On SpyCast: Spying at American Universities
For decades, American universities have been a battleground in the shadow war. Especially in recent years, the FBI has warned of the use of international students and faculty as spies on college campuses.
In this episode of SpyCast, Daniel Golden, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of "Spy Schools," documented the dark space between academia and espionage — from technology theft to influence operations, courtesy of China, Russia, Cuba, and Iran.
Dan stumbled on the practice while working at Bloomberg. He was covering a story about a University of South Florida professor who had gotten into serious trouble when authorities found porn on his computer. The FBI told the professor he could either lose his job and go to prison, or spy on his Chinese colleagues.
“The university should be off limits,” Dan told me. “They should be places of collaboration and diversity and learning and openness and transparency. It's too bad if that gets tarnished and exploited by intelligence services, from Russia to China to our own CIA.”
Length: 27 minutes
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