Stop the presses! Barely a month after President Donald Trump visited Beijing, an espionage scandal is brewing in the pristine waters off China’s long stretches of ocean coastline. China’s Ministry of State Security addressed the situation in a post on the social platform WeChat, the exact wording of which depends on your choice of translator. We’re going by Google Translate’s interpretation here.
The post is really quite a read. It begins by setting the scene: China’s territorial waters, an “expansive blue territory [that] is a precious gift from nature to the Chinese nation.” And we’re not talking about nice beaches and an abundance of fish here. No, the sea “[provides China with] strategic space and abundant resources for promoting high-quality development and advancing Chinese-style modernization.”
But despite the high-quality development and Chinese-style modernization, all is not well in the expansive blue territory! No, beneath the waves, “an unseen covert war of espionage is quietly unfolding.”
“Foreign intelligence agencies,” the post continues, “are continuously collecting and stealing sensitive maritime data through various new types of espionage equipment.” Egad! What sorts of espionage equipment are we talking here?
Well, the culprits are many and varied, but the ones that caught our eye were “spy turtles and spy fish.” Yes, apparently these devious marine creatures have been “fitted with sensors” and sent to “swim in specific areas, collect ocean data, and transmit it to overseas satellites.” You might wonder exactly how much data a turtle could collect, but according to the Ministry, this is no laughing matter. “Sensitive data such as ocean current dynamics, water temperature characteristics, temperature distribution, and seabed topography, if stolen by foreign intelligence agencies, will seriously endanger China’s national security, military security, and economic security.”
We’ll leave it to experts to assess how serious a threat turtles and fish pose to China’s national, military and economic security, and to readers to ponder whether the current state of America’s national security apparatus has left anyone at the CIA equipped to run a bath, let alone a covert operation involving training turtles and fish to spy on Chinese seabed topography.
In fairness, the CIA does have previous form in this area, having made more than its share of contributions to the surprisingly well-populated pantheon of animal-related espionage silliness. Your correspondent recently addressed one of its wildest contributions to the genre, Project Acoustic Kitty, for another outlet—the tl;dr is that the agency tried to use a cat to spy on suspected Russian operatives, and it went exactly as anyone who has ever interacted with a cat would expect.
Other world powers have also dabbled in using animals for naughty purposes. Who could forget the beluga that surfaced off the coast of Norway in 2019 wearing a harness equipped with a camera mount? The immediate suspicion was that despite appearing innocent and playful, the suspiciously friendly cetacean was in fact [drum roll] a Russian spy! Why would anyone think such a thing?
Well, there was the fact that the harness bore a logo that read, “EQUIPMENT OF ST. PETERSBURG,” and also the fact that Russian state TV had aired a documentary a couple of years before about… training belugas as spies. (Rumors that the beluga was also carrying a banner that read, “Hello, I am a Russian spy!” remain unconfirmed.) For its part, Russia denied the allegations. In fact, an analyst at a Russian think tank turned the tables, accusing “Norwegian idiots” of “robbing certain Petersburg zoologists” who were conducting perfectly innocent studies on whales.
Anyway, it could be that the CIA’s turtle-training department is the last bastion of competence in a crumbling imperial intelligence apparatus. Or it could be that the Russians have moved onto studying turtles. Who can say for sure? It’s a wild old world out there.
Read the full article here
