Counterintelligence & Tradecraft — 2026-07-29

French Intelligence Service DGSI Investigates Former Rafale Pilot for Espionage After Unauthorized Trips to China

BLUFChuet's CATOBAR carrier experience maps directly to Fujian work-up requirements, and the South African brokerage pattern linking his trips to parallel cases across NATO states points to a standing PLA recruitment channel, not an isolated approach.

Pierre-Henri Chuet, a dual French-Canadian former Rafale M pilot from the carrier Charles de Gaulle now known publicly as YouTuber "Até Chuet" with roughly 500,000 subscribers, was placed under formal investigation in Paris the week of July 20 after DGSI questioning, with his home searched and judicial supervision imposed 123. He faces four counts: disclosing defense secrets, intelligence with a foreign power, collecting national-interest information, and delivering information to a foreign power 12. The investigation follows a February 2025 Ministry of the Armed Forces's referral and unauthorized China trips in September 2018 and August 2019, during which Chuet ran training seminars for Chinese military pilots, sometimes alongside a British pilot, financed through a South African aviation shell company, TFASA, while Chuet was still serving 12. Europe1, citing Mediapart, reported two paid conferences in 2018 and 2022 worth 80,000 euros on landing systems and radar aircraft, and said Chuet faces up to 30 years in prison 3.

Analysis
The case exposes a vetting gap in France's post-retirement oversight: chain-of-command notification rules cover active duty only, leaving lucrative foreign-linked consulting and speaking work largely unmonitored. Chuet's roughly eight years of Charles de Gaulle carrier operations experience falls squarely within the CATOBAR skill set Beijing needs to work up pilots for its first catapult carrier, Fujian, and the South African brokerage pattern tying his 2018-2019 trips to similar cases already surfacing in the UK, Spain, and the US points to a standing PLA recruitment channel rather than an isolated approach; reporting rests on a single primary account (Intelligence Online), with other outlets amplifying rather than independently confirming. Formal investigation status shows a magistrate found evidence warranting inquiry, not that classified material actually transferred; the referral may instead reflect a compliance failure over undeclared travel and payments.

4 sources