閆博士採訪前CIA資深顧問Edward Haugland討論眾多關於中共特務和前蘇聯克格勃在美國影響力的區別話題；06/24/2023【路德時評】

路德社節目中，閆博士採訪前CIA資深顧問Edward Haugland，深入探討了中國共產黨對美情報滲透與認知戰策略，並將其與前蘇聯克格勃在冷戰時期的活動進行了對比。專家指出，相比前蘇聯，中共利用資訊時代、美國社會的某種天真、龐大的留學生群體以及對政商高層的滲透，在認知戰和情報收集上具有更多戰略優勢，同時也面臨獨裁體制及缺乏對美文化理解等固有軟肋。

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So, in this episode, we will continually talking about the paper come from Chinese Communist Party on the cognitive warfare, unrestricted warfare, and also in this episode, we will involve certain questions related to the current situations between America and China. So, thank you, Edward. Thank you for coming again. But thank you, Doctor Yan. Always a pleasure to be on with you. Always, always enjoy the discussion and helping others to understand how important this cognitive war is to to understand and to how to fight back.

So, as we have discussed, that China has developed the unrestricted warfare strategy, and also Chinese Communist Party is focusing on cognitive warfare against America and Americans' allies, and we also know that.

The similar thing has happened, several decades ago in the world, in the Cold War between America and Soviet Union. I have watched some movies recently. So, the more I watched, the more I feel amazing, like incredible how much Soviet Union infiltrated into the United States back to 1970s, 1980s, and the United States has spent quite, quite a lot of effort and even sacrifice to battle with Soviet Union at that time. So I know that you are very experienced in the history and in the intelligence.

About the Soviet Union. So, could we, like, because this time I just want discuss with you the question first. We want start from the difference between the Soviet Union and China, and so in this case, I want you to share your opinions to our audience that.

What do you think about the difference between the intelligence infiltration in the United States, which conducted by Soviet Union, and also which is currently conducted by the Chinese Communist Party? So, like, what kind of advantages or the disadvantages between the two regime, and how deep do you think it is? How difficult do you think it will be for the United States to win this battle against China this time?

Well, thanks for the question, Doctor. Yes. So there's a couple of points there from a historical perspective to look at. So the bottom line is, is China has a number of significant strategic advantages that the former Soviet Union didn't have. However, going back in history from 1918 to the end of the Cold War, the Soviet Union had infiltrated the United States very adeptly and multiple levels. Because from 1918, with the utopian dream here in the U.S., a lot of people joined the Communist Party. In 1930s, they joined the fascist party, okay, which is just another version of socialism.

And then through the sixties, eighties, and other aspects, same thing. In Roosevelt administration, if you go back and look at the Venona papers, the Roosevelt administration was filled with Soviet spies. The Rosenbergs and others, and were just a few examples of people that were caught based on the Venona papers. So pre-information age, the Soviet Union was very adept at infiltrating the United States.

Post information age, which is in early nineties, right after the wall came down and right after the Cold War ended. Okay, then China took over and had significant advantage in a number of ways. So, first of all, is the United States is a lot more naive. And with the Soviet Union, the Cold War, we took decades to build up and explain to the American people the threat, understood the threat and such.

Nowadays, many people still think China is not our enemy; they're just a trading partner. Despite the fact that they commit genocide to fight the subjugation of one point five billion people and such, and this is because our American youth and our politicians don't pay attention to history. So there is an extreme naivete in the U.S. which helps China significantly to advance the infiltration. And please stop me at any point here because I have a number of points to go through here. So if you have questions, just interrupt me.

Sure. So they infiltrate openly by and fund researchers, academics, industry partners, and such. And so, unlike the former Soviets, right, that you have diplomatic aspects and they had to work through diplomatic regions and such, they have free reign to travel throughout the United States with just a visa. They have free reign to come in here and work as students, and so they have three hundred fifty, three hundred seventy thousand students. And not saying all are spies, of course not. But what I am saying is, if they want to get access to something, they have a quarter million plus people to spread throughout the United States to join industry, to join CPA firms, or whatever area they're interested in.

