, those lessons play out on the page, especially in the Detective Emilia Cruz mystery series set in Acapulco. Starting with Cliff Diver, the series is a back-to-back winner of the Poison Cup Award for Outstanding Series from CrimeMasters of America. I’ve also written historical and political thrillers, essays about the craft of crime fiction, and live with a very large white dog named Bear.

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