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news.

>> A few quick notes before we get started.

It's customary in Chinese for family

names to come before given names. So

with Shu Yanjun, Shu is his family name

and Yanjun is his given name. But almost

everyone we spoke to and almost every

document we reviewed for the story

referred to him as Shu. So for

simplicity, you'll hear us do the same

for him and for a few others. Also, this

series includes material originally

written and spoken in Chinese. At

various points, you'll hear actors

voicing the translated versions in

English. This episode also contains

strong language. Finally, this is the

second episode. If you missed the first,

we recommend going back and listening

from the beginning. Thanks.

When Jordan and I first started going

through the documents of this case, we

saw a bunch of the usual things we'd

expect. Trial testimony, emails, that

kind of stuff. But one thing really

stood out. Remember Shu Yan Jun is a spy

working for one of the most secretive

agencies in the world, China's Ministry

of State Security. So it was surprising

to come across something much more

intimate. Something that made us feel

like we were inside his head.

>> June 11th morning, eyeglasses

prescription. March 6th. The whole

family worshiped the Buddha at Jim

Temple. October 29th evening, the fan

man and his wife held banquet. April 5th

morning went with the second uncle's

family to sweep great-grandfather's

tomb.

>> Shu Yanjun had an online calendar where

he put his appointments in.

>> This is Bradley Hull, the lead FBI agent

on the Shu Yanjun case.

>> At the end of the day, he would take

little notes to himself about what

happened that day. Sometimes it was

related to source meetings. Sometimes it

was related to work conflicts. Sometimes

it was about his wife or his child or

the apartment that he wanted to buy.

>> July 15th afternoon, purchased the

house, signed a contract. May 25th

morning, family day at the Shao's

kindergarten hike mountain. June 21st

afternoon music festival.

>> Shu goes to a music festival. Shu eats

lobster. Shu takes his grandfather car

shopping.

>> Shu wins money at cards.

>> Play cards, 1500.

>> Shu loses money at cards.

>> Lost 700. Shu loses more money at cards.

>> 1950, lost 700, lost 2100, lost 150,

lost 600.

>> Shu seems to have been pretty bad at

cards.

>> So, it was every little piece of his

life that he very diligently put down in

textual form for us.

>> It was a diary.

>> It was a diary.

>> November 16th, afternoon, watch

Interstellar with John Ling. October

31st, evening karaoke. November 28th

after dinner, foot massage. February

17th evening, dined with Jung Hao. Three

rounds of drinks, puked. There were

highs and lows, and we saw all of them.

>> March the 3rd, grandfather passed away

at 10:40 p.m.

>> He's a complicated fella would be the

simplest way to put it. He has some

issues. He He likes to gamble. He likes

to womenize.

Shu was married but wasn't the most

faithful husband.

>> I don't remember how many girlfriends we

identified but there were quite a few.

>> One of them starts to dominate his diary

around this time. He refers to her with

an emoji a peach.

>> December 30th evening peach the

beginning. Wanda Hilton June 29th

evening peach 2nd afternoon picked up

peach near the shelter and give the

gift. August the 7th went a karaoke

afterwards. Peach was drunk and took her

home. September 20th, N Peach Ning

Hotel.

>> The details of Shu's personal life are

pretty juicy. But what's even more

incredible is that this spy meticulously

documents his work life, too.

>> March 14, 6 bureau meeting. January

24th, held banquet with comrades of

aerospace team. November 25th, worked

overtime until 2:30 a.m. May 13th, party

committee meeting. June 11th, Matt G.

Cha. March 31st, aviation briefing.

August the 24th, my official promotion

came. Waited for too long. It finally

came. Took a load off my mind.

It's normal enough to keep a diary, but

she was recording things that are

supposed to be secret, deniable, things

about his job and how he does it. It's

an actual spies diary and we got our

hands on it.

>> From Bloomberg News and iHeart podcast,

this is the Sixth Bureau. I'm Jordan

Robertson.

>> And I'm Drake Bennett.