And so it's significant. And then you have folks like Congressman Swalwell, okay, naive guy, okay, liberal lemming, in my opinion. But then he has a sweetheart deal with a honeypot Chinese spy, okay, and deals with that for a number of years. Then you have senators like Diane Feinstein, who her chauffeur was a Chinese spy for decades. And so they've been building this repertoire of different access points for a long time. So the other advantage is China thinks strategically.They plan strategically. They’ve been implementing unrestricted warfare in actual efforts since 1994, as we’ll talk about a little bit later—26 years, right? Twenty-something years. Those advantages are significant. But the other main advantage China has, in my opinion, is that they have a compromised president, through his son, but also through business dealings in China. Here is an American vice president’s son doing business with China, getting billion-dollar deals, and having no experience.

Yet he’s smoking crack and dealing with prostitutes in China. Smoking drugs and crack in China is a capital offense. People get hanged for that, right? Not him. So, do you think they have some video and other things on him? Let alone what we’ve heard about President Biden and his daughter and showers and stuff. I suspect they have more than enough blackmail material and other stuff. So now, not only do you have a means to infiltrate the political arena on the left across the United States, you have an “avatii” of the American public, and you have a compromised president.

The USSR, the old Soviet Union, had a lot of advantages based on the construct they were in. But in this time and age, with the information age, China fully understands, through unrestricted warfare, the necessity and importance of understanding the information environment. With TikTok, WeChat, DNA data, biological data, and the stolen OPM data, they’ve mapped out all the key influencers, relationships, and such, in my opinion. So now, if they want to target certain specific things, they have hundreds of thousands of people, not only within their military force but here in the United States, who can then go collect other specific information.

It’s a massive network that’s unparalleled in the world in terms of collection and ability to impact and influence. Those are their advantages. I’ll come to the weaknesses depending on your questions.

Oh, yeah. I understand what you described, and that is exactly what we have seen. Thank you for your summary and for pointing it out so clearly, because we’ve felt for so long that the Chinese Communist Party has been spending a long time, little by little, infiltrating almost every corner of the United States.

Compared to the Soviet Union, I don’t have as much understanding of the Soviet Union’s intelligence activities as you do. But according to what I’ve read, China has more manpower working in the United States to help Communist China. Also, as you said, they’ve gotten into not only the political field; they also focus on the academic field and on whatever field they can, even affecting the presidential election in the United States. According to what you said, you think these kinds of activities by the Chinese Communist Party have even been kind of successful, right?

In this case, we’ve seen that they have more designed, planned, and evolved tactics against the Americans. But it seems very difficult for Americans to remove this kind of influence and manipulation, which is also what concerns us. Compared to the Soviet Union, the Chinese Communist Party is more like parasites or cancer cells. They invade and infect America, then produce more small parasites or cancer cells, which spread again and work toward the same purpose, right?

In this case, it sounds like Xi Jinping and the CCP believe they’re so powerful, and that their unrestricted warfare techniques definitely work very well. That’s why Xi Jinping is so aggressive. Even this time, when Blinken visited China, Xi Jinping acted like an emperor, sitting in front of Blinken and showing an attitude as if Blinken were much lower than him. So, do you think the Chinese Communist Party has so much of an advantage, even much more than the Soviet Union? Do you think they have no weaknesses, or do you think they have some weaknesses? How could we use their weaknesses to deal with them?

Okay, great question. Before I go back into weaknesses, one aspect to look at is the National Institutes of Standards. When we have standards-body meetings, I have a number of friends who attend these forums. The Chinese government sends a large number of representatives—not directly representing the Chinese government, of course, but Chinese people representing China's interests in these bodies. So it has wide influence.

In terms of weaknesses, China is still a subjugated society, much like the old Soviet Union. Just like in any society like that, the people there, from my perspective—and you can correct me if I'm wrong—realize they have to live within the boundaries of that society, and they don't like it. Anybody on this planet has a certain amount of free will, and eventually they realize that, one way or another, the system is bankrupt. Many others in China now have realized this, but they have to operate within that system. That's a major weakness that we've yet to exploit fully here within the United States or elsewhere.

