Defense analyst Wendell Minnick identifies one of the driving forces in rising Chinese espionage on Taiwan: a growing number of Taiwanese military see not future, and try to make some money by selling secrets to China, he writes in Defense News.
Wendell Minnick:
As relations improve between Beijing and Taipei, military morale still continues to fall as fewer Taiwan military officers see a future in an ever-shrinking armed forces. Many are beginning to cash in on their intimate knowledge of military secrets, including classified information on US military equipment.
Over the past several years, Taiwan military officers have sold China information on the E-2K Hawkeye airborne early warning aircraft, Patriot Advanced Capability-3 and PAC-2 anti-ballistic missile systems, Hawk air defense missile system, and the Raytheon Palm IR-500 radiometric infrared camera.
Taiwan defense sources said that on the Taiwan side, China has collected all the data needed to compromise the Po Sheng C4I upgrade program and the Anyu-4 air defense network upgrade program, Shuan-Ji Plan (electronic warfare technology project), and the Wan Chien (Ten Thousand Swords) joint standoff weapon.
A common anecdote used by the Western media suggests China uses a “grains of sand” or “mosaic” approach to collecting intelligence. That is, China collects intelligence from a broad effort by low-level, often amateur, sources to form an overall picture. However, Chinese efforts in Taiwan indicate otherwise.
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