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    Under Assault

    Interference and Espionage in China's Secret War Against Canada

    Author Dennis Molinaro
    Ebook (EPUB)
    RH Canadian Publishing | Random House Canada
    On sale Nov 18, 2025 | 320 Pages | 9781039011717
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    A Hill Times’ Top 100 Best Book in 2025

    FOREWORD BY CHERIE WONG

    National security expert Dennis Molinaro reveals the shocking details of Beijing’s five-decades-long effort to influence and interfere in Canadian political life. From cultivating future political leaders at the end of the Cultural Revolution to the foreign-interference scandals that have shaken present-day Ottawa, this definitive book addresses one of the most urgent global issues of our time.

    Amidst heightened tensions between Western nations and China, Canadians have found themselves astonished by hostage crises, cyberattacks, harassment of members of our government, and theft of intellectual property worth untold billions of dollars. Guided by Molinaro’s experience as a historian and China specialist, Under Assault focuses on the actions of the People’s Republic of China’s government and its governing party, the Chinese Communist Party, against Canada during the past fifty years.

    From Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s earliest journeys through the “Middle Kingdom” prior to his election to Parliament in the 1960s, the communist government of the PRC has perceived Canada as a staging ground for spying on and pressuring its ultimate target, the United States. When Canada’s first tech giant, Nortel, was plundered of intellectual property by digital spies; while Canada was manipulated into advocating against the independence of Taiwan; and as Chinese Canadians were targeted in the country where they thought they’d escaped Mao’s terrors, Canada’s leaders have too often seen only what they want to see in China: an emerging market of inestimable value and fertile soil for democratic change for a long-tyrannized people. Generations of Communist leadership have gladly allowed Canada’s government to labour under these misapprehensions, even when the evidence of China’s spying, theft and harassment of Canadian citizens has been happening right before its eyes. Canada has rarely allowed itself to believe what the rest of the world has long understood.

    Using Canada as an early warning Under Assault shows how influence operations quietly shape international democratic institutions, markets, and political decisions—including in the United States. Informed by numerous interviews with generations of Canadian politicians, diplomats and bureaucrats; members of diaspora communities targeted by China who have endured this harassment for too long; as well as by new revelations from recently declassified CSIS documents, Under Assault is a timely, eye-opening account of a country compromised by its own illusions in a time of rising global conflict and a burgeoning new world order.
    INTRODUCTION

    I knew Russia. I knew the Cold War like I knew the back of my hand. I was a historian of intelligence and a university professor, and when I joined the intelligence world in 2018 as an intelligence analyst, I took it as a given that I would be working on the Russia f ile. Instead, my focus quickly became centred on the PRC. Now inside Canada’s security and intelligence establishment, I was shocked at the threat posed by one of Canada’s largest trading partners. I quickly came to believe that confronting the PRC was vastly more urgent than any threat presented by our former Cold War antagonist.

    Canadians have become alarmed about the foreign interference threat posed by the PRC, but they don’t yet understand it. This needs to change. Counterterrorism has been the primary security focus of the Western world for the past twenty-odd years, and the counter- intelligence effort traditionally aimed at countering Cold War–style state spying differs from foreign interference. However, the PRC remains the most persistent and largest foreign power covertly interfering in the political operations and civic life of Western nations. Canadians have many unanswered questions. This isn’t to say Canadians have met only silence on the subject, but much of the analysis to date has been written by journalists and rooted in their particular angles on the issue. There have been academic books on the Canada–China relationship, but the broader picture of the PRC’s targeting of Canada, from its beginnings to the present, remains untold. With the perspective I developed in my time in intelligence work, combined with my training as a professional historian and academic, I hope to fill that need.

