The Great Heist: China’s Epic Campaign to Steal America’s Secrets

by David R. Shedd, Andrew Badger

A definitive, headline-making exposé of how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has carried out the largest-scale theft of intellectual property, technology, and data in history—reshaping the global balance of power and redrawing the geopolitical map for decades to come

The Great Heist exposes China's unprecedented state-orchestrated espionage campaign to strip the United States and its allies of their economic, technological, and military edge. Through a coordinated “whole-of-society” strategy, the Chinese Communist Party has dramatically expanded its covert operations to acquire America’s most valuable innovations—stealing defense secrets and proprietary technology from companies like Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Google, T-Mobile, and Tesla. By exploiting both human and cyber vulnerabilities, China has quietly looted the crown jewels of Western technology, saving itself trillions in R&D costs since the 1990s—with an ongoing brazenness fueled by decades of Western inaction.

Drawing on exclusive investigations and interviews with intelligence officers, corporate security teams, senior policymakers, and espionage victims, David R. Shedd and Andrew Badger reveal how industrial theft has fueled China’s meteoric rise from Third World backwater to global superpower—and present a bold strategic playbook to turn the tide in the greatest economic contest of our time.

Genres: Business, China, Nonfiction, History, Politics, Science

368 pages, Hardcover

First published December 2, 2025

Reviews

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Chilling. I didn't realize the extent to which China has built their economy through theft and at the expense of western nations, primarily the United States. Besides the staggering scope of their espionage, what was most shocking is that any Chinese national can be obligated, by law, to spy or steal on behalf of the government - regardless of their location in the world.

I hope the US government, corporations, and universities adopt their recommendations.

[CatReader · Rating 4 out of 5]

David Shedd is a retired US intelligence officer whose most prominent posting was as Deputy Director, then Director, of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), under President Obama, and Andrew Badger is a former DIA case officer. Shedd and Badger's 2025 book The Great Heist is a very timely look at the bubbling-below-the-surface information war between the United States and China that has been percolating for the last several decades. This is a dense, intentionally alarming book that summarizes how the Chinese Communist Party works both in China and globally to capture intelligence to use for its own gain and goals.

As always with books about China, I'd recommend reading widely and from as many vantage points as possible. I've linked a short list of previous books I've read and would recommend below.

Further reading:
The Big Nine: How the Tech Titans and Their Thinking Machines Could Warp Humanity by Amy Webb
Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future by Dan Wang
Apple in China: The Capture of the World's Greatest Company by Patrick McGee
House of Huawei: The Secret History of China's Most Powerful Company by Eva Dou
The Struggle for Taiwan: A History of America, China, and the Island Caught Between by Sulmaan Wasif Khan
China's World View: Demystifying China to Prevent Global Conflict by David Daokui Li

My statistics:
Book 39 for 2026
Book 2345 cumulatively

[Johnwick brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read The Great Heist: China’s Epic Campaign to Steal America’s Secrets through the Millions and Edioak Reader Program, and it is a detailed, compelling account of cyber espionage and international intrigue.

The book is meticulously researched, blending investigative journalism with real-world examples that illustrate the scale and sophistication of modern economic and cyber espionage. The narrative makes complex geopolitical and technical subjects accessible without oversimplifying.

The pacing is engaging, moving smoothly between historical context, case studies, and analysis. The writing keeps the tension high, making the story feel almost like a thriller while remaining factual and informative.

This book is perfect for readers interested in global security, cybercrime, and international politics, offering both insight and suspense in a topic that is often overlooked yet critically important. The Millions and Edioak Reader Program helped me discover a story that is as educational as it is gripping.

[Charlotte · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading The Great Heist felt like sitting in a cluttered room with someone telling you the wildest spy tale you’ve ever heard. Some parts made me lean in, picturing the back-and-forth between China and the US intelligence world, and at times I got lost in all the jargon. I liked the pacing more than I expected, even when it got dense, and it left me thinking about how fragile secrets really are.

[Nathan Schmidt · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received The Great Heist through Goodreads First Reads and am grateful for the opportunity to read and review this book.

While I have not been blind to China's rise to power and ambitions, I was shocked at the scale, depth, and history of China's intelligence operations, and how the Chinese government is facilitating a combined brain drain and economic takeover across numerous industries and research sectors. The book's use of specific examples helped demonstrate the level of threat that these interconnected plots impose. I also appreciated how the strategies have long ties to China's history, particularly with Sun Tzu. In addition, I am thankful that the author tried to take a neutral stance in politics, making it clear that everyone has been ignorant of China's pernicious tactics.

That said, while the book is fascinating, it has a few small weak points I wish to point out. First, because so much of the attention was focused on the United States and not other countries, I was unsure if this meant that China is primarily targeting America, or if this was a bias on part of the author; it would have been nice if there had been comparisons to Chinese operations on other continents such as Europe and Africa, giving a better idea of the bigger picture.

Second, I'm disappointed that, unlike a number of similar books, there wasn't a set of illustrative photographs midway through the reading. I find the include of pictures connected to the topics/events discussed helps me better visualize the stories covered in the book.

Third, I really felt that chapters 10 and 11 broke the pace of the nonfiction work by switching tracks to fictional narratives. While the narratives weren't necessarily bad on their own, it just didn't feel tasteful for them to be part of a nonfiction, research-based book.

But overall, this book has given me a greater awareness of China's global strategy, and how many different actions are part of a larger, organized objective.

[Kris H · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent read. One of very few policy books that identifies a problem, assess its full implications and depth, then actually writes up a policy recommendation in an engaging, easy to read format.

If you want an aggregated account of Chinese industrial espionage across sectors, this is it.

[Boguslaw Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

A truly gripping story. Honestly, I haven’t read such an engaging, well-written, high-quality book in a long time.

[Shriley]

There’s a reflective calm to the writing that made it easy to stay engaged.