Pod Crashing Episode 456 With The 6th Bureau On Bloomberg

About this episode

The episode discusses the Chinese government's campaign to steal intellectual property, focusing on the story of Xu Yanjun, a spy involved in significant economic espionage.

Pod Crashing episode 456 with Drake Bennett and Jordan Robertson from The Bloomburg Report’s 6th Bureau. It's an open secret that the Chinese government has, for years, engaged in a global campaign to steal intellectual property from Western tech and manufacturing firms. Those stolen secrets have helped Chinese companies, in industry after industry, close the gap and in many cases surpass their competitors elsewhere. And at the center of that campaign is the Ministry of State Security (MSS), China's pre-eminent intelligence agency. The US has apprehended hundreds of people linked to the MSS and its efforts, but its inner workings remained a mystery until one arrest unearthed a trove of confidential documents, covert communications and even a diary. The Sixth Bureau follows Xu Yanjun, the Deputy Division Director of the Sixth Bureau of the Jiangsu Province MSS office. Xu is a burnt-out spy with money problems, a crumbling marriage and a deep resentment for his boss - on a mission to snatch the crown jewel of American aerospace: GE jet engines. With dead drops, cyberattacks, aliases, blackmail and the occasional break-in, Xu played a role in one of the largest economic espionage…

People in this episode

Guests: Drake Bennett, Jordan Robertson

Topics covered

• intellectual property theft
• economic espionage
• Chinese intelligence
• MSS
• cyberattacks

Keywords

• Bloomberg Report
• 6th Bureau
• GE jet engines
• FBI sting
• Xu Yanjun

Mentioned in this episode

Products: GE jet engines, DuPont, Boeing, General Motors

Books & works: Pod Crashing

Places: China, US, Jiangsu Province, Belgium

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