    This book is not a recollection of my time in Canadian intelligence or a revelation of specific intelligence files. I do not divulge classified material or “name names.” The entire book was researched and created using publicly verifiable sources. All my comments, conclusions and analysis are derived from those sources. Instead, this book identifies and illustrates a long- standing pattern of failure in Canadian political circles to understand what our own intelligence service has been trying for decades to tell us. The result is, I hope, a realistic appraisal of Canada’s relationship with China, by way of China’s secret operations against Canada over the last f ifty years. I hope readers will come away from this book knowing far more about China’s secret operations, how and why they have been so successful, and what Canada’s failure to stand up to this threat says about the country.
    Copyright © 2025 by Dennis Molinaro With a foreword by Cherie Wong. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
    PRAISE FOR UNDER ASSAULT:
    "Groundbreaking… Incisive and sweeping…     While Molinaro’s book is a work of history, it also serves as a guidebook to the predominant geopolitical forces that will shape the next decade—and to the evolving superpower contest between democratic Washington and autocratic Beijing…. Through newly declassified RCMP documents Molinaro digs up a number of explosive scoops… [bringing] acerbic flair [to] the book’s sharpest assessments.”
    ―Sam Cooper, The Bureau

    "A deeply unsettling account of China's systematic and subversive attempts to influence Canadians, and the failure of political and business leaders to deter it.     Dennis Molinaro convincingly documents how for decades, the Chinese Communist Party has cultivated and co-opted Canada's elites, interfered in Canadian politics, stolen intellectual property and classified information, silenced criticism and suppressed Chinese dissidents and ethnic minorities.”
    ―Michael Kovrig

    “Lucid analysis from a national security expert, Under Assault unveils the hidden roots of Beijing’s decades of foreign interference in Canadian society and exposes Ottawa’s misguided beliefs—essential reading for policymakers and citizens alike.     It is a fact-based must-read on how Canada arrived at this pivotal moment of reckoning with China’s decades of foreign influence activities.”
    ―Joanna Chiu, author of China Unbound, winner of the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing

    “Under Assault offers an urgent look at PRC foreign interference in Canada, an issue not widely understood outside of Canada’s Chinese community until recently.     Dennis Molinaro reveals the extent of Beijing’s interference, from Canada’s democratic institutions to its local communities from the 1970s to the present. Drawing on his experience as an intelligence analyst, he outlines a number of actions governments can take to safeguard Canadian sovereignty. This book serves as a wake-up call for one of Canada’s most pressing national security challenges.”
    ―Hon. Michael Chong, P.C., M.P.

    "Molinaro has made a significant contribution here.     CCP interference may echo Cold War strategy, but it defies easy categorization. Its genius lies in the opacity of its structures and blurring of lines between interference and legitimate―even laudable―work. Molinaro lays out the anatomy forensically, accessibly, and in context. For those in democracies grappling with the problem, this book isn't just insightful, it’s essential."
    ―Luke de Pulford, Co-Founder, Executive Director, Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China


    PRAISE FOR THE BRIDGE IN THE PARKS:
    "Based on newly released archival material, the book portrays an intelligence world more nuanced than sometimes seen in the literature."
    Kurt F. Jensen, Intelligence and National Security

    "The Bridge in the Parks is a must-read for anyone interested in the Five Eyes intelligence community. With top scholars covering a range of engaging issues, the book is an important contribution to the field of security and intelligence, addressing the surprisingly overlooked nature of counter-intelligence in the ‘Anglosphere’ during the Cold War. Indeed, current practitioners in the partnership might also prosper from this historical examination of their community."
    Arne Kislenko, Department of History, Toronto Metropolitan University

    "This superb collection offers welcome and necessary insight into assorted intelligence and related practices of Five Eyes countries during the Cold War. The precise configuration of security circumstances may change, but many of the challenges reported in these chapters remain eternal. Understanding the past reported in this book provides, therefore, essential context for evaluating the present and anticipating the future."
    Craig Forcese, Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa
    © The Documentarians
    DENNIS MOLINARO is a former national security analyst and policy advisor for the Canadian federal government. An author and an academic, he earned his PhD from the University of Toronto in 2015 and studies the history of security, counterintelligence and foreign interference. His research on wiretapping and the government's use of emergency powers in the 1970s received national media coverage. A frequent media commentator on intelligence and foreign-interference issues, he has taught courses on modern espionage, human rights law and national security at several Canadian universities, including the University of Toronto. View titles by Dennis Molinaro

    About

    A Hill Times’ Top 100 Best Book in 2025

    FOREWORD BY CHERIE WONG

    National security expert Dennis Molinaro reveals the shocking details of Beijing’s five-decades-long effort to influence and interfere in Canadian political life. From cultivating future political leaders at the end of the Cultural Revolution to the foreign-interference scandals that have shaken present-day Ottawa, this definitive book addresses one of the most urgent global issues of our time.