>> As spy agencies go, China's Ministry of

State Security is unique. First of all,

it's massive. Estimates we've heard put

it at hundreds of thousands of employees

that's way bigger than the FBI and the

CIA combined. And it has an additional

job that those agencies don't.

Industrial espionage, stealing stuff

from companies instead of governments.

>> It wasn't just military information. It

wasn't just US political information.

They wanted trade secrets. They wanted

everything.

This is Matthew McKenzie, a federal

prosecutor on the shoe case.

>> Everyone does espionage, but not every

country uses their intelligence

apparatus to steal commercial trade

secrets. That is beyond the norms.

Technically, this is correct. The CIA

and FBI don't steal trade secrets, but

the US government does have a history of

it. In the late 1700s, right after

independence, the US offered bounties

for anyone who could smuggle out loom

designs from British cotton mills. Those

mills had been built thanks to plans

stolen from Italian silk spinners, an

industry that Italians essentially stole

from China centuries before. Fast

forward to the 1990s. China's economy is

still recovering from the devastation of

the cultural revolution and the ruling

Communist Party decides reasonably

enough that they need to do whatever

they can to catch up. Within a decade,

China becomes the world's factory,

turnurning out toys and textiles and

kitchen appliances. They soon move on to

more advanced technologies like

smartphones and electric vehicles. Then

in 2015, the CCP codifies this ambition

in a strategic plan called Made in China

2025,

which is exactly what it sounds like.

China making its own critical

technologies and no longer relying on

Western products. That policy and

commitment largely worked today. It's

safe to say they've caught up in many of

these technologies. But one key area

where they haven't is aerospace.

Building planes and helicopters and jet

engines that other countries want to

buy. That's where the MSS comes in. In

particular, one of its divisions, the

Sixth Bureau. Shu Yan Jun worked there

on a team tasked with stealing the

secrets of the world's top aviation

companies. Everything in China is a

top-down approach, right? It is a edict

from the government that we are going to

make our own regional airliners. So we

can stop buying from Boeing and stop

buying from GE. We're going to make our

own domestic product.

>> And Shu Yan Jun's job is to work with

engineers from China's stateowned

aerospace companies and get them exactly

what they need because they're the ones

who are actually trying to build the

plane.

Which brings us to a recording that Shu

secretly made in 2017. My favorite part

of the entire case. He's recording a

talk by a man named Arthur Gao.

This is the engine power. Therefore, you

have to do the power interrupt test and

EMI lightning.

Lightning.

>> Arthur Ga was an engineer at the

American company Honeywell. He worked on

advanced technologies for both civilian

and military aircraft.

For control systems of helicopters,

there are two very important issues. One

is a rotodynamics. You have to take it

into account.

Arthur is originally from Taiwan and he

came to the US in the late 70s to get

his PhD. He eventually wound up at

Honeywell in Phoenix. He's been invited

to China to give this talk in what was

described as an academic exchange with

the Nanjing University of Aeronautics

and Astronautics. But when he got there,

he wasn't brought to a university to

give his talk. He was brought to a hotel

room. Inside, only a few people were

there. Arthur thinks he's talking to all

of these academics and students and it

turns out that there are no academics.

There are no students. There are MSS

officers posing as people who work in

the industry. There are also Chinese

engineers, employees of China's

stateowned aerospace conglomerate,

Avicatcraft

systems that Honeywell builds for the

United States military.

These are all military standards. They

have very detailed regulation.

Arthur talks to the group for about

three hours

>> and at the conclusion of his

presentation,

>> FBI agent Bradley Hall,

>> shoe engine thanks him. They go through

all the nicities and then they ask

Arthur to step out of the room.

>> TJ Gal, maybe you can't have back first.

Thank you so much.

Arthur walks out of the room, leaving

Shu and the engineers alone,

>> but the tape keeps rolling and there's

this amazing kind of Easter egg.

