Spy games: why the US-China cold war is heating up in public
- Intelligence agencies in Washington and Beijing are intentionally more visible than ever, both for domestic and foreign audiences
- ‘The idea that you can operate clandestine services in the shadows and nobody talks about it, that’s over,’ one analyst says
In another sign of the dismal state of US-China relations, public espionage disclosures have increased markedly in recent months on both sides of the Pacific as spy agencies that once lurked in the dark openly tout their handiwork.
Behind the strategic leaks and veneer of transparency is a shadow play mirroring the broader geopolitics, as intelligence communities face pressure to look effective at home and tough abroad, with little sign that the spy-versus-spy showdown will end any time soon, security analysts and former spies said.
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“There is a new cold war between China and the West at the moment and intelligence operations and intelligence agencies are the front line of this,” said Calder Walton, assistant director of the Applied History and Intelligence Project at Harvard Kennedy Centre.
“Governments of all persuasions use them to pursue foreign policy in non-avowed ways. So what you can’t do openly, you use an intelligence agency to do covertly.”
This comes as both sides raise public consciousness with ever more warnings of spies, industrial espionage, cybertheft and related dark arts.