    Amidst heightened tensions between Western nations and China, Canadians have found themselves astonished by hostage crises, cyberattacks, harassment of members of our government, and theft of intellectual property worth untold billions of dollars. Guided by Molinaro’s experience as a historian and China specialist, Under Assault focuses on the actions of the People’s Republic of China’s government and its governing party, the Chinese Communist Party, against Canada during the past fifty years.

    From Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s earliest journeys through the “Middle Kingdom” prior to his election to Parliament in the 1960s, the communist government of the PRC has perceived Canada as a staging ground for spying on and pressuring its ultimate target, the United States. When Canada’s first tech giant, Nortel, was plundered of intellectual property by digital spies; while Canada was manipulated into advocating against the independence of Taiwan; and as Chinese Canadians were targeted in the country where they thought they’d escaped Mao’s terrors, Canada’s leaders have too often seen only what they want to see in China: an emerging market of inestimable value and fertile soil for democratic change for a long-tyrannized people. Generations of Communist leadership have gladly allowed Canada’s government to labour under these misapprehensions, even when the evidence of China’s spying, theft and harassment of Canadian citizens has been happening right before its eyes. Canada has rarely allowed itself to believe what the rest of the world has long understood.

    Using Canada as an early warning Under Assault shows how influence operations quietly shape international democratic institutions, markets, and political decisions—including in the United States. Informed by numerous interviews with generations of Canadian politicians, diplomats and bureaucrats; members of diaspora communities targeted by China who have endured this harassment for too long; as well as by new revelations from recently declassified CSIS documents, Under Assault is a timely, eye-opening account of a country compromised by its own illusions in a time of rising global conflict and a burgeoning new world order.

    Excerpt

    INTRODUCTION

    I knew Russia. I knew the Cold War like I knew the back of my hand. I was a historian of intelligence and a university professor, and when I joined the intelligence world in 2018 as an intelligence analyst, I took it as a given that I would be working on the Russia f ile. Instead, my focus quickly became centred on the PRC. Now inside Canada’s security and intelligence establishment, I was shocked at the threat posed by one of Canada’s largest trading partners. I quickly came to believe that confronting the PRC was vastly more urgent than any threat presented by our former Cold War antagonist.

    Canadians have become alarmed about the foreign interference threat posed by the PRC, but they don’t yet understand it. This needs to change. Counterterrorism has been the primary security focus of the Western world for the past twenty-odd years, and the counter- intelligence effort traditionally aimed at countering Cold War–style state spying differs from foreign interference. However, the PRC remains the most persistent and largest foreign power covertly interfering in the political operations and civic life of Western nations. Canadians have many unanswered questions. This isn’t to say Canadians have met only silence on the subject, but much of the analysis to date has been written by journalists and rooted in their particular angles on the issue. There have been academic books on the Canada–China relationship, but the broader picture of the PRC’s targeting of Canada, from its beginnings to the present, remains untold. With the perspective I developed in my time in intelligence work, combined with my training as a professional historian and academic, I hope to fill that need.

