It appears that our intelligence agencies – from the CIA to its sister agencies in the national security space – are struggling to get eyes in China and maintain an active spy network.
The new details of just how blind U.S. intelligence is flying when it comes to China were part of a stunning and in-depth report from the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday. If the details in the report are accurate (and there is no reason to believe they are not), then it shows that the U.S. is almost completely in the dark when it comes to the motivations of Chinese leader Xi Jinping and his party government.
According to the reporting from the WSJ, we’ve been flying blind since a number of spies were rounded up and killed by the Chinese government between 2010 and 2012. In all, it appears the U.S. lost about 30 assets in China as a result of this purge, and that had some severe ramifications for…