>> You know that narrative convention in

movies and TV where near the beginning

of a story, some new character shows up

and someone else has to explain to them

and by extension you, the audience, how

everything works and who everyone is.

Think Peggy Olsen's first day on the job

in Madman.

>> Now, this is the executive floor. It

should be organized, but it's not. So,

you'll find account executives and

creative executives all mixed in

together. Please don't ask me the

difference. Great. Hopefully, if you

follow my lead,

>> what we hear next on the recording is

exactly that for Shoes World. You hear

someone take a sip of a drink

and put their mug down on the table.

You hear the door close behind Arthur

and then Shu turns back to the group of

Chinese engineers.

>> Shu and Jun starts describing how the

MSS recruits Western experts, how they

operate them, and how they found Arthur

so that he could teach them about what

the Americans were doing with their

helicopters. She wants to know how the

engineers think Arthur will be most

useful to them, what kind of source he

may be. So he lays out the different

types of sources he brings in like a

taxonomy of spies. Let's say he walks

them through it.

>> There are a few aspects to our

collaboration.

>> He actually has what he calls four

levels of expert participation. The

first level are high ranking experts.

>> This expert is ranked highly and is

reliable. The expert can directly

participate in the design of the

project. These are folks who have direct

involvement in design both in the West

and in Chinese systems. They have access

to classified information in China and

they're long-term sources as in these

are the people that they keep on the

books for 15 20 years and they call them

in when they need them.

>> This is our highest level of

collaboration.

A lot of the stories you hear about

China stealing trade secrets involve

hacking, breaking into computer systems.

But spying is ultimately about something

way more ordinary, cultivating

relationships, or using people.

>> They invite people over under some kind

of innocent sounding pretext. This is

James Olsen. We'd like to invite you to

China to give a guest lecture or to meet

with our experts just for a get

acquainted a session and we will

compensate you for that. There will be a

stipen and we will cover all your

expenses and most people fall for it.

James knows this because he was a spy

>> and uh the central intelligence agency

for 31 years.

>> Eventually the agency's chief of counter

intelligence. So James has a pretty good

idea of what a spy like Shu Yanjun does

and he says there's kind of a universal

playbook on how to do it.

>> It sounds cynical,

but in the intelligence profession, we

know that every human being has needs

and our job in intelligence

is to identify what your need is. And

our hope is that need is so compelling,

so urgent, so important for you that if

we satisfy that need, you will assist

us. You will violate your own country's

laws. You will give us technology.

It's it sounds terrible, but we are in

the business of exploiting your

weakness, your needs, your

vulnerabilities,

and we're good at it.

Sometimes exploiting vulnerabilities is

a matter of carrots, but sometimes it

sticks. People fear the MSS. Generally,

they will put that in the frame of your

family back in China is dependent on the

government. And uh we would not want to

do anything to make their life more

difficult.

>> I've seen cases where family members are

arrested. I have seen cases where family

members are sent by the MSS to deliver

messages to people in the United States

to either get in line or come back to

China to face whatever consequences

there are for them there. We don't know

exactly why Arthur Gao did what he did.

We tried multiple times to contact him

for this series, but we never heard

back. We also reached out to his former

employer, Honeywell. They never

responded. But we do know that when the

MSS came calling, it was hard for Arthur

to say no. And they came calling more

than once. That talk in the hotel room

wasn't a one-off. The MSS first targeted

Arthur two decades before.

The first invitation came to Arthur in

1997 from someone at the Nanjing

University of Aeronautics and

Astronautics or NUAA.

You're going to hear NUAA a lot in this

series because its staff worked really

closely with the MSS.

They allow themselves to be used as

cover to invite and to host foreign

visitors so that they can assess them,

wind them and dine them, develop them

when they're making their trips to

China. So, it's a very very valuable

relationship in the MSSIS.

So the invitations from NUAA kept coming

and Arthur Gal kept accepting them. He'd

come give a talk. There'd be fancy

meals, luxury cruises down the Youngst

River, all expenses paid trips to visit

tourist attractions. Then after he got

home from a trip in 2003, his contact

followed up asking for very sensitive

information. Arthur seemed to get

suspicious and he cut things off. That

worked for a while. The MSS though can

be patient. Like unbelievably patient.