Even with the extensive mass of potential influencers they have, from my perspective, and having dealt with some different trolls on social media platforms and stuff, they don't fully understand the United States' culture and freedoms. Even though they have a lot of students here, the culture is completely different. It's sort of hard, I think, for some of the Chinese agents and elements trying to counter the United States to fully understand and comprehend not only its resilience and ability to be persistent, but also the danger of awakening the sleeping giant, as Japan did, if they push too far with America. We've seen some aspects of covert activity.

The last thing here is that all dictators are suicidal by nature, in my opinion—Xi included. President Xi, as you've noted in your prior programs, has narrowed down his body of Politburo members. Every one of those people has their eye on Xi's back, whether he knows it or not. He has to balance that level of conflict and keep those people happy. He also has to make sure the people who are watching the 1.5 billion are well taken care of. So he has a significant balancing act while trying to undertake this cognitive warfare against America.

Thank you so much. Yes, Xi Jinping has definitely put himself in an unstable position. Although, in his opinion, he thought he had already enhanced his power in China and that his position there was very stable. Compared to the previous chairman, Xi Jinping really does have more power, and he is now a true dictator. But they don't know that this kind of ideology and thought doesn't fit in modern society, especially in a society like America, with democracy, freedom, and respect for human rights. That's why, when the Chinese Communist Party uses its propaganda to influence America, it comes across as very naive and stupid, and sometimes even very crazy. They try to just put their ideas into your brain, and they don't even understand the basic knowledge of a democratic country. I really appreciate your opinions on this question.

Let's move to the next question. Based on what you have discussed, we know that America is under this kind of invisible attack by China, just as America was under attack by the Soviet Union back in the Cold War. At this moment, we know that it's a crisis because the geopolitical situation is becoming more and more intense. That means the counterintelligence teams in the United States have more responsibility and also need to work harder to counter their enemies in China. In this case, could you share your opinions on what you think the difficulties will be in collecting intelligence during this kind of invisible battle against the Chinese Communist Party? Compared to the Cold War period, is this more difficult for Americans, or is it more difficult for the United States to analyze the intelligence you collected? Yeah, thank you.

No, no, great. First of all, let's talk about the obvious. Just look at me. I'm of Norwegian-Polish heritage. In the former Soviet Union, I could get by, walking around the Soviet Union and participating in different things. Without the information age, they had to rely on other humans to do the tracking and other things, to monitor agents, recruitment, and stuff like that. Right now.Take me, me, this white guy, put me over in China. Okay, I'm going to stick out like a sore thumb, right? And you and I have talked about this before. There's very few people inside the intelligence community who have Chinese heritage or Asian American heritage, right? And even if they don't stick out like a sore thumb, now you have the information age, and China has put in a massive surveillance network that you're very familiar with, right? That the social credit scoring, okay? The surveillance network and cameras around the whole country.

The DNA and biological capabilities, so they could do certain amount of DNA biological trapping. So, if I'm a human intelligence type guy and I want to try to recruit someone or do something, you know, and they have my DNA and such, and I come in under a different name or something, you know, there's all sorts of issues trying to hide my real identity because China stole all the OPM data. They have the DNA data from these other sources and stuff, so they have a variety of countermeasures to then track and identify folks. Lastly.

China is also locked down the internet, and so access to information and stuff within China and such makes it very difficult. Okay, all those things in the Cold War we didn't have to deal with to that extent, but also because we were also again, middle-aged white guys like myself and others, it was a little bit more easier for us to walk around former Soviet Union and do certain things. Now with China, it's very difficult. Now.

That's within China. External to China, though, I think we have pretty much the same advantages because China has not a good reputation around the world, right? They are perceived in different places as then basically raping and pillaging the country for their own benefit. Okay, although they go in there as the benefactor, the people on the ground actually then see what the reality is and find that the whole deal's distasteful. So China has those disadvantages, but.

