What The Leaked FSB memo shows about Russia-China relationship: how strategy and incentives will influence Putin's response. Part I.

• Over the weekend, the New York Times has came out with a report of draft FSB counterintelligence department memos that were allegedly originally secured via cybercrime.

• The memos were in a draft format.

• It's unclear whether they were fully published and disseminated internally, but the authenticity and veracity of the memos were confirmed by Western intelligence experts and sources contacted by the New York Times.

• The memos were initially allegedly acquired through a cyber attack operation—a cyber leak was the cause.

• Now, we don't know the details of this and we cannot speculate as to what exactly has happened.

• There's no evidence to say that Russia wanted these memos to be leaked.

• But having said that, the mere fact that they were leaked at the end isn't necessarily all bad news for Moscow either.

• We will not unpack full contents of the leaked memos (though you are highly encouraged to read the full NYT report for that.) - suffice it to say that the memos cite numerous Chinese attempts to conduct espionage in Russia, lure away Russian scientists, and acquire sensitive material of high strategic value via covert means.

• In short, note how no limits allies and partners should conduct relations and behave towards one another.

• (side note: with that said, it's important to remember that even the staunchest Western liberal allies and full liberal democracies regularly spy on each other. Indeed, it wasn't not too long ago that it was revealed that U.S. was spying on the German Chancellor, even tapping her phone. In matters of espionage and national interest, there is never true friendship between any two states. And we should remember this and not jump too far ahead declaring that the Russia-China relationship was sour, as many experts were quick to claim on social media and on news channels since this past weekend.)

• We will instead analyze what this means for the Russia-China relationship, and how Russia may or may not respond, and what incentives would drive this decision.

• Now, before looking at the specific actions that Russia may take to retaliate and whether they will retaliate at all, and what incentives and options Putin faces at this very moment, we need to analyze following core points:

1. The content of the FSB memos were founded upon actual facts and were not mere speculations.

• It is true that China has indeed been trying to lure away Russian scientists - to induce them to leave Russia and work with them in China, or even provide some intelligence, whilst remaining in Russia.

• In fact, there have been numerous well-documented reports of Russian scientists being charged with treason for cooperating with Chinese intel agencies (e.g. in crucial hypersonic tech capabilities domain).

• This has been happening during the ongoing war with Ukraine, where—in spite of China's help and the claims that there are "no limits" in partnership between Russia and China—in the middle of the war when Russia was so vulnerable, China was busy trying to get these scientists to betray their homeland.

• There are more examples of specific areas that China wanted to gain dominances and how it wanted to get these sensitive information on propulsion technology, engine technology, hypersonic missile and engines, on specific warships (older Soviet hovercraft assault ship designs/tech knowhow), or how China may be a threat to Russia in the long term.

• An example of potential irredentist claims against Russia was provided in the FSB document: the recently republished official Chinese map that showed claims to Russia - by very subtly naming them in the old Chinese way.

• (Side note: there's still a de facto border dispute between Russia and China. Previously, long-standing border disputes culminated in the 1969 Soviet-China clashes. The Sino-Russian Border Agreement of 1991, along with a supplementary agreement in 2004, formally resolved the border disputes. But the de facto dispute remains on a backburner - since many Chinese leaders are not happy with 19th century borders.)

• There's also talk about how China is trying to increase its influence in Central Asian countries.

• Again, this is something that we talked about for a long time, and so this is just to say that you need to remember that the FSB counterintelligence office worries are in fact grounded in the very real threats that face Russia.

• This is not some cuckoo conspiracy theory group promoting these angles.

• In fact, and over the years, we have frequently mentioned that there are in fact limits to this "no limits" partnership - because fundamentally there are a lot of areas of dispute between China and Russia, and China isn't really acting like a genuine ally.

2. Knowing all this, the Kremlin has chosen to bite its tongue for many years.