Silicon Valley couldn’t be farther from the confines of Langley or Fort Meade, let alone Beijing or Moscow. Yet, the verdant foothills of suburban sprawl that encompass the Bay Area have played host to some of the most technically sophisticated espionage missions the world has ever seen. As the home of pivotal technologies from semiconductors to databases, artificial intelligence and more, no place has a greater grip on the technological edge than California — and every nation and their intelligence services want access.
It just so happens that almost no national security reporter sits on this beat. Nearly all cover the sector from Washington, or in rare cases New York. All except one that is: Zach Dorfman. Zach has been driving the coverage of the technical side of espionage operations for years, and his pathbreaking scoops about China’s unraveling of the CIA’s network of operatives in the early 2010s were widely read in DC officialdom. Now, he’s published two blockbuster features, one in Politico Magazine on the FBI’s attempts to intercede in the chip trade between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. at the height of the Cold War in the 1980s, and the other in Rolling Stone on a deep-cover agent and the very human consequences of state-to-state skullduggery.
Zach and host Danny Crichton talk about Silicon Valley’s history in industrial espionage, the tricky mechanics of intercepting and disabling chip shipments to the Soviet Union, why the U.S.S.R. was so keen on learning the market dynamics of computing in America, the risks for today’s companies around insider threats, Wirecard and Jan Marsalek and finally, some thoughts on Xi Jinping and how China’s rollup of the CIA’s mainland intelligence network affected his leadership of America’s current greatest adversary.
Produced by Christopher Gates
Music by George Ko
Show notes:
Chapters
00:00 Introduction and Background on Zach Dorfman
05:12 Uncovering Operation Intering: How the FBI Sabotaged Soviet Espionage
12:45 The Ethical Dilemmas of Sabotaging Technology
18:30 Insider Threats in Tech: The Role of Intelligence Services
25:50 Russia and China: Modern Espionage in the Tech World
35:00 The CIA’s Operations in China: Geopolitical Ramifications
45:15 The Future of Espionage in Silicon Valley
Sound Bites
- “The Soviets could not indigenously produce what Silicon Valley was creating.”
- “They tampered with chips in ways that would undermine Soviet efforts from the start.”
- “We didn’t know 100% where the technology was going behind the Iron Curtain.”
- “In the world of espionage, it’s already the 22nd century.”
Takeaways
- Operation Intering was a covert FBI operation that sabotaged technology sold to the Soviet Bloc, undermining their efforts to build an indigenous microelectronics industry.
- Ethical concerns arose during such operations, with fears that sabotaged tech could end up in civilian applications, creating moral hazards.
- Espionage operations often involve complex multi-layered strategies that require collaboration between intelligence agencies and the tech industry.
- The geopolitical ramifications of intelligence failures, such as the CIA’s operations in China, have long-term consequences, influencing the policies of foreign leaders.
- Insider threats within tech companies continue to pose significant risks, with state actors increasingly infiltrating commercial enterprises for intelligence purposes.
Keywords
FBI sabotage, Soviet espionage, Operation Intering, Silicon Valley, microchips, counterintelligence, Rick Smith, ethical challenges, intelligence agencies, Russia, China, insider threats, cybersecurity, espionage, geopolitical impact