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The FBI Made a Spy Thriller to Remind You Not to Be a Spy

In what feels like a full-on Netflix nod, they even called it "Game of Pawns."

More so than government training videos, government warning videos—warning you, for instance, about the Soviet threat—can be very hard to take seriously for their simple cheese factor: bad music, cheap dialogue, overbearing concern-trolling.

The latest one from the FBI tells a story that's just interesting enough to keep you watching—how, in real life, a young American expat almost became a Chinese spy—but just cartoonish enough to make you want to look away, perhaps in a search for more details about his story. The FBI calls its thirty-minute thriller, in what feels like a full-on Netflix nod, "Game of Pawns":

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Where did all this money come from, Glenn Duffie Shriver's father asks in the (highly produced) FBI dramatization, when young Glenn, who'd been working as an English teacher abroad, came home from China with a few stacks of hundred dollar bills (he was always paid in hundred dollar bills). "I've been slinging English like crack in China," he says. "Everyone wants to learn."

Actually, the young American was writing essays about politics for a mysterious group of people he met in Shanghai. Austin Ramzy at the Times picks it up from there:

Through that assignment, and a contact named “Amanda,” he was introduced to two men — “Mr. Wu” and “Mr. Tang” — who paid him thousands of dollars while encouraging him to apply for United States government jobs. Mr. Shriver received a total of $70,000 while twice taking and failing the Foreign Service exam, then applying to the Central Intelligence Agency.

He was arrested before he was able to take any United States government post or gain access to any sensitive information. In 2010, he pleaded guilty to “conspiring to provide national defense information to intelligence officers of the People’s Republic of China” and was sentenced to four years in prison.

In addition to the video (produced by a company called the Rocket Media Group) and a five-minute interview with the actual Shriver, the FBI's website offers instructions to Americans studying abroad on how to avoid becoming a target of secret stealers. It points specifically at "seemingly innocuous pretexts such as job or internship opportunities, paid paper-writing engagements, language exchanges, and cultural immersion programs." In other words, the sort of things you encounter on a daily basis as a twenty-something American living in a big Chinese city. Helpfully, the tips get more specific:

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  • Be skeptical of “money-for-nothing” offers and other opportunities that seem too good to be true, and be cautious of being offered free favors, especially those involving government processes such as obtaining visas, residence permits, and work papers.
  • Minimize personal information you reveal about yourself, especially through social media.
  • Minimize your contact with people who have questionable government affiliations or who you suspect might be engaged in criminal activity.
  • Properly report any money or compensation you received while abroad on tax forms and other financial disclosure documents to ensure compliance with U.S. laws.

The point: be alert, do not be a spy, and do not become the target of spying. Noted.

Despite the video's sincere attempts at verisimilitude—DC's Chinatown doesn't make for a very convincing Shanghai, though we applaud the effort—it's difficult to know exactly how serious the threat of other Shrivers is. In 2011 the Associated Press reported that over the previous three years, at least 57 people had been charged for trying to pass “classified information, sensitive technology or trade secrets to intelligence operatives, state-sponsored entities, private individuals or businesses in China.”

Presumably, the US government's counterespionage officials (who work with a budget of about $3.8 billion, estimates the Post) are really worried about the threat of Americans studying and working abroad. The number of Americans working and studying in China continues to grow (I was once one of them, in Beijing, no less, and no spying); the Institute of International Education reports there were more than 280,000 American students studying overseas last year.

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Also growing, according to the authorities: Chinese attempts at real-world, non-cyber espionage.

"It's true that China has experienced amazing economic growth, but what most people don't realize is that part of that growth is fueled by a state-run systematic program of theft, pure and simple," Michelle Van Cleave, a former head of the National Counterintelligence Executive, Washington's main counter-spy agency, told Newsweek in January, in a report that cited "scores of cases currently filling state and federal court dockets."

"They insert collectors inside US companies to facilitate technology acquisition," said Van Cleave. "The numbers of businessmen and commercial enterprises, scientists, engineers, academics working in the U.S. from China keep growing, far exceeding our ability to keep tabs on potential illegal activity."

It's not clear when and how the FBI and CIA figured out Shriver was working with the Chinese, but sources told the Washingtonian that it involved special intelligence methods that went beyond the typical background check.

“The young man explained it well," Edward T. Timperlake, a former Department of Defense intelligence liason, told the Epoch Times, a paper whose antipathy for China is well-known. "You lead a sheltered life in American society. You can get along being bright and qualified, and never see the malicious, ugliness of a foreign government targeting you to exploit you as a human being for their political agenda. It’s a wake up call.”

The film isn't just about China or students living abroad. "Productions such as the movie 'Game of Pawns' are essential and very practical tools for sensitizing the public and private sectors to our nation's growing counterintelligence mission," Frank Montoya, the current National Counterintelligence Executive, said in a press release.

Beijing's Global Times also wrote about the video, which, it said, "warned US students studying abroad to be aware of a foreign intelligence threat." The paper did, however, manage to leave out any mention of the country at hand.

Read about the FBI's use of drones in the U.S. in the Motherboard/MuckRock Drone Census.