Chinese spy who shook America through LinkedIn

Jun Wei Yeo, an ambitious and recently enrolled Ph.D. student from Singapore, became extremely happy when he was invited to present a presentation in Beijing in 2015 in China. His doctoral research was related to China's foreign policy. He was getting a chance to know directly about the emerging superpower country. Following his presentation, Jun Wei, also known as Dixon, according to US court documents, came across several people who reported that he worked for Chinese think tanks.

He said that they want to pay him for providing political reports and information. He later revealed what he wanted from him: "Shuttlebut" - rumors and insider information. According to the testimony given in the oath, they soon understood that they were Chinese intelligence agents, but they kept in touch with them.

At first, he was asked to focus on the countries of southeast Asia, but later his interest shifted to the US government. In this way, Dixon became a sugar agent. He started using the professional networking site LinkedIn, he resorted to a fake consulting company and used the site to put a curious teacher's curtain to trap American targets.

Five years later, on Friday, Yeo pleaded guilty in a US court to be "an illegal agent of a foreign power" amid deep tension between the US and China and the US's commitment to find Chinese spies.

Yeo, 39, could face a jail term of up to 10 years.

What say, old fellow

Alumni of Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy (LKYSPP) are shocked to hear this news.

The institute trains some of the top bureaucrats and government officials in Asia. A former postgraduate student, who did not wish to be named, said, "He was a very active student in the class. I always saw him as a wise man." He told that he often talked about social inequality and told how his family had faced a financial crisis when they were children.

A former staff member of the institute told a different story. He said that Yeo felt that he was more important than necessary.

Yeo's Ph.D. was Supervisor Huang Jing, a high-profile Chinese-American professor. He was expelled from Singapore in 2017 for being a foreign agent.

Huang Jing has always denied these allegations. After leaving Singapore, he first worked in Washington DC and now he is working in Beijing.

According to a court-issued document with Yeo admitting the blame, the student met his Chinese handlers dozens of times in China at different places.

During a meeting, he was asked to get information about the US Department of Commerce, Artificial Intelligence, and China-US Trade War. Bilahari Kausikan, a former permanent secretary in the Foreign Ministry of Singapore, said he did not doubt that Dixon knew he was working for Chinese intelligence services.

Use LinkedIn

Yeo made his important contacts using LinkedIn. This site is used by over 700 million people.

Former government and military personnel and contractors do not hesitate to publicly reveal details of their earlier work on this site. Through this, they aim to get jobs with a big salary in the private sector. It is like a gold mine for foreign intelligence agencies. In May last year, a former CIA officer, Kevin Melory, was sentenced to 20 years in prison for providing confidential military information to a Chinese agent. This officer was targeted on LinkedIn itself.

In 2017, Germany's Intelligence Agency said that Chinese agents had resorted to LinkedIn to target at least 10,000 Germans. LinkedIn has not responded to this story, but said earlier that it is taking several measures to prevent such misdeeds.

Contact with people associated with the US military

One of the people contacted was working on the US Air Force F-35 fighter jet program and had problems with money. Another person was a US Army officer who had lived in the Pentagon.

The LinkedIn algorithm helped Yeo find such contacts. Every time Yeo used to see someone's profile, he used to get other contacts with similar experiences in the suggestion.

According to court documents, their handlers advised them to ask their targets whether they were dissatisfied with their work or had some financial problems.

In 2018 Yeo posted a fake online job ad for his consultancy firm. He said that he received more than 400 CVs, of which 90 percent were from US military and government employees who secured security clearance. Some of these CVs were sent to their Chinese handlers.

Matthew Brazil, co-author of Chinese Communist Espionage: An Intelligence Primer, says that the use of LinkedIn is blatant but there is nothing to be shocked.

He says that obtaining consultant reports is one way for agents to link their marks with them. The US Assistant Attorney General for National Security, John DeMers, says the case exemplifies how China is taking advantage of the openness of American society.

On Sunday, Singapore's Ministry of Home Affairs said that no direct threat to the country's security has been revealed by the investigation into the matter. It is believed that Dixon did not work with his contacts the way his handlers wanted. But, in 2019 he went to the US with instructions that he would make the army officer a permanent source of information.