Book Review: "Spy Schools"

"Spy Schools: How the CIA, FBI, and Foreign Intelligence Secretly Exploit America's Universities", by the renowned Dan Golden, is a unique look at how intelligence agencies around the world have leveraged higher education for various purposes. Specifically, intelligence agencies seem to favor academia for building a handler's background and to get operatives in their target countries, under the guise of studying or teaching abroad. Dan shows how American universities, while known for their openness, can suffer from this double edged-sword, and how intelligence agencies actively exploit them today. This was a long book, and slightly repetitive, but drove home the reality and pervasiveness of academic espionage. I listened to the book on Audible for ~14hrs, at $20, which felt long, but provided a fun and intriguing listen nevertheless. Overall I give the book 6 out of 10 stars, for being an eye opening read, although not critical or earth shattering to one's understanding of modern intelligence operations. I recommend this book to intelligence analysts, professors at universities, history buffs, and really anyone interested in information security. It's an incredible piece of investigative journalism, where Golden leaves no stone unturned as he hunts down the sources and players involved in these cases of academic espionage. The book highlights how teachers make for great spies or handlers, as they get access to tons of upcoming talent, as well as gaining cover for international travel. The following are the chapters of the book, in my typical fashion, to give you a better sense of the contents:

Introduction: The FBI Goes to College
Part 1: Foreign Espionage at American Universities
Chapter 1: Cloak of Invisibility
Chapter 2: The Chinese Are Coming
Chapter 3: Spy Without a Country
Chapter 4: Foreign Exchange
Chapter 5: Shanghaied
Part 2: Cover U.S. Operations In Higher Education
Chapter 6: An Imperfect Spy
Chapter 7: The CIA's Favorite University President
Chapter 8: Bumps and Cutouts
Chapter 9: Hidden in the Ivy
Chapter 10: "I Am Keeping You out of Jail"
Chapter 11: No Spy Zone

I especially enjoyed the note about the "spy schools" or "spy programs", the many well known, specific academic programs that are so friendly towards intelligence agencies that they have gained a public reputation for having ties to spy services. The book also talks extensively of double agents, or spies working for multiple agencies or countries, allowing them to feed misinformation to target countries. For example the book focuses heavily on the industrial Chinese brain drain of the 21st century, citing lots of good evidence of blatant economic espionage. But the book also talks about cultivating Chinese double-agents within the academic space, and the conflicting desire to both cultivate and curb these activities at the same time. Further, it's fascinating the lengths the Chinese would go for academic and industrial espionage, seemingly putting out general calls to bring top ideas home from both universities and companies. While this narrative gets the majority of the focus in the book, Golden also shows how can this can lead to biases and racism from assumed allegiances. The book also talks about how both foreign and domestic intelligence agencies have persecuted researchers, using leverage and bad situations to get them to comply with espionage. It provides the details of one case, that of Dajin Peng in depth, and while it doesn't provide any clear cut answers it shows how dangerous and shadowy the life of a secret agent can be, even for teachers. Still, using a university is a great way to build a back story and generate connections in a handler's target country. Checkout this amazing turbo-summary by the author below: