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in the case of china there was a large scale national deception effort that they moved along

for decades you you know,

influencing U.S. think tanks, influencing members of Congress, influencing the business community.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to Change Agents, an Ironclad original, presented by Firecracker Farm.

Today we're going to be talking about China's spy game and capabilities.

And my guest today is Nicholas F.T. Miades.

Nicholas is a renowned expert on intelligence, espionage, and national security with over 30 years of service in the United States intelligence

and defense communities. He served in senior roles across the central intelligence agency,

the defense intelligence agency, and the U.S. Department of State's Diplomatic Security Service,

where he specialized in technical and human intelligence, counterterrorism operations, and space policy.

Let's dive in.

Thank you. counterterrorism operations in space policy. Let's dive in. Man, you have, uh, who pretty hell of a resume in the intelligence. I'll call it umbrella.

How did you get started? I always, and I've talked with a bunch of, and I know quite a few guys who spent time specifically at the agency, and I always ask him, how did one get involved in this? And I'm still waiting. So just so you know, my lens is the movie The Recruit, which I'm sure you've seen. I consider this to be a documentary. So at some point in time, somebody circles some letters for you on a newspaper and they

slide it across to you at a bar and you're recruited. It's a shadowy world of espionage and

intelligence. And of course, now everybody I know from there is like, yeah, that completely

didn't happen at all. So maybe today, though, is my lucky day. How did you get involved in the

intelligence world?

Well, it didn't happen like that at all. Do you know anybody who had happened like that?

Not in our government. That is ruining my misconception of what I wanted to be, because you probably would know given the amount of time you spent in there.

I'll tell you what, it was deflating to me my first couple of years because you figure out,

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