by Sharad Swaney
Dear Room,
The FBI is now sharing intelligence with China and Russia.
Not through some distant diplomatic channel. Not as a one-time exchange during an emergency. Reuters reports that Chinese public-security officials have been visiting FBI facilities in the United States, American agents have traveled to China to work cases, and the two sides are speaking every day.
Every day.
FBI Director Kash Patel called these new relationships with longtime American rivals selective partnerships aimed at fighting fentanyl trafficking, cyber fraud, fugitive crime, and the sexual exploitation of children. Those are real threats. Cooperation that saves a child or stops a shipment of fentanyl is not something I am going to dismiss.
But that cannot be the end of the conversation.
The same FBI that publicly calls the Chinese government a grave counterintelligence and economic-espionage threat is now inviting officials from China’s Ministry of Public Security into American facilities to exchange intelligence and case information. Patel is also building a relationship with Russia and considering a trip there.
That is an extraordinary line to cross.
Before I keep going, I would really appreciate it if you subscribed. This room exists to slow down when a wild headline is also a real institutional change, because those are the stories we cannot afford to absorb as background noise.
They are inside the building.
Reuters described personnel exchanges in which Chinese law-enforcement officers visit the United States and FBI agents travel to China. Patel said working-level officers from China’s Ministry of Public Security come here monthly, American agents go there the following month, and the two sides speak daily.
He said the FBI knows who is coming and vets them. Former bureau officials told Reuters the visitors would ordinarily face electronic and physical surveillance meant to reduce the risks.
That reassurance tells us something important.
If the partnership requires counterintelligence measures against the people receiving access, then the danger is not imaginary. The bureau is trying to cooperate with institutions it simultaneously believes may exploit that cooperation.
This is not like sharing information with Britain, Canada, Australia, or New Zealand through alliances built over generations. Patel himself called China and Russia adversarial. A former FBI supervisory agent told Reuters that both countries are actively trying to harm the United States physically, economically, and militarily.
The FBI’s own public China-threat page is blunt. It says the counterintelligence and economic-espionage efforts of China’s government and Communist Party threaten American economic well-being and democratic values.
And now officials connected to that state security system are being welcomed into FBI facilities.
The reason sounds impossible to oppose.
This is how the hardest government decisions are sold.
The stated goals are the things any decent person wants stopped: child exploitation, deadly drugs, cyber scams, fugitives, and organized crime. Patel says the working groups are narrow and focused. Reuters also reported concrete cooperation, including fugitive repatriations between the United States and China.
Those outcomes matter.
But a good goal does not erase the risk created by the method. China’s Ministry of Public Security is not an ordinary local police department. It is part of an authoritarian government accused of mass surveillance, political repression, and targeting critics beyond its borders. Russia’s security services have spent years conducting cyber operations and influence campaigns against the United States and its allies.
The question is not whether cooperation can ever happen. Governments cooperate with adversaries when interests overlap. The question is who controls the boundary, what information crosses it, who audits the exchange, and what happens when a foreign government uses American access to identify sources, techniques, dissidents, or vulnerabilities.
Reuters reported that some former FBI officials are deeply alarmed. One warned that these exchanges could provide cover for Chinese intelligence officers trying to penetrate the American system.
The FBI is asking Americans to trust that it can invite an adversary inside without letting the adversary see the room.
That may be possible in a tightly controlled case. It becomes much harder to accept when the contact is routine, reciprocal, and daily.
This is becoming a model.
The part that stopped me was not only that these relationships exist. It was Patel’s argument that the China arrangement proves the FBI can build similar partnerships with almost anyone.
In other words, this is not being described as an uncomfortable exception. It is being treated as a playbook.
That should trigger serious congressional scrutiny immediately. Lawmakers should know which FBI facilities foreign officers entered, what categories of information were shared, what databases or personnel they could access, how each visitor was vetted, and whether American counterintelligence officials objected. The public should know what safeguards exist before this model expands to more governments.
Oversight is not sabotage. Asking questions does not mean wanting cyber scams or child-abuse networks to continue. It means understanding that national-security institutions can do something useful and still create a dangerous precedent.
I am 19. I have spent enough time watching politics to know how quickly an astonishing change becomes normal once officials wrap it in the language of efficiency. The first announcement sounds temporary. The next one sounds technical. Then one day the country realizes a boundary disappeared without a real debate.
Why I am asking here.
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If you believe Americans deserve to know why officials from adversarial governments are entering FBI facilities and exchanging intelligence, please put something behind that belief.
The quiet part.
The quiet part is that nobody has to prove this partnership already caused a catastrophe for the arrangement to deserve scrutiny.
Security is built before the breach. Oversight happens before the scandal. Guardrails matter before someone drives through the opening.
Maybe these exchanges will dismantle criminal networks and remain as narrow as Patel promises. I hope they do. But hope is not a counterintelligence policy, and trust is not a substitute for public accountability.
China and Russia do not stop being American adversaries when the topic changes from espionage to cyber fraud. The institutions involved do not suddenly lose their political purpose when they walk through an FBI door.
America’s premier domestic intelligence agency is testing a relationship its own former officials describe as dangerous. The director wants to use it as a model. That is not a footnote. That is the story.
If this post made you stop, please restack it. People need to know this relationship exists before it quietly becomes permanent.
Thank you for being in this room.
— Sharad
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A note for the room: I am 19 years old, running a nonprofit and this publication on my own. I work with research and editing tools, including Claude, an AI assistant, to keep up, the way other reporters work with editors and fact-checkers. Every quote and every source in this post was verified by me before anything went live. Other people will not tell you this, but I really care about journalistic integrity. Letting you know I use these tools to help me do this work all on my own is important to me. The room means trust, and trust means I tell you how the work gets made.
Sources: Reuters on the FBI’s new China and Russia partnerships, Reuters on the July FBI meeting with China’s police chief, FBI on the China counterintelligence threat
The Trump Administration has not earned the trust of anyone but the high authoritarian supporters. I would think Americans would like to know what type of information is being shared. Is the FBI sharing personal information on US Citizens that could be used in election interference? This would not surprise me considering the previous Trump Administration's involvement with Russia as documented in the Mueller Report. I wonder what Trump's response would be if a reporter asked him about this? If he says "i know nothing" or words to that effect then the alarm bells need to sound, loudly and often.
Sharad, this is the kind of article I want more nineteen year olds writing. You didn’t just react to the headline, you asked who controls the boundary and what happens when it gets crossed. That’s the actual question, and most coverage of this is going to miss it entirely.
I also appreciate you naming your process at the bottom. That shouldn’t be a brave thing to do, it should just be normal.
Keep going.