Chinese Spies in France and Other Good Stuff

China Caught Spying on French Car Maker

According to reliable sources French (Paris) prosecutor Jean-Claude Marin on Jan. 14 began an inquiry into allegations of commercial espionage carried out against French car-maker Renault. Renault suspended three of its employees on Jan. 3 after an internal investigation that began in August 2010. Citing an anonymous French government source, Reuters reported that French intelligence services are looking into the probability that China played a role in the Renault espionage case. The French government refuses to officially confirm this accusation, but speculation has run wild that Chinese state-sponsored spies were stealing electric-vehicle technology from Renault.

The Chinese are very well-known bad guys when it comes to industrial espionage. They have been caught before in France, but the details of the Renault operation differ from the usual Chinese method of operation. Much has been learned about this MO just in the last two years in America. The United States has been increasingly aggressive in investigating and prosecuting cases of Chinese espionage. If Chinese intelligence services were indeed responsible for espionage at Renault it would be one of only a few known cases involving non-Chinese nationals and would have involved the largest amount of money since the case of the legendary Larry Wu-Tai Chin, China’s most successful spy.

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China's newest combat aircraft prototype, the J-20, will require an intense development program if it is going to catch up with fast-moving anti-stealth advances.

In fact, anti-stealth will bring into question all stealth designs: How much invulnerability will current low-observability techniques offer as air defense systems adopt larger and more powerful active, electronically scanned array (AESA) radars? From the early days of AESA development, a key goal was to build a radar that could detect very small objects -- such as a cruise missile at a distance great enough to target and shoot it down -- or a larger object like a fighter with a very low-observable treatment.

It would be easy to drift into some highly technical discussions of both stealth and anti-stealth technology, but I am afraid all I would succeed in doing would be to put most of you to sleep. Let me just simply that everyone from Americans to Russians to Swedes’, even to Chinese are all excited about Stealth technology. Everyone seems to be developing their own. It is the first big 21st century high tech toy. The problem is simply that all the money being spent may not be buying as much as they want because the technology to detect “stealth cloaked equipment” is also improving at a rapid pace. After all, what is the point of having “invisible” strike aircraft –if they are no longer invisible by the time they are deployed?

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Here's a You Tube about an incident I had to laugh about. Chinese spies caught behind two-way mirror spying on Danish team meeting at Women's World Cup. Really, what's next? Chinese spies in the Boy Scouts?

Live Long and Prosper............