How Silicon Valley Became a Den of Spies

By ZACH DORFMAN
27 July 2018

Excerpt

As Silicon Valley continues to take over the world, the local spy war will only get hotter—and the consequences will resonate far beyond Northern California. This story is based on extensive conversations with more than half a dozen former intelligence community officials with direct knowledge of, or experience with, U.S. counterintelligence activities in the Bay Area. All requested anonymity to discuss sensitive matters more openly. A few other individuals, all of whom worked counterintelligence in the Bay Area from the early 1970s through the mid-2000s, agreed to be interviewed on the record.

As one former senior intelligence official put it: “San Francisco is a trailblazer—you see the changes there in foreign counterintelligence first. Trends emerge there.” If we want to understand a world where Russia and China are ramping up their spy games against the United States, then we need to pay attention to what’s happening in San Francisco.

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