Sino snoops are legion

The mysterious Bamban, Tarlac Mayor Alice Guo, it is suggested, is a time traveler after no official records could be found of her life before the age of 17. As for her stellar rise in local politics, the reason could be that she is a planted Chinese agent.

President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. gave the simplest assessment of the bizarre public official when he said that no one seemed to know her in local government circles.

Guo’s political career appears to have been funded by two illegal Philippine offshore gaming operators (POGO) that were recently raided in her town. A Senate investigation into her origins brought more questions and suspicions due to her ridiculous background as a Tarlac native.

The worsening confrontations in the West Philippine Sea brought to the nation’s attention the reality of espionage, which is not a problem solely of the Philippines.

Western allies have had to contend with a bigger problem that included the theft of technology aside from the extraction of military intelligence.

In January 2022, for instance, British intelligence issued an interference alert, which is akin to a warning of a security breach, on a UK-based solicitor, or lawyer, for alleged donations to several British political parties as part of a campaign to advance Beijing’s agenda.

According to a report by the British Broadcasting Corp., (BBC) “collecting intelligence on China is uniquely challenging for Western intelligence services like United Kingdom’s MI6 and the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency.”

China has employed technology to its advantage, with the planting of spies, which is another reason to check on the POGOs that may be incubators for other Chinese state activities.

The pervasive nature of Chinese surveillance, thanks to facial recognition and digital tracking, makes the traditional model of human intelligence — meeting agents face-to-face — nearly impossible for Western agents.

What was found in the BBC investigation was astounding.

It indicated that China swept up a large network of CIA agents a decade ago. The report said it is also technically hard to intercept Chinese communications and collect digital intelligence, partly because it uses its own systems, rather than relying on Western technology.

“We don’t know how the (Chinese) politburo thinks,” the report said, quoting a Western official.

China with its growing resources and influence can embed its spies in the locations it seeks to draw information from.

For instance, it has deployed snoops in Silicon Valley in an apparent attempt to steal technology, sometimes through cyber espionage and sometimes by recruiting insiders.

A Western intelligence official estimated that China has 600,000 people working on intelligence and security, more than any other state in the world.

Thus, even advanced nations cannot keep up with the deluge of Chinese activity, as security services simply cannot investigate every case.

British intelligence bared that more than 20,000 people in the UK alone had been approached on professional networking sites like LinkedIn by Chinese spies seeking to cultivate a relationship.

“People can be unwitting that they are corresponding with an intelligence officer from another nation, but eventually they find themselves passing on information that rips out the future of their own company,” BBC quoted a British intelligence official.

Yet, these Western nations need to keep abreast of the Chinese since, like the problems Filipinos now face, the surreptitious activities have serious national security implications and economic consequences.

The bulk of China’s huge apparatus, however, is focused on domestic surveillance, while also deploying spies abroad to limit criticism of its actions.

Recently, Chinese spies targeting Western politics were arrested in the UK, Belgium and Germany and there is an ongoing inquiry in Canada.

There have been reports of Chinese “overseas police stations” in Europe and the US which recalls the local experience of Chinese being admitted into the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) reserve.

After the report came out, the PCG terminated the services of the foreign PCG reserve officers.

The spying threat from China, based on global experiences, is a clear and present danger.