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238 | HOW AMERICA LOST ITS SECRETS

sian KGB and SVR reported that Chinese intelligence received from Russia a continuous stream of communications intelligence about the United States in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Russia's intelligence resources during this period were formidable. They included geosynchronous satellites, listening stations in Cuba, sleeper agents, and embassy-based spy networks. Presumably, this relationship further deepened under President Putin's regime. Putin asserted in speeches in 2014 that Russia and China continued to share a key strategic objective: countering the United States' domination of international relations, or what Putin terms "a unipolar world order." China's president, Xi Jinping, expressed a very similar view, saying in 2014 in a thinly veiled reference to the United States that any attempt to "monopolize" international affairs will not succeed.

Since the end of the Cold War, Russia has been the major supplier of almost all of China's modern weaponry. It licenses for manufacture in China avionics, air defense systems, missile launchers, stealth technology, and submarine warfare equipment. To make these arms effective, it also provides China with up-to-date intelligence about the ability of the United States and its allies to counter them. While such intelligence cooperation may be limited by the reality that China and Russia still compete in many areas, they still have reason to share much of the fruits of their cyber and conventional espionage against the NSA in accordance with their intelligence. After all, the NSA works to intercept the military and political secrets of both these allies. Moreover, as the CIA's former deputy director Morell points out in his book, NSA secrets are a form of currency for adversaries in the global intelligence war, saying that part of Snowden's cache could be traded by a country that acquired it to the intelligence services of Iran and North Korea.

Snowden's stay in Hong Kong from May 20 to June 23 in 2013 made the Chinese intelligence service, willy-nilly, a potential player in whatever game he was involved in. China's full responsibility for Hong Kong's national security and foreign affairs includes monitoring foreign intelligence operatives. Chinese intelligence main-

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