I have an old friend, whom I've known for many years, who went to work for the CIA after his Marine Corps service, which included 13 months in Vietnam. He spent 30 years in the CIA, as a "Field Intelligence Officer," in such places as Iran, the Philippines, and a host of other places he's not at liberty to discuss. The one defining characteristic of my old friend is his patriotism, and his pride in serving during the best years of what he refers to as "The Agency." But he is not at all happy about what The Agency has become since he retired in 1992.

As evidence of this decline, we see Saturday that a former CIA officer has pleaded guilty to charges of spying for the nation that is arguably the United States' primary geopolitical and military adversary - China:

Alexander Yuk Ching Ma, 72, has been in custody since his arrest in August 2020. The U.S. Justice Department said in a court filing it amassed “a war chest of damning evidence” against him, including an hourlong video of Ma and an older relative — also a former CIA officer — providing classified information to intelligence officers with China’s Ministry of State Security in 2001.

The video shows Ma counting the $50,000 received from the Chinese agents for his service, prosecutors said.

China's Ministry of State Security, akin to the old Soviet Union's Komitet gosudarstvennoy bezopasnosti (Committee for State Security, or KGB) is the Middle Kingdom's primary foreign intelligence service.

The information Ma provided to the Chinese included information on CIA personnel and operations - conceivably the kind of information that could get people killed:

The secrets he was accused of providing included information about CIA sources and assets, international operations, secure communication practices and operational tradecraft, charging documents said.

Ma is facing a 10-year sentence, due to the deal around the guilty plea; without that deal, if the case had gone to trial, he could have (and should have) faced life in prison.

See Related: WATCH: Former CIA Officer Jason Hanson Discusses Surviving and the End of the World 

US Navy Petty Officer Wenheng Zhao, Convicted of Spying for China, Receives Slap on Wrist

Previous service members found to be spying for China have received some surprisingly light sentences; Petty Officer Wenheng Zhao, in the story linked above, received only a 27-month sentence and $5,500 in fines after being convicted of accepting bribery payments from a Chinese official.

China's increasing bellicosity in the Pacific appears to be part of a situation that is growing worrisome. A recent Chinese naval exercise involved putting what was effectively a ring of steel around Taiwan. Taiwan is generally regarded as a target for Chinese aggression; Beijing still considers Taiwan to be a "rogue province" that should rightly be under the control of the mainland Chinese government; that is to say, the Chinese Communist Party. China and Russia have also, within the last year, sent joint task groups of warships to trail their coats off the coast of Alaska.

Intelligence-gathering is something all nations have always done, China no less than any others. Even so, in recent years it seems like Beijing is stepping up its efforts, and gathering intelligence on the United States in particular seems to be the agenda - and it is certainly targeting Americans of Chinese descent for "flipping." That may not be a harbinger of more aggressive actions to come - but then again, it may be exactly that.