11 years later, his contact, who is

actually an MSS officer named Ja Rang,

reaches back out like an old friend

checking in.

>> Time flies. It has been 11 years.

>> He mentions things about Arthur's

personal life that only a friend should

know.

>> I heard that you had a son recently.

Congratulations.

>> He wishes Arthur's family a happy new

year.

>> Stay healthy. and invites him to return

to China. If I were Arthur, I'd be

creeped out. So, he replies, but he

doesn't commit to another trip.

>> Two years later, in 2016, Jaw nudges him

again. This time, Arthur caves. He tells

Jaw that he does have a trip to China

coming up, a personal trip to see some

friends. Jaw offers to pick him up at

the Beijing airport. In the car, he

introduces a supposed university

colleague. It's actually Shu Yan Jun.

During that visit, J and Shu come up to

Arthur's hotel room late at night and

hand him $3,000.

Arthur's confused. This has been a

strictly personal trip. No presentation,

no meetings. He didn't even bring his

work computer. They basically tell him,

"Keep it. Use it for the next trip." On

the next trip though, in 2017, when he

gives that talk in the hotel, he's

handed another envelope of money. This

time it's five grand.

At the time he gave that talk, Arthur

Gao was thinking about retirement. In a

way, this only made him more useful. It

meant he could come over for even longer

periods of time and they could possibly

even hire him.

He said he may retire in two years or

so. He also wants to, right? He has the

ability. He is competent. He has a

desire to achieve something. We can also

design it that way.

>> Arthur Gaudy, he was the longest running

asset that's in the case. He I mean he

what 20 years? What does he represent to

you in terms of you know this

organization's ability to to run people

for a long time?

>> Both the long-term nature of the

operation and then the significant

amount of damage that can happen over

that time frame.

>> Bradley Hall with Arthur's example when

he did choose to disclose he disclosed

things that could hurt us.

the helicopter that the Marine Corps is

is going to fly the next level

helicopter. There's no reason that the

Chinese government needs to know the

specifications of that. There's no

reason an employee of any American

company should be prepared to pass that

sort of information over.

In 2021, Arthur Ga was indicted and

plead guilty to exporting controlled

information without a license. He was

sentenced to three years probation and

ordered to pay a fine.

Okay, back to Shu's taxonomy of the

types of sources he recruits. Level one

is kind of like having someone who works

for you directly over a period of time.

Level two, that's more like having a

consultant who's on call for specific

one-off jobs. These are folks who

examine specific models. They solve

problems. They usually come to China for

a one-mon period, but fairly

infrequently because they are working in

companies in the West. If we have

specific questions, we can ask them. For

instance, if we come across any problems

in the project, we can present them with

the questions directly in a very

specific fashion.

>> Level three, that's even less of a

commitment.

>> The third level he called topical

experts. These are individuals who

answer questions in person only or they

provide reports that they only come into

China for very very short durations of

time because they're experts in their

field back in the west and it would be

unusual or raise concerns if these

people stayed there for more than a week

or a weekend or something like that. Shu

indicated that this was the most common

type of source that he as an individual

ran.

>> This is something we've done quite a lot

in the past.

>> Arthur Gao was probably a level three.

So was a man named Lee Jung. Shu wrote

about meeting with Lee in his diary.

>> April 20th afternoon, pick up Lee from

train station. Check in to Jingling

Hotel.

>> We don't know that much about Lee Jian.

But we do know that he was an expert on

fighter aircraft and how to make them

like the Loheed Martin F-35 which is one

of the world's most advanced fighter

jets. We also know that when Shu invited

Lee to come give a talk in Nanjing, the

MSS officer used an alias. When Lee

arrives in April 2014, Shu and Ja Rang

host a banquet in his honor.

>> There's a level of rapport building.