Because we fail to map the information environment in the United States, we do not have that same level of understanding that China has of the influencers and other stuff like that. So they continually, in my opinion, outmaneuver the United States in every region of the world for the most part. Because even if they don't have the upper hand in terms of trust or other stuff, they have the upper hand in terms of knowledge of the information environment, the influencers, and then how to manipulate, buy, or cheat in different arenas, economic, political, or other aspects. And so, and the last thing aspect is.

China has a massive army of citizens that they can deploy to do this, right? 1.5 billion people, so they have 350 million people they could take and deploy forward to do different things around the world, right? That's the equivalent of the United States population. So all those things give them some tremendous advantages over the U.S., which makes it one case outside China fairly easy to collect, but there is huge amounts of information to collect in, so makes the challenge what do you collect on?

And then within China itself, again, as I mentioned, all the social credit scoring, the cameras, everything else, surveillance systems. And the tracking of people with other people, it makes it very difficult to operate in that realm. Period. I agree with you for all these points. Yes, the strict surveillance camera in China is layers by layers. Basically, it can catch any red in the field. I think so. It's it's almost impossible for America to do the even similar activities against China as how China did to the United States. And also, one thing as you mentioned, outside China, there is culture difference, language barriers, and as I have.

Failed that I when I experienced since I came to the United States, I realized that first the lack of understanding of China is a very serious problem because most of Americans learn it from the TV or other media and even the books. Those are all the kind of censored, or even the propaganda content. So this kind of things has already, as we always talk about, it's a strategic deception. It's already successfully cheated naive Americans, and also Chinese Communist Party using United Front work or using other agents and other pro Chinese Communist Party campaigns to.

A kind of control or manipulate the people who understand Chinese language. So that means when you Americans need to analyze the intelligence or other things, if you rely on the translators or if you rely on the tools provided by China. Even Google translation, China can change the translation to make it looks very. I mean, make it very ridiculous when you try to translate certain English into Chinese or reverse for some sensitive, that kind of sentence or content. So in this case, a lot of barrier is much more than only the firewall between Chinese and Americans.

As we always discuss, China has implanted the things in not only also Americans' brain, and that will affect their understanding and decisions. And that will help China to make Americans make the wrong decision against China. Yeah, yes, that's a great point. So, if if you don't mind, is is that when you talk about that indirect influence?

So, so China doesn't have to come back to the listeners. They don't have to come back and directly target Dr. Yan or myself and say you need to love China or this that. No, what they'll do is they take a look at the divisions in the United States, take a look where we have potential issues. And they watch that social media discourse, and within that stream, they'll feed certain pieces of information to then exacerbate and expand that disgruntlement, cause additional chaos, cause additional issues, and so they're very effective at that. So it doesn't have to be in-your-face disinformation. Matter of fact, as Dr. Yin has mentioned on a program many times, it's very subtle, but it's very nuanced. But because they map the information environment, they know the key influencers. They can very adeptly get in there and take care of that.

Exactly, they know how to little by little building on the facts and then mixed with certain disinformation, which make it looks real and then little by little change the logic. It's basically like you want to build the build the wall, but then little by little it become a little bit not stable and finally the wall will fall down. So that's how they try to finally achieve their goals.

No, it's the same way that the old Soviets use. Is that you're standing, for example, you're standing on a roadway or bridge, and slowly but surely take a piece underneath that bridge, a piece underneath the roadway, and wash it away. And before you know it, the bridge or the road collapses, and you didn't even realize it's getting ready to collapse. Now the Soviets did this with the Communist, the Communist International, with with the with the Chinese Communists. They're doing it with the United Front and others. So they use many of the same tactics and techniques. But now with the information age and technology.

They use. They can do it more subtly. They can do it with individuals. They can do it in masses. So they have much more flexibility in how they operate this cognitive war. Yes. So that means it's kind of very serious and very urgent issue, as you always advocate for American intelligence community, other like leaders, everyone who involved into that. I guess for everyone in America, because it's for the national security.