HUGE scoop from @zachsdorfman: Remember how people speculated that China's hack of the Office of Personnel Management might allow China to identify and track CIA operatives abroad?

Well, that's EXACTLY what China did.

Read more at @ForeignPolicy: https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/12/21/china-stolen-us-data-exposed-cia-operatives-spy-networks/#

Starting around 2013, one year after the US govt became aware of the OPM hack, the CIA became aware that undercover CIA personnel, flying into countries in Africa and Europe for sensitive work, were being rapidly and successfully identified by Chinese intelligence.

U.S. officials believed Chinese intelligence operatives had likely combed through and synthesized information from these massive, stolen caches to identify the undercover U.S. intelligence officials, @zachsdorfman reports.

Read the entire article. Widespread corruption in China made Chinese govt officials especially vulnerable to CIA recruitment, Zach reports.

So Xi Jinping's anti-corruption drive was motivated in part by a very specific counterintelligence element.

It is exceedingly unclear to me why NYT hasn't scooped up Zach Dorfman yet.