Podcast Summary: The Rest Is Classified, Ep 112

Title: How To Protect Your Secrets: Inside China’s Technical Surveillance Playbook (Ep 1)
Hosts: David McCloskey (former CIA analyst & spy novelist) and Gordon Corera (security correspondent)
Special Guest: Glenn Chaffetz (ex-CIA Chief of Tradecraft & Operational Technology)
Date: December 29, 2025

Episode Overview

This episode marks the first of a two-part series exploring how emerging technologies—especially persistent, ubiquitous technical surveillance—are fundamentally transforming the world of human espionage. The hosts, joined by espionage veteran Glenn Chaffetz, dive deep into how traditional spy tradecraft is being rendered obsolete by modern data collection, facial recognition, commercial data brokers, and mass surveillance, and what this means for intelligence agencies and anyone seeking to keep secrets in the digital age.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The End of Old-School Tradecraft

• Obsolescence of Traditional Methods: The podcast opens by describing how the classic imagery of espionage (dead drops, midnight meetings, aliases) has become nearly impossible to maintain due to the explosion of accessible technology and surveillance.

  • “A lot of the tradecraft that we've talked about … is now, I guess, maybe totally, or something close to totally obsolete. There is an absolute revolution going on in the way that human espionage operations are conducted.” — David McCloskey [04:11]

• Not-So-Secret Technology: The mechanisms undermining clandestinity aren’t secret NSA gadgets, but rather everyday, consumer-facing tech, which means “the tools and technologies that are reshaping human intelligence are available to everybody.” [04:55]

2. Ubiquitous Technical Surveillance (UTS)

• Definition and Components: Glenn Chaffetz breaks down UTS (a term from within the intelligence community) as "the interweaving of modern technology into all aspects of our lives, often to degrees that we don't understand." This includes cameras, phones, mics, computing power, and algorithms to connect the dots. [13:40]

• Surveillance Capitalism vs. State Surveillance: While Western surveillance often aims to better market products or optimize infrastructure ("to sell us stuff"), in places like China, the infrastructure is optimized for law enforcement and regime control.

  • “For governments, it's law enforcement, it's fraud detection... but for the private sector, it's... to know what we're doing so that they can... put ads in front of us.” — Glenn Chaffetz [14:08]

3. The Challenges of Modern Clandestinity

• The UTS Catch-22: In the smartphone era, everyone is expected to have a data-emitting device. Attempting to "go dark" is itself suspicious.

  • “The only people who don't carry cell phones are, you know, drug dealers, infants, and spies and intelligence officers. Right. So. Yikes. Right? So you really stand out by trying to escape all the sensors and data that make up the UTS system.” — Glenn Chaffetz [16:46]

• Defining Clandestinity: Clandestinity is described as the intersection of privacy (known identity, unknown activity) and anonymity (unknown identity, known activity). True clandestine activity requires both—now almost impossible to achieve.

  • "A perfect intelligence operation would be one in which anonymity is perfect and privacy is perfect and you have clandestinity, and that's what's required. And that is what is so challenging about today's UTS environment...” — Glenn Chaffetz [18:24]

4. Spotting and Assessing Targets in the Digital Age

• Data Drowning: The vast troves of personal data—tracked online and offline—make it much easier to find people with secrets…and their vulnerabilities. But actual contact becomes fraught with visibility.

  • "You can Google people, you can look up social media profiles, so you can get quite a lot of understanding of someone. ... But as soon as you want to do that engaging face to face or interacting with them or connecting with them, that's where it gets trickier.” — Gordon Corera [27:58]

• Commercial Surveillance and Data Brokers: A burgeoning industry exists to sell sensitive, personal, even compromising information—without regulation or concern for the buyer’s intent.

  • “And I think there's probably tens of thousands of these brokers around the world. ...the United States leads in this because it's the most unregulated or loosely regulated data economy.” — Glenn Chaffetz [30:10]
  • Case: For 12 cents per person, researchers purchased financial, health, and contact data about thousands of active-duty US service members—including special forces—using only commercial channels. [34:10]

• People Undervalue Their Own Privacy: Many share key indicators (resentment, personal problems, work access to secrets) on social media without realizing the implications.

  • "People don't recognize the value of their privacy, and so they undermine it constantly." — Glenn Chaffetz [32:21]

5. Maintaining Cover — Now Almost Impossible

• The Death of Alias: The classic spy “stack of false passports” no longer holds up under digital scrutiny. Google, social media, biometrics, and travel patterns quickly expose discrepancies.

