Cornucopia of Vectors of Theft: How China Is Stealing America's Economic Future

Host John Sipher sits down with his former CIA colleague Glenn Chafetz, now Director of the 2430 Group, a nonprofit focused on state-sponsored espionage against the economy. Chafetz explains how technology has transformed espionage — from the days of clandestine meetings in parking garages where “if you didn’t get caught red-handed, you didn’t get caught,” to a world in which the speed of technological expansion has required significant change and adaptation by the CIA.

He describes China’s coordinated, party-state, intentional, and purposeful effort to steal American intellectual property (IP), and calls China’s intelligence service “the single most successful intelligence organization in the history of the planet.” He argues that American companies are losing the IP war because their focus on quarterly profits prevents them from calculating the significant long-term cost of stolen technology and making needed investments in counterintelligence efforts that would protect that IP.

He warns that China’s informal network of autocracies — Russia, Iran, North Korea — functions as a modern “Axis of Evil,” and that the U.S. is destroying its own alliance network at the worst possible time. He closes with advice for companies: You have to become sufficiently expert in economic espionage, counter-espionage, counterintelligence, because if you don’t, your competitors will.

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Guest info: Glenn Chafetz is the Director of the 2430 Group, a nonprofit providing research and advice on state-sponsored espionage efforts against the US economy, and publisher of the Red Report, the organization’s recurring intelligence/geopolitical brief. He served at the State Department and the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency before spending much of his 30 year government career at the CIA, including three tours as Chief of Station. He became the first person to oversee the Agency’s program of espionage tradecraft in the age of technological expansion.

Founded in 2016, The Steady State is a nonprofit 501(c)(4) organization of more than 400 former senior national security professionals. Our membership includes former officials from the CIA, FBI, Department of State, Department of Defense, and Department of Homeland Security. Drawing on deep expertise across national security disciplines, including intelligence, diplomacy, military affairs, and law, we advocate for constitutional democracy, the rule of law, and the preservation of America’s national security institutions.