Issue No. 2: May 27, 1999: Analysis of the Cox report on Chinese spying on the U.S. Defense Program.

The Cox report was available on the Internet almost before it was in print, becoming available at CNN (www.cnn.com) and the U.S. House of Representatives web site (www.house.gov). As a result, I've had a chance to read most of this report. My impression of it is that there is both less and more here than meets the eye.

There is less meat here than you might expect. The report is highly redundant; some sentences appear four and five times. Lists of U.S. warheads appear several times, with minor variations. In addition, some material is clearly padding, such as a totally useless extended definition of what constitutes a "espionage walk-in."

More significantly, the report is written very generally. It offers conclusions, but, with some significant exceptions, does not provide the supporting material to prove its allegations. It would not be surprising that this was due to security issues. The unanimous support of the report from committee members and chorus of approval it's received is evidence that its conclusions are not that far off. However, the report also does not give much space to explaining or probing why this counter-intelligence failure happened. That is not a minor omission. If this security breach was simply the result of the failure of one or two people it would be easy to fix. You fire those people, add some more oversight, and go on. But this problem was overlooked by our counter-intelligence agencies, senior Executive officials, Congress and even the press. This problem went on for 20 years in administrations of both parties. That means we have a much more serious problem. While the report doesn't address that issue directly, it does offer insight indirectly into two important factors that contributed to this. Later in the essay I will highlight those.

This impression of slight vagueness is increased by reading the recommendations. When the report's 38 conclusions are examined, many appear to be of minor significance, or almost repeat each other. Many are simply a sentence or two in length. Recommendations 1, 14, 22 and 26 are about reporting to Congress. Recommendations 8, 15 and 23 simply call for observation of existing laws. Recommendation 9 and 10 are about other countries observing the law.

There are two clusters of recommendations that have punch. Recommendations, 2, 3, 4, 5, 35, 37 and 38 all suggest, in various ways the amazing idea that maybe we ought to have some sort of organized counter-intelligence program against the Chinese. But again, one wonders at what isn't said: why don't we have an effective counter-intelligence program? Would it just prove so embarrassing to both of the political parties do dredge this up that neither have any motivation to do so?

Recommendations 15 through 24 are about reform of the satellite-launching program. This is where the report digs in and describes what, in my opinion, is a real scandal. Because we can't launch enough of our own satellites, we have been using Chinese rockets to do so. We take highly sensitive, classified technology in our satellites, tell the Chinese how to connect it to their rockets, use private and unmotivated security guards (not real law enforcement professionals) to keep the Chinese from studying this technology. Then, we are surprised that the Chinese learn things about us they shouldn't.

A second area where the report highlights a significant problem is in its description of the loose security at the National weapons labs. By "loose security" I don't mean to suggest that the problem is black-clad ninja's sneaking in at midnight. Rather, the report describes an almost casual series of joint meetings between the Chinese and American scientists. American scientists go to motels to avoid American security. Chinese officials wine, dine and flatter Americans on trips to China and badger them into saying more than they should. And, apparently, this works. This procedure, so simple that a spy novelist couldn't use it, apparently has the U.S. scientists helpless.

I believe strongly in scientific freedom, and that, usually, military and law enforcement put more controls on scientific activity than is useful (for example, the bungling about encryption standards). However, here is a case where some elementary restrictions seem to be useful. Like keeping classified and unclassified computers separate from each other.

So much useless material is classified. So often the classification just keeps historians from knowing what happened, or critics of policy from proving what most of us suspect. And then, we don't keep secure the technology about some of our most advanced thermonuclear weapons. If anything should be classified and protected, this would be it. But again, the "why" question reoccurs. Why are our labs so insecure?

The report indirectly addresses two factors that I think are of greater significance than even the lamentable security failures described already. These two factors I think are the real reasons we have an ongoing problem, and indicate that old style, cloak and dagger spy operations are not the problems we have to face in the next century.

The first factor pertains to the actions of private companies. The report does describe in clear and extensive detail the aggressive activities of private firms who wanted to do business with China. Certainly, portions of our business community see China as the last untapped market. These firms avoided government supervision and licensing requirements, freely offered technological fixes to missile problems and other technologies. In other words, the Chinese were being practically beseeched to accept our technology. Far from a spy operation, our companies were almost trying to give the information away in the hopes of expanding their business in China. Globalization brings about companies whose motives cannot be simply aligned either with local communities (because they move factories and jobs) or even the nation (because they pursue profit globally).

The report cautions against uncritical approval of what business wants to do. It would be ironic if the conservatives who push for expanded markets would be reigned in by the conservatives who want strong defense.

However, there is a second factor that the report only hints at. My suspicion is that the "why" question I've been posing goes to a fundamental fault of U.S. foreign policy: our habit of having universal solutions. For decades it was provided by opposition to the Soviet Union. Two peasants in Latin America get in a fistfight and one must be a subversive communist trained in Russia and the other a brave freedom fighter. Even suggesting that maybe local fights might have local issues at their core could get you labeled weak on communism. In such a framework it becomes easy to overlook everything else. (Though, it must be added, it wasn't as if we had such excellent intelligence estimates of the Soviet Union, either.) A second problem with this approach is that, if everything depends on one enemy, it becomes easy to build that enemy into an invincible monster, as we certainly did with the Soviet Union.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, it has been observed many times that we find ourselves adrift, without a universal bogy-man to organize our activity. Even Hollywood is casting about for enemies. I suspect that there are those who are itching to turn China into the sort of enemy that we made the Soviets. The thought is raised because there are several places in the Cox report were the language is directly reminiscent of J. Edgar Hoover. An anonymous, middle level Chinese official is quoted and ominous conclusions about the entire thrust of the country are drawn from it. The control of the party over the army is used to imply that we are facing some sort of implacable, highly organized, unified enemy. Then, every possibility for the Chinese to threaten us militarily is taken to its maximum concern. Of course, it is said, we can't be too careful. Yes, we can. By assuming the worst, we can create it.

A little realism might be in order. We are not about to start a war with China. And there seems little need for us ever to do so. Moreover, a visionary foreign policy should not be one that creates what we fear. Clearly we need to revise the satellite program, reform the export of technology, tighten up the weapons labs and diversify our counter-intelligence focus. Then, even more critically, we need a serious analysis of our relationship with China. We need to find ways to bind our interests closer to the Chinese and maximize the advantages to both countries to cooperation. The last thing we need is another arms race. We now know the sort of accidental way that the Cold War began, and the way in which we created a monster, build to defend against it, and then provoked the building up of the very monster we imagined. Could we be about to do it again with China?

© 1999 John P. Nordin. Do not copy.