There's a level of whining and dining

that's often involved with this.

>> But it's not just about rapport

building. During the banquet, Shu's

colleagues sneak into Lee's hotel room

and try to hack into his computer. But

they run into problems and they can't

get everything they want. So, they

invite Lee back a few months later for

another visit. They want him to give a

talk about electric takeoff and landing

systems, and they want to take another

crack at hacking into his laptop.

>> December 7th, Lee Jang's coming to

Nanjing entertaining.

>> Shu brings Lee to the hotel. Lee drops

his stuff in his room and then heads off

to dinner with Shu's boss, Ja Rang,

who's waiting for him in a private

dining room.

>> I'm in the private room and the dishes

have been ordered.

>> Then Shu and another colleague go to

Lee's room to try and hack into his

computer again. It's 6:49 p.m. Shu texts

his boss,

>> laptop is in sleep mode, one portable

hard drive and the two small drives.

>> The hack is taking longer than expected

and his boss gets impatient.

>> It's too slow. Speed it up.

>> 15 minutes later.

>> If it doesn't work, copy it with your

own computer.

>> Now it's 8:39 p.m. The operation's been

going for almost 2 hours. Shu updates

his boss.

>> The copying will more or less be done in

15 minutes. Restoring the scene and

documents will take roughly 20 minutes.

>> Hurry up. Hurry up. Because remember,

Shu's boss, Ja Rang, is having dinner

with Lee, and even a fake honorary

banquet can only go on for so long.

Finally,

>> the carbing is completed. Restoring is

in progress.

>> After 2 hours and 22 minutes, she's

done.

>> Restored. Exiting.

>> You can let him toddle back up to his

room. At this point,

>> the next day, Lee gives his talk.

Totally clueless. He's been hacked.

We were never able to reach Lee Jang. As

far as we know, he was never charged

with any crimes.

The fourth and final level of shoes

experts are called spotters. So these

are people that we have living in the

west whose job it is to identify

engineers who might be susceptible for

working with the MSS.

>> These people are crucial for Shu because

they live in places like the US, places

that are too risky for Shu to go.

Gi Chowun, the guy who was secretly

recorded by the FBI in Chicago.

>> G was a spotter.

>> Gi was first approached by the MSS back

in Beijing. It was 2012. He was about to

graduate from college and he was

checking out a job fair on campus. He'd

also applied to some grad schools in the

US to get a master's degree in

engineering. He wasn't sure exactly what

he wanted to do next. At the job fair,

he meets Ja Rang, who's on a spotting

mission of his own. The MSS officer

introduces himself to G as a college

professor and tells him about some vague

opportunity in a quote confidential

unit. This is G texting his girlfriend

about that first conversation.

>> He indicated that they wanted to train

me to do things on their behalf because

they are not able to leave the country.

>> G was a perfect candidate for the sixth

bureau. He was already planning to go to

the US for legitimate reasons, an

engineering program, and so didn't need

a cover. And he was psyched to be a spy.

Once the MSS came clean about who they

really were, he was all in. He got into

a university in Chicago, signed official

paperwork with the MSS, moved to the US,

and got to work. His job was to provide

background information and hopefully

some assessment information on Chinese

Americans who were working in high-tech

companies in the United States.

>> Former CIA chief of counter

intelligence, James Olsen.

>> He was fired up. He really wanted to do

this. It's kind of fun being a spy.

>> And G had fun, a little too much fun. In

2014, he reaches out to a friend he

knows from China. The friend is studying

aeronautical engineering in Washington

DC. Gi wants his help finding potential

sources, and he starts off by texting a

photo of a bunch of $100 bills. It's

operating funds from Shu Yan Jun, who's

now his handler.

>> [ __ ] you even dare to photograph

this?

>> Photograph this sneakily. Delete after

you see it.

>> Then G eventually gets down to business

in his own way.

>> [ __ ] you. Ask around for me. Your

school. Does anyone study engines or

aircraft design?

>> Yes, that's the major timing.

