CNBC SPECIAL: China's Corporate Spy War Part 2

Squawk Pod

CNBC

Business News, News, Investing, Business

4.2 • 543 Ratings

🗓️ 6 February 2024

⏱️ 16 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Episode 2, Tricks of Tradecraft: CNBC’s Eamon Javers talks to a former chief of counterintelligence at the CIA, James Olson, whose expertise from his 31-year career makes him essential to understanding the case of a spy from China who targeted GE’s jet engine trade secrets. Javers also interviews aviation analysts to discuss the challenges China faces in building its own commercial passenger planes, why it would be after GE’s technology, and why the technology is so difficult to master or replicate. ----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

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	I'm Aaman Jabbers and this is part two of China's corporate spy war, a special
0:07.8	CNBC podcast.
0:11.6	Act 2, Tradecraft.
0:13.0	Tradecraft.
0:15.0	Great to see you, Director Ray,
0:19.0	thank you so much for doing this.
0:20.0	FBI Director, Christopher Ray, has been warning American industry for years about the threat from China.
0:26.0	The Chinese government is bound and determined to try to steal key technologies through a whole variety of means, cyber means, human intelligence
0:36.2	programs, and even seemingly benign investments, and then using them in concert. One of those Chinese intelligence programs targeted a GE engineer named David Jang.
0:50.0	It's November 2017 and in a corporate office just outside Cincinnati, Ohio, the
0:56.6	FBI is questioning Jang about a lecture he gave in China and the people he met there.
1:02.4	Here's the federal prosecutor in the case,
1:04.7	Tim Mangan. A lot of the questions had to do with what information did he
1:09.0	download, what did he take with him, what exactly transpired in China. The engineer needs to decide whether or not to
1:16.8	cooperate with U.S. law enforcement. Recruiting people to cooperate and take risks, personal risks is something we never take for granted,
1:27.0	but it is certainly one of the harder things that any skilled security service or law enforcement organization can do.
1:35.0	And that person faces a choice, right?
1:37.0	Cooperate with the FBI or face the consequences.
1:40.0	And that's a choice that we make sure they understand both sides of those consequences.
1:45.0	The GE engineer consults with an attorney and he agrees to cooperate.
1:50.0	So now the most important questions are who in China has targeted the engineer and what exactly are they after?
1:56.7	So what the FBI does is they take control of the operation.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from CNBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of CNBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.