  • “As soon as you had kind of Google and social media...as soon as [a border guard] with access to Google and social media...the answer was less than a minute before they realized there wasn’t a backstory, it didn’t match. You just couldn't do what you could do in the past.” — Gordon Corera [37:25]

• Biometrics and Pattern Recognition: Facial and iris recognition, and data from devices and vehicles, have become almost unavoidable identifiers.

  • “It's the mathematics of the distance of different parts of your face...which is highly invariant.” — Glenn Chaffetz [44:15]

• Travel Pattern Analysis: Credit card companies, retailers, and government agencies can now instantly spot deviations from your daily routine, sometimes even before you do. [40:05]

  • "People do the same thing every day. We're exceptionally habit driven..." — Glenn Chaffetz [39:17]

6. CCTV, Analytics, and the Rearview Mirror Problem

• Global Camera Networks: Cities like London and Beijing are blanketed with surveillance cameras, feeding into central (or sometimes federated) AI systems which may not review all footage immediately—but can always go back and reconstruct events.

  • “If you see the camera, assume it works. Assume someone's going to see what's on that camera. Now, it might not be today, it might not be tomorrow, it might not be this year. But...an asset caught a year from now is still caught.” — Glenn Chaffetz [49:07]

• Back-End Analytics — The Real Game Changer: Automation, AI, and virtually unlimited cheap storage mean that surveillance is never “lost,” just waiting to be processed.

  • “Relying on the incompetence of the adversary is not a particularly successful strategy for security... The authorities have all the time in the world and all the computational power in the world...” — Glenn Chaffetz [47:21]

• Notable Cases:

  • Mossad in Dubai (2010): Israeli agents underestimated Dubai’s CCTV reach, leading to their exposure after a hotel assassination.
  • Salisbury Poisonings (2018): UK authorities pieced together Russian operatives’ movements using CCTV footage.
  • China’s draft dodger sweeps: Use of CCTV and facial recognition to track and arrest military draft evaders in cities like Moscow. [45:58]

Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• "The only people who don't carry cell phones are, you know, drug dealers, infants, and spies and intelligence officers." — Glenn Chaffetz [16:46]
• "Clandestinity is the marriage of both [privacy & anonymity]...That is what is so challenging about today's UTS environment, because we are soaking in...technologies that make anonymity and privacy so difficult to achieve." — Glenn Chaffetz [18:24]
• "Your ability to wear [a disguise] for any long period of time...would be pretty diminished. I mean, it just seems very technically challenging." — David McCloskey [45:40]

Important Timestamps

• 03:01: Former MI6 Chief’s warning — “Adapt or die.”
• 04:11-05:37: Why traditional spy tradecraft is now “obsolete.”
• 13:40-16:08: What is “ubiquitous technical surveillance” (UTS), and how does China lead the world here?
• 18:01: Clandestinity as the intersection of privacy and anonymity.
• 23:58-28:50: The new paradox—data overexposure helps find targets, but meeting them risks exposure forever.
• 29:06-34:10: Data broker economy and the case of buying info about US service members.
• 36:53-41:32: Cover and identity management — why old methods (passports, backstories) fail in the smartphone/biometric age.
• 42:02-44:37: Biometrics, facial recognition, and why Mission Impossible masks don’t work.
• 46:54-50:13: The AI-powered back end, and dangers of “waiting for the review”—why nothing is ever just in the past now.

Natural Language and Tone

The episode is conversational, telling real stories and offering both technical insights and anecdotal evidence. Both hosts inject humor and humility, and Glenn Chaffetz draws on a wide range of personal experience without giving away operational secrets.

Conclusion and Preview

The episode concludes by highlighting how pervasive technology has upended every stage of espionage—from spotting and recruiting agents, to managing cover, to avoiding exposure through digital footprints. While parts of the traditional craft have become easier (finding targets), the critical component—maintaining clandestinity—is harder than ever, and mistakes are permanent in a digital, watchful world.

Preview:
Next episode dives further into how technology is transforming agent running and the practicalities of human espionage in the digital age.

For those interested in espionage, privacy, or the implications of surveillance capitalism, this episode offers both an accessible primer and a chilling warning: the line between spycraft and daily digital life is thinner—and more dangerous—than ever before.