It's Not Happening in an Embassy. It's Happening Two Blocks From You.
It never looks like espionage at first. It looks like an opportunity.
July 25, 2026 |
By the EPCYBER Intelligence Team
Most people picture espionage as something that happens somewhere else — in embassies, in classified facilities, in countries they will never visit. The uncomfortable truth is that a modern Chinese collection campaign is far more likely to run through a coffee shop two blocks from your office, a message in your LinkedIn inbox, or a paid "consulting" arrangement that looks, on paper, completely ordinary. It does not announce itself. It builds slowly, patiently, and by the time it looks like espionage, the useful part has already happened.
Below, we get into what a China-linked collection effort actually looks like on the ground near you — the approach, the tells, and how to catch it before it matures.
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Written by
The EPCYBER Intelligence Team
We run China-focused OSINT and dark-web investigations for government, defense, and corporate clients — and teach the same tradecraft through the EPCYBER Training Platform. Everything we publish comes out of real casework.
By the EPCYBER Intelligence Team
