AFIO SF Chapter Presents: Dr. Matthew Brazil on Chinese State Security – South San Francisco, CA

Date: Friday, September 20, 2024

Time: 11:30am no host cocktail; 12 noon meeting start

Location: Basque Cultural Center, 599 Railroad Avenue, South San Francisco, CA

Speakers: Dr. Matthew Brazil; Q&A moderated by Lt. Col. Roger S. Dong

Title: China’s Ministry of State Security: its Organization, Expanding Activities, and Unique Culture

Synopsis: China’s Ministry of State Security, the nation’s premier civilian intelligence service, displays similarities and differences with the services of other major nations. They recruit foreigners with access to national secrets both abroad and at home, but unlike other countries’ services they place a strong emphasis on the acquisition of foreign technology to advance China’s economy, and are a major player in the PRC’s intense monitoring of its own civilian population. Legacies of the past haunt their decision making and their organizational culture, such as China’s “century of humiliation” and the belief from revolutionary times that Chinese society is full of enemies. These aspects of thinking lead Beijing to spend enormous resources on goals which are unfamiliar to our concepts of national security, while the MSS and the rest of China’s IC have harnessed hacking technology as a force multiplier, propelling it to world class status.

Our briefing will engage in some comparative intelligence system analysis, examine what is known about the Ministry’s organization chart, evaluate their currently known missions, and propose a forecast for the MSS in the coming decade.

Speaker: Dr. Matthew Brazil

Dr. Matthew Brazil is a Senior Analyst at BluePath Labs and a Senior Fellow at The Jamestown Foundation. He pursued Chinese studies as an undergraduate at UC Berkeley, as an Army officer with tours in Korea and NSA, and as a graduate student at Harvard in their Regional Studies East Asia program. After a stint as the China specialist for the Commerce Department’s Office of Export Enforcement, he was assigned as a Commercial Officer with the US Embassy, Beijing, where he both promoted and controlled US high technology exports to China.

Afterward, Matt spent 20 years as a security professional, performing investigations in China for a chip manufacturer, and leading the development of a security organization in China for an American specialty chemicals firm. His PhD dissertation at the University of Sydney (2013) described the place in the Chinese Communist Party of their intelligence organs. That and further research led to his contribution as the coauthor of Chinese Communist Espionage, An Intelligence Primer (2019). Matt is also the author of the China chapter in the Handbook of Asian Intelligence Cultures (2022).

Moderator: Lt. Col. Roger S. Dong, USAF ret.

Roger S. Dong is a retired Air Force Lt. Colonel who served in counter-intelligence and human intelligence collection for 28 years throughout Asia. After retirement, he returned as a GS-14 serving as our Defense Attaché in Taiwan from 1995-1999. His interest in modern China continued after his retirement and he has lectured on the Belt and Road Initiative and President Xi Jinping and China and Africa in the past.

He is one of the most highly decorated HUMINT officers in the nation recognized by the Secretary of Defense, Director of DIA and Director of CIA for his significant intelligence reporting.

Questions: If you have any questions about the meeting, please contact the Secretary, Mariko Kawaguchi at afiosf@aol.com.