When it comes to military intelligence, ‘bungling’ Russia and ‘sophisticated’ China have more in common than you think

For all their surveillance, autocracies are inherently fragile, however slick and impregnable they may look from the outside, argues Ben Chu

It’s a tale of two autocracies. Last week we laughed at the apparent primitiveness of the Russian intelligence services and simultaneously trembled at the sophistication of their Chinese counterparts.

Bloomberg Businessweek magazine reported that China’s military has managed to implant a microchip no bigger than a grain of rice in US computer mother boards, as they were being assembled in China, effectively giving Beijing a secret back door into giant American firms including Amazon and Apple.

It was seen as a jaw-dropping technical feat. “Like witnessing a unicorn jumping over a rainbow,” one hardware expert commented.