CNBC SPECIAL: China’s Corporate Spy War Part 1

Squawk Pod

CNBC

Business News, News, Investing, Business

4.2 • 543 Ratings

🗓️ 6 February 2024

⏱️ 12 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Episode 1, A Spy Finds His Target: CNBC Documentaries dives into the undercover world of economic espionage and details an illicit campaign by China’s government to steal high tech trade secrets from some of the biggest companies in the United States. Correspondent Eamon Javers follows the story of Xu Yanjun, a Chinese government spy who targeted GE and one of its engineers in an attempt to steal valuable proprietary information about its jet engine technology. Javers travels to Cincinnati where the company is based and interviews prosecutors that worked on the Xu case, finding out how the spy targeted the engineer, lured him to China and set in motion a federal investigation. ---- CNBC Documentaries examines the case of a Chinese government spy who tried to steal trade secrets from some of America’s biggest companies, including GE, Boeing and Honeywell. Correspondent Eamon Javers talks with prosecutors, intelligence experts and government officials, including the Director of the FBI, Christopher Wray — all of whom say the case is an example of China’s desire to dominate global markets through any means necessary, including stealing technology from the heart of corporate America. In this special podcast series, Javers explores the shadowy world of spies and the industrial battle space that has millions of U.S. jobs on the line. “China’s Corporate Spy War” originally aired on CNBC in June 2023. To watch China's Corporate Spy War and other CNBC Documentaries go to: https://www.cnbc.com/documentaries/

Transcript

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0:00.0	It's the fall of 2017 and as an engineer at GE Aviation passes through a security
0:17.2	perimeter at the company's sprawling Cincinnati area campus, nothing seems out of
0:22.4	the ordinary. He works with some of the company's most closely
0:26.0	guarded trade secrets, and now GE executives say they want to see him. But what the GE engineer doesn't know is that his bosses have
0:36.1	grown suspicious. The room is wired and waiting down the hall is a team of
0:40.8	agents from the FBI.
0:43.0	Soon, those FBI agents will tell the engineer
0:46.0	he has to make a decision right now.
0:49.0	His career and even his freedom are at stake.
0:53.0	This is a spy story.
0:58.0	This is as big of a case as we've had in 20 years.
1:01.0	There is a Chinese spy who's trying to obtain secret technology.
1:04.7	A story that shows how millions of American jobs now and in the future are on the line.
1:10.4	I think every major American corporation in any of these fields needs to assume that they are a target to be either replaced or gutted.
1:17.0	What's at stake here for the U.S. economy?
1:20.0	American quality of life, American innovation, ultimately American national security.
1:24.4	This is not just Wall Street, it's Main Street.
1:27.2	A brazen threat from the Chinese Communist Party with one goal in mind, global economic domination.
1:37.0	I'm Aiman Javers.
1:38.0	This is China's corporate spy war, a Special CNBC Podcast.
1:48.0	Act 1, The Invitation.
1:52.0	The Story begins in March 2017 with a simple message on LinkedIn, the business networking platform
	...

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