CSIS warned Canadian company unwittingly supplying drone tech to Russia: Director

Canada’s domestic spy agency warned a Canadian company that it was unwittingly supplying drone technology that Russia has used against Ukraine.

In 2022, a Kyiv-based think tank reported that Canadian-made components from a company called Tallysman Wireless were found in Iranian drones shot down by Ukrainian defence forces.

Speaking at a public meeting of Five Eyes spy chiefs at Stanford University in California, Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) director David Vigneault said he had a “very difficult” conversation with a Canadian company supplying drone parts for Russia’s war efforts.

“We essentially were able to show that person that we had discovered … that some components of high-tech guidance (technology) had been used in Russian drones to kill Ukrainians absolutely unbeknownst to that business leader,” Vigneault said.

“That engagement, us taking that information, finding the right way to have classified information to share with those individuals, a tangible example like that goes a long way.”

Vigneault said it was an example of how CSIS has increasingly been working with private sector companies and universities to counter attempts by other nations to steal cutting-edge technology and research.

In a statement, a CSIS spokesperson said Vigneault was referring to Iranian-made Shahed-136 drones “used by Russia against Ukrainian civilians” and which included Canadian components.

In recent years, CSIS has dramatically stepped up its outreach to Canadian businesses and research universities over concerns about hostile states stealing intellectual property and trade secrets. Vigneault gave a rare public speech in 2018 to the Economic Club of Canada, where he called foreign interference and espionage the “greatest threat” to Canada’s “prosperity and national interest.”

CSIS accelerated these efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic, when Canada’s spy agencies repeatedly warned that hostile nations were attempting to hijack vaccine research and disrupt already-shaken supply chains.

Vigneault said the agency has been hampered by the “stigma” attached to what Western intelligence agencies have done since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in the U.S.

“After 9/11, you know, there are a number of practices that have been put in place in each of our organizations that may not” have stood the test of time, Vigneault said.

“But we need to overcome that.”

The Stanford event on Tuesday brought together the domestic intelligence heads of Five Eyes countries — the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand — to discuss the challenges of emerging technologies like artificial intelligence on national security. It’s extremely rare for all five countries’ spymasters to gather for a public discussion.

Unsurprisingly, the People’s Republic of China loomed large in the discussion.

“(This) unprecedented meeting is because we’re dealing with … (an) unprecedented threat,” said Christopher Wray, the director of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), who convened the Five Eyes meeting.

“There is no greater threat to innovation than the Chinese government. And it is a measure of how seriously the five of us and our services take that threat that we have chosen to come together to try to highlight that, raise awareness, raise resilience and work closely with the private sector to try to build better protections for innovation, especially in a place like Northern California, but really across all five of our countries.”

“Five or six years ago … every analyst would continue to say that, you know, investment in China was absolutely the way to go,” Vigneault said.

“You would go to Bay Street or Wall Street, you know, and that was the thing to do when we would come from the intelligence community and say, well, wait a second, there is this aspect (of Chinese investment).”

Vigneault spoke sparingly during the hour-long panel discussion on the challenges of emerging technology in national security. But the CSIS director also noted cultural difficulties in getting his agency to “think differently.”

“The question is, you know, how can we legally (and) safely operate with these technologies in our environment, with the oversight we have and so on. But that cultural reticence from our organization is something we need to break,” Vigneault said.

“The fact that we have top secret clearances, that we operate in the environment we’re very comfortable with … Breaking down these silos is one of the most important aspects that we can do, and that’s why we’re here.”