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A couple of weeks ago, an employee of a CCP-run think tank asked me who my sources were.
I gave him the names of two characters from the Simpsons.
Seemingly impressed, he then offered to pay me for more.
A thread on CCP ineptitude: https://www.axios.com/chinese-communist-party-think-tank-intelligence-94c12452-f705-4542-9a0a-9f25eb79c0e4.html
I gave him the names of two characters from the Simpsons.
Seemingly impressed, he then offered to pay me for more.
A thread on CCP ineptitude: https://www.axios.com/chinese-communist-party-think-tank-intelligence-94c12452-f705-4542-9a0a-9f25eb79c0e4.html
Aaron Shen (沈岳 in Chinese) sent me a request to connect on LinkedIn. He claimed to be the assistant director of international liaison at the China Center for Contemporary World Studies — the in-house think tank of the International Department of the Chinese Communist.
He and I exchanged messages for a couple of weeks. During that time, I saw his list of LinkedIn contacts grow from 55 to 72. The list included political risk analysts, a current U.S. Defense Department employee, a top exec at the US-China Business Council, and similar people.
I messaged about a dozen of his LinkedIn contacts. None of them had met him in person or knew him in any personal capacity.
My conversations with Aaron started casually but got weird real quick. It turns out we had both been students at Peking University in 2008. He was from Hubei; I told him I was from Texas (to which he replied, "Oh right. Cowboy is famous cultural symbol of Texas!")
This was a dead giveaway to me that he had never spent any meaningful time in the US. I've been to many countries & told many people that I'm from Texas. The only people who ever react by saying "cowboys" (extra points for "cowboys and indians") are ppl who haven't visited US.
Anyways, on to the weirdness. He asked me how I was able to get "first-hand information" when I was stuck at home during the pandemic. Alarm bells immediately started going off in my head.
More from him. He kept coming back to "first-hand information" and "sources." It was super obvious to me, by this point, what this whole thing really was.
So I decided to play along and see how far I could take it. And I thought, well, might as well have some fun with it. So I started sending him names of Simpsons characters.
I told him that Troy McClure and Kent Brockman "have unique insights into American society."
I told him that Troy McClure and Kent Brockman "have unique insights into American society."
Taking a quick mid-thread break to thank certain people (you know who you are) for assistance in coming up with names of Simpsons characters.
I also crowdsourced it, thanks to all you who responded. https://twitter.com/BethanyAllenEbr/status/1337237348690616321
I also crowdsourced it, thanks to all you who responded. https://twitter.com/BethanyAllenEbr/status/1337237348690616321
(I needed help because I am a fake American who has basically never watched the Simpsons.)
So anyways, after I sent him those two names from the Simpsons, Aaron Shen got all excited and offered "extremely ample financial support" and asked to switch to different messaging platform. He asked me to switch to Signal several times over the course of our conversations.
Needless to say, I never sent Shen the names of any real people or any reports, I never gave him my cell number, never messaged with him on Signal, and never accepted money or any form of compensation from him.
Here's him offering me moolah.
I'll get to a more serious summary in a bit, but just let me say, that this thing with Aaron Shen might possibly be the most hilarious thing that has ever happened to me. I dissolved into helpless paroxysms of laughter on at least 7 occasions over the course of 2 weeks.
Last Simpsons thing: I also told him I had an imminent meeting with a "former intelligence director" (an important-sounding but non-existent position) named "Krustofsky" — the last name of Krusty the Clown.
Now for the analysis. China using LinkedIn to collect intel is nothing new!
Here's a great NYT piece about it, from 2019. But this has been going on since at least 2011. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/27/world/asia/china-linkedin-spies.html
Here's a great NYT piece about it, from 2019. But this has been going on since at least 2011. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/27/world/asia/china-linkedin-spies.html
Why does China do this? Because it works! It's cheap, basically risk-free, and if you try it 1000 times and get 2 useful sources out of it, that's a win.
Kevin Mallory, a former CIA official, was successfully recruited this way. Jun Wei Yeo, a Singaporean national, recently pled guilty to DOJ charges, he was using LinkedIn to recruit at the direction of the Chinese govt. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-53544505
BUT! Aaron Shen, or whoever was really behind that LinkedIn profile, was almost stupidly inept.
Who could be so dumb as to try to pay a journalist for her sources—especially one who specializes in CCP influence and intel operations—without even asking to go off the record!?
Who could be so dumb as to try to pay a journalist for her sources—especially one who specializes in CCP influence and intel operations—without even asking to go off the record!?
But the ineptitude continues. Clearly this person knows next to nothing about American pop culture. But why didn't he do a basic internet search of the names I was sending him?
I wonder if there is now a list circulating at the IDCPC with Simpsons names on it.
I wonder if there is now a list circulating at the IDCPC with Simpsons names on it.
And if that weren't enough — a few days into my conversations with Shen, Axios published me and Zach's investigation about the suspected Chinese spy Christine Fang. It was all over the internet and LinkedIn.
I thought for sure he would be on to me after that.
Nope.
I thought for sure he would be on to me after that.
Nope.
Several scholars and writers helped me understand what I was dealing with. @RollandNadege provided sharp and smart insight. She told me, "From the outside, it’s easy to feel that the party-state is really professional at what they are doing. But actually they may not be."
(If you're interesting in learning more about CCP think tanks, check out Nadège's new report for NED:
https://www.ned.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Commanding-Ideas-Think-Tanks-as-Platforms-for-Authoritarian-Influence-Rolland-Dec-2020.pdf?utm_source=forum&utm_medium=site&utm_campaign=intellectual%20inquiry
https://www.ned.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Commanding-Ideas-Think-Tanks-as-Platforms-for-Authoritarian-Influence-Rolland-Dec-2020.pdf?utm_source=forum&utm_medium=site&utm_campaign=intellectual%20inquiry
. @gadyepstein recently wrote a great article for The Economist about the International Department of the Chinese Communist Party, which runs the think tank Aaron Shen claimed to be affiliated with. Read it here: https://www.economist.com/china/2020/12/10/how-chinas-communist-party-trains-foreign-politicians
. @jonasPplesner is something of an expert in these LinkedIn recruiting attempts, and he helped me as well. Read his first-hand account here: https://www.the-american-interest.com/2018/10/23/chinas-linkedin-honey-traps/
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To offer everyone some closure on this story, Aaron Shen deleted his account as soon as I sent him an email and a LinkedIn message with a formal media inquiry for the article. The IDCPC think tank where he claimed to work also did not respond to a request for comment.
And to end, I'll leave you with the final message I ever received from Aaron Shen:
"How about your meeting with Krustofsky, was there anything interesting?"
(gif mine, not Shen's)
"How about your meeting with Krustofsky, was there anything interesting?"
(gif mine, not Shen's)
