On Dec. 22, 2010, someone apparently pointed a cellphone out of the window of a car driving along a public road outside the perimeter of a military airfield in Chengdu, an industrial city in central China. The person holding the phone, whose name has never been revealed, snapped a photo of a black-painted jet fighter taxiing through fog blanketing the airfield.
"Accidental spies" like the Chengdu photo are the subject of my feature in the new Pacific Standard magazine. (Danger Room's own Spencer Ackerman is also a contributor.)
With his simple act, the photographer appeared to outperform the $80-billion-a-year U.S. spy community, which has the advantage of a plethora of drones, satellites, hackers and old-fashioned human spies. The snapshot was the first hard evidence of China's very first "fifth-generation" stealth fighter, the J-20 – and it seemed to come as a surprise to some Pentagon analysts. "We have been pretty consistent in underestimating the delivery and initial operational capability of Chinese technology weapons systems," Vice Adm. David Dorsett said.
In 2009, then-U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates had predicted that China would "have no fifth-generation aircraft by 2020." Granted, Gates might have meant operational fifth-generation aircraft. All the same, the J-20's appearance years ahead of schedule was a dramatic demonstration of China's rapidly expanding aerospace prowess. And discovering it was also a signature achievement by a relatively unknown group of Chinese internet users whose military-technology fandom is having a profound effect on the most important strategic rivalry of the early 21st century.
The Chinese fanboys, who post rumors, photos and snippets of technical data to a wide range of blogs and forums, are America's de-facto spies in China, hoovering up information on Beijing's latest planes, ships, missiles and ground vehicles and making it widely available to U.S. analysts, journalists, military planners and policymakers.
The Chengdu snapshot's roundabout journey from the photographer's cellphone to computer screens in the United States is typical of the postings from these Chinese forum members. The photog uploaded the J-20 shot to an obscure military forum apparently hosted inside the firewalled Chinese internet. That's where one prominent, U.S.-based Chinese forum member found the photo. This person, whose name I agreed not to mention, uploaded it to Top81, a popular forum that includes an English-language extension that is easily accessible by foreigners.
On Christmas Day 2010, Bill Sweetman, one of the world's leading aviation journalists, noticed the photo at Top81 and, appreciating its significance, linked to it at Ares, the website of Defense Technology International magazine. Sweetman's link spawned countless other links. There were skeptics, at first. But within a few days the J-20 was featured in newspaper headlines all over the Western world. Shortly thereafter Dorsett admitted the Pentagon was behind the curve.
It's not actually certain that the fanboys are better spies than the Pentagon's, CIA's and NSA's professional spooks. It's possible that the Chinese People's Liberation Army controls the trickle of information to the forums, and by extension to Western audiences – perhaps making the fanboys more propagandists than spooks. Read the article in Pacific Standard, and decide for yourself.
