Probably a more productive use of resources than spying on <insert snark here>.
From The Stanford Review, May 7:
INVESTIGATION: Uncovering Chinese Academic Espionage at Stanford
This summer, a CCP agent impersonated a Stanford student. Under the alias Charles Chen, he approached several students through social media. Anna*, a Stanford student conducting sensitive research on China, began receiving unexpected messages from Charles Chen. At first, Charles's outreach seemed benign: he asked about networking opportunities. But soon, his messages took a strange turn.
Charles inquired whether Anna spoke Mandarin, then grew increasingly persistent and personal. He sent videos of Americans who had gained fame in China, encouraged Anna to visit Beijing, and offered to cover her travel expenses. He would send screenshots of a bank account balance to prove he could buy the plane tickets. Alarmingly, he referenced details about her that Anna had never disclosed to him.
He advised her to enter China for only 24 to 144 hours, short enough, he said, to avoid visa scrutiny by authorities, and urged her to communicate exclusively via the Chinese version of WeChat, a platform heavily monitored by the CCP. When Charles commented on one of her social media posts, asking her to delete screenshots of their conversations, she knew this was serious.
Under the guidance of experts familiar with espionage tactics, Anna contacted authorities. Their investigation revealed that Charles Chen had no affiliation with Stanford. Instead, he had posed as a Stanford student for years, slightly altering his name and persona online, targeting multiple students, nearly all of them women researching China-related topics. According to the experts on China who assisted Anna, Charles Chen was likely an agent of the Chinese Ministry of State Security (MSS), tasked with identifying sympathetic Stanford students and gathering intelligence.
A Culture of Silence and Fear
This March, Stanford’s President, Dr. Jonathan Levin, received a letter from the Select Committee on the CCP detailing the security risks China poses to STEM research. For years, concerns about Chinese espionage have quietly persisted at Stanford. Throughout our investigation, professors, students, and researchers readily recounted their experiences of Chinese spying, yet they declined to speak publicly. One student who experienced espionage firsthand was too fearful to recount their story, even via encrypted messaging. “The risk is too high,” they explained. Transnational repression, $64 million in Chinese funding, and allegations of racial profiling have contributed to a pervasive culture of silence at Stanford and beyond.
It is this pervasive silence that has compelled us to write. After interviewing multiple anonymous Stanford faculty, students, and China experts, we can confirm that the CCP is orchestrating a widespread intelligence-gathering campaign at Stanford. In short, “there are Chinese spies at Stanford.”
To investigate these concerns, we interviewed over a dozen individuals, including Stanford professors, current students, and China experts specializing in technology transfer and espionage. The majority of interviewees spoke under the condition of anonymity, citing fears of retaliation from both the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and Stanford's academic community. Their accounts, cross-referenced where possible, form the basis of our findings.
Under its Made in China 2025 plan, China aims to unseat the US as the dominant force in frontier technologies. Such a plan necessitates substantial technology transfers from America's research institutions. Given its dominance in AI, Stanford is academic target number one.
Speaking at a China Town Hall event, the former U.S. National Security Council’s Director for China, Matthew Turpin, characterized the threat of Chinese espionage at Stanford:
“The Chinese state incentivizes students to violate conflicts of commitment and interest, ensuring they bring back technology otherwise restricted by export controls.”Former FBI Director Christopher Wray has called this theft of academic research “one of the largest transfers of wealth in human history.”
The CCP’s Strategy: Non-Traditional Collection
According to Stanford experts on Chinese intelligence-gathering efforts who wished to remain anonymous, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has employed a 'crowdsourced approach' to gathering information at Stanford. Dubbed ‘non-traditional collection,' the Chinese Ministry for State Security (MSS) uses civilians unaffiliated with the intelligence community to acquire and report sensitive information. The aim of non-traditional collectors isn’t necessarily to steal classified documents but rather to quietly extract the know-how behind American innovation.
This includes conclusions from Stanford research projects, methodologies, software, lab workflows, collaborative structures, and even communication channels. Stanford faculty speaking anonymously stated that this non-traditional collection of sensitive technology is extensively practiced at Stanford, particularly in AI and robotics....
....MUCH MORE
