As if we have nothing else to worry about.
Good grief, what's next for the Bay Area? I can see the headline now "SF homeless mysteriously turn into zombies"
San Francisco aka spyland USA
dimondpark@imgur
Anyhow, it turns out that unusually large Russian consulate in SF that was ordered closed by the Trump administration last year probably was the biggest known hub of intelligence gathering activity by Moscow in the US.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Foreign Policy
THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE RUSSIAN CONSULATE IN SAN FRANCISCO
Overflights, mapping fiber-optic networks, “strange activities.” Moscow’s West Coast spies were busy.
BY ZACH DORFMAN
ILLUSTRATIONS BY MATT ROTA
DEC. 14, 2017
...But why the focus on San Francisco? Why not close one of Russia’s other three consulates, in New York, Seattle, or Houston? And why now?
The answer, I discovered, appears to revolve around an intensive, sustained, and mystifying pattern of espionage emanating from the San Francisco consulate. According to multiple former intelligence officials, while these “strange activities” were not limited to San Francisco or its environs, they originated far more frequently from the San Francisco consulate than any other Russian diplomatic facility in the United States, including the Russian Embassy in Washington, D.C. As one former intelligence source put it, suspected Russian spies were “doing peculiar things in places they shouldn’t be.” Russian officials in Washington failed to respond to multiple attempts via email and phone for comment...
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https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/12/14...-spies-moscow/
And here I thought they liked the views and food
I've seen this electronic billboard all over the Bay Area, from the Bay Bridge toll plaza, to 101 on the Peninsula.
2 recent articles, I wonder if theyre having as hard a time finding a place to live as everyone else is?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Business Insider
San Francisco is a 'nirvana' for China's main intelligence agency — and the center of an intensifying spy war
John Haltiwanger Jul 27, 2018, 5:10 PM ET
1. San Francisco and Silicon Valley are top priorities for Beijing's efforts to steal US trade and technological secrets.
2. California is the only state where China's main intelligence agency has a dedicated unit focused on "political intelligence and influence operations."
3. Tech firms - even those with high-level government contracts - are apparently unprepared to respond to espionage and have few incentives to report such activities.
San Francisco and Silicon Valley are top targets for China's main intelligence agency and Beijing's efforts to steal billion of dollars in US trade and technological secrets are only set to increase, according to a new report from Politico.
The intelligence offensive being launched by foreign governments and led by China could also signal how they intend to operate in other US states and countries in the years to come, the Politico report states.
The national conversation regarding espionage might be dominated by discussions of Russian election interference, which is certainly a serious threat, but China's activities out West are reportedly becoming more and more sophisticated.
Russia and even US allies, such as South Korea and Israel, are also allegedly quite active in the region.
But it's China's Ministry of State Security (MSS), the country's primary intelligence agency, that has placed particular emphasis on California...
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https://amp.businessinsider.com/san-...-agency-2018-7
Quote:
Originally Posted by Politico
How Silicon Valley Became a Den of Spies
The West Coast is a growing target of foreign espionage. And it’s not ready to fight back.
By ZACH DORFMAN 07/27/2018 05:10 AM EDT
SAN FRANCISCO—In the fall of 1989, during the Cold War’s wan and washed-out final months, the Berlin Wall was crumbling—and so was San Francisco. The powerful Loma Prieta earthquake, the most destructive to hit the region in more than 80 years, felled entire apartment buildings. Freeway overpasses shuddered and collapsed, swallowing cars like a sandpit. Sixty-three killed and thousands injured. And local Soviet spies, just like many other denizens of the Bay Area, applied for their share of the nearly $3.5 billion in relief funds allocated by President George H.W. Bush...
...We tend to think of espionage in the United States as an East Coast phenomenon: shadowy foreign spies working out of embassies in Washington, or at missions to the United Nations in New York; dead drops in suburban Virginia woodlands, and surreptitious meetings on park benches in Manhattan’s gray dusk.
But foreign spies have been showing up uninvited to San Francisco and Silicon Valley for a very long time. According to former U.S. intelligence officials, that’s true today more than ever. In fact, they warn—especially because of increasing Russian and Chinese aggressiveness, and the local concentration of world-leading science and technology firms—there’s a full-on epidemic of espionage on the West Coast right now. And even more worrisome, many of its targets are unprepared to deal with the growing threat...
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https://www.politico.com/magazine/am...-russia-219071