>> Help me out and befriend people in the

field. When does spring break start?

I'll give you funds for it, [ __ ]

Yeah. Yeah. Halfway have to like him,

you know. He flashed the money around.

He he bragged about what he was doing.

He loved being kind of a boy spy, you

know.

>> And that's exactly what he was, a boy

spy. I mean, imagine being fresh out of

college and doing this job. You might

act a little reckless, too. And when you

look at G's text from around this time,

you're like, "Oh, right. He is still a

kid." Take these messages with his dad.

>> Dad, is good sea cucumber available now?

>> Asking him for advice at the market.

>> Only dried ones in this season. Good

ones are available all the time, but no

fresh ones in this season.

>> Do the dry ones last?

>> Updating him on his travel

>> through customs. Got it. Put away your

belongings, put on your slippers, and

take a nice rest after you board the

plane. Baby, do your best.

>> And the money he gets from the MSS.

>> I received 6,000.

>> That is good. Stay safe. Be vigilant.

Try to understand others agenda when you

interact. Be grateful.

>> In US dollars, not remn.

>> These texts with his dad are all in

2014. A year later, G gets another text

from Shu.

>> Are you there? I have a favor to ask.

>> I'm here. Please go ahead, brother Shu.

>> Here are three websites. Look up these

people separately.

>> These people being engineers at Boeing,

Loheed Martin, NASA, and GE. All of whom

were born in either China or Taiwan and

were working in the US. She wants

background checks on them. Home

addresses, phone numbers, who they're

married to, sensitive stuff. A fee is

required for the search and it needs to

be paid using a foreign visa card.

>> Okay, I'll give it a try.

>> A week later, G sends Shu the background

checks he bought on the internet. He

puts a password on the file, zips it,

and gives it a cheeky code name, midterm

exam paper.

Honestly, these background checks,

they're a small job for a rookie.

For now, G's pretty low down in Shu's

taxonomy,

but it seems like he's trying to rise

through the ranks and make himself more

valuable to the MSS.

After he completes grad school, G

enlists in the US Army as a fast track

to get American citizenship and a

security clearance. So, he may be young

and reckless, but he's also pretty

strategic. He has potential. See, the

MSS is in the business of making bets.

Some are big bets, like grooming

engineers working abroad over the course

of decades. Some are quite small, like

giving a 20-some a bunch of cash and

sending him out into the world to see

where he ends up. But together, if

enough of these bets pay off, they add

up to something much bigger, a more

powerful China,

which is ultimately Shu Yan Jun's

mission. Near the end of the recording,

after he's gone through his taxonomy

with the Chinese engineers, he brings it

back to what this is all really about.

At the end of the day, we are all

serving the state. We're all serving the

state, right? Everyone, we all share the

same goal.

>> That recording was almost dumb luck. I

cannot believe they didn't turn that

recording off before they dropped their

pretenses. It really shines a spotlight

on Chinese trade craft.

>> Shu and the engineers, his boss Ja Rang,

even the sources he's handling, Gi Chow

Chun, Arthur Gao, Li Jang, their cogs in

this giant machine, the talks at NUAA,

the hacking, the carrots, the sticks,

the cash. This is what that machine

looks like from the inside. So yeah, Shu

is this cog, but this is also his life.

And in the days after he records this

meeting, he decides to take on a

high-risk, highreward operation. One

that will completely upend his life and

disrupt the machine for years to come.

>> On the next episode,

>> what about spies? So, spies come here.

>> There's no question. There's no

question. You know,

>> March 27th, John rejected a meal

received today. An ungrateful person

like him has no shame. I will have my

revenge.

>> He would have an amazing case and get a

beautiful end of the year review and

then be crushed a week later because a

decimal point was wrong on a receipt. So

that that yo-yoing between you're great

and you're terrible clearly was having

an impact on his state of mind.

>> When Shu saw Jing's LinkedIn profile, he

said, "Bingo, jackpot. Exactly what they

want and I'm going to go get it.