    This book is not a recollection of my time in Canadian intelligence or a revelation of specific intelligence files. I do not divulge classified material or “name names.” The entire book was researched and created using publicly verifiable sources. All my comments, conclusions and analysis are derived from those sources. Instead, this book identifies and illustrates a long- standing pattern of failure in Canadian political circles to understand what our own intelligence service has been trying for decades to tell us. The result is, I hope, a realistic appraisal of Canada’s relationship with China, by way of China’s secret operations against Canada over the last f ifty years. I hope readers will come away from this book knowing far more about China’s secret operations, how and why they have been so successful, and what Canada’s failure to stand up to this threat says about the country.
    Copyright © 2025 by Dennis Molinaro With a foreword by Cherie Wong. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

    Reviews

    PRAISE FOR UNDER ASSAULT:
    "Groundbreaking… Incisive and sweeping…     While Molinaro’s book is a work of history, it also serves as a guidebook to the predominant geopolitical forces that will shape the next decade—and to the evolving superpower contest between democratic Washington and autocratic Beijing…. Through newly declassified RCMP documents Molinaro digs up a number of explosive scoops… [bringing] acerbic flair [to] the book’s sharpest assessments.”
    ―Sam Cooper, The Bureau

    "A deeply unsettling account of China's systematic and subversive attempts to influence Canadians, and the failure of political and business leaders to deter it.     Dennis Molinaro convincingly documents how for decades, the Chinese Communist Party has cultivated and co-opted Canada's elites, interfered in Canadian politics, stolen intellectual property and classified information, silenced criticism and suppressed Chinese dissidents and ethnic minorities.”
    ―Michael Kovrig

    “Lucid analysis from a national security expert, Under Assault unveils the hidden roots of Beijing’s decades of foreign interference in Canadian society and exposes Ottawa’s misguided beliefs—essential reading for policymakers and citizens alike.     It is a fact-based must-read on how Canada arrived at this pivotal moment of reckoning with China’s decades of foreign influence activities.”
    ―Joanna Chiu, author of China Unbound, winner of the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing

    “Under Assault offers an urgent look at PRC foreign interference in Canada, an issue not widely understood outside of Canada’s Chinese community until recently.     Dennis Molinaro reveals the extent of Beijing’s interference, from Canada’s democratic institutions to its local communities from the 1970s to the present. Drawing on his experience as an intelligence analyst, he outlines a number of actions governments can take to safeguard Canadian sovereignty. This book serves as a wake-up call for one of Canada’s most pressing national security challenges.”
    ―Hon. Michael Chong, P.C., M.P.

    "Molinaro has made a significant contribution here.     CCP interference may echo Cold War strategy, but it defies easy categorization. Its genius lies in the opacity of its structures and blurring of lines between interference and legitimate―even laudable―work. Molinaro lays out the anatomy forensically, accessibly, and in context. For those in democracies grappling with the problem, this book isn't just insightful, it’s essential."
    ―Luke de Pulford, Co-Founder, Executive Director, Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China


    PRAISE FOR THE BRIDGE IN THE PARKS:
    "Based on newly released archival material, the book portrays an intelligence world more nuanced than sometimes seen in the literature."
    Kurt F. Jensen, Intelligence and National Security

    "The Bridge in the Parks is a must-read for anyone interested in the Five Eyes intelligence community. With top scholars covering a range of engaging issues, the book is an important contribution to the field of security and intelligence, addressing the surprisingly overlooked nature of counter-intelligence in the ‘Anglosphere’ during the Cold War. Indeed, current practitioners in the partnership might also prosper from this historical examination of their community."
    Arne Kislenko, Department of History, Toronto Metropolitan University

    "This superb collection offers welcome and necessary insight into assorted intelligence and related practices of Five Eyes countries during the Cold War. The precise configuration of security circumstances may change, but many of the challenges reported in these chapters remain eternal. Understanding the past reported in this book provides, therefore, essential context for evaluating the present and anticipating the future."
    Craig Forcese, Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa

    Author

    © The Documentarians
    DENNIS MOLINARO is a former national security analyst and policy advisor for the Canadian federal government. An author and an academic, he earned his PhD from the University of Toronto in 2015 and studies the history of security, counterintelligence and foreign interference. His research on wiretapping and the government's use of emergency powers in the 1970s received national media coverage. A frequent media commentator on intelligence and foreign-interference issues, he has taught courses on modern espionage, human rights law and national security at several Canadian universities, including the University of Toronto. View titles by Dennis Molinaro

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