Speaker 1: Welcome to Spycraft, a podcast that tells gripping life and
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Speaker 2: Universities have been having a lot of trouble of late,
Speaker 2: and it continues. A CCP agent impersonated at Stanford student
Speaker 2: under the Elias Charlie's Chen Charles Chen. He approached several
Speaker 2: students to social media, and a Stanford student conducting sensitive
Speaker 2: research on China began receiving unexpected messages from Charles Chen.
Speaker 2: At first, Charles's outreach scene Benine he has about networking opportunities,
Speaker 2: but soon his messages took a strange turn. Charles where
Speaker 2: their Anna spoke Mandarin, and then grew increasingly persistent and personal.
Speaker 2: He sent videos of Americans who had gained fame in China,
Speaker 2: encouraged Anna to visit Beijing, and offered to cover her
Speaker 2: travel expenses. He sent screenshots of a bank account Bounce
Speaker 2: to prove he could buy the plane tickets, and alarmingly,
Speaker 2: he referenced details about her that Anna never disclosed to him.
Speaker 2: He advised her to anser China for only twenty four
Speaker 2: one hundred and forty four hours short enough, he said,
Speaker 2: to avoid visa scrutiny by authorities, and urged her to
Speaker 2: communicate exclusively via the Chinese version of we Chat. Its
Speaker 2: platform is heavily monitored by the CCP. When Charles commented
Speaker 2: on one of her social media posts asking her to
Speaker 2: delete screenshots of their conversations, she knew this was serious.
Speaker 2: Under the guidance of experts familiar with espionage tactics, Anna
Speaker 2: contacted authorities their investigation of you that Charles Chinna no
Speaker 2: affiliation with Stanford. Instead, he had poses a Stanford student
Speaker 2: for years, slightly altering his name and persona online, targeting
Speaker 2: multiple students, nearly all of whom were women researching China
Speaker 2: related topics. According to the experts in China who assisted Anna,
Speaker 2: Charles chen was likely an agent of the Chinese Ministry
Speaker 2: of State Security tasks identifying sympathetic Stanford students in gathering intel.
Speaker 2: Stanford's president, doctor Jonathan Levin, received a letter from the
Speaker 2: Select Committee on the CCP detailing the security risks China
Speaker 2: poses the stem research for years. Concerns about Chinese espionage
Speaker 2: have quietly persisted at Stanford throughout our investigation, they said, Professors, students,
Speaker 2: and researchers readily recounted their experiences of Chinese spy, yet
Speaker 2: the decline to speak publicly. Once student who experienced espionage
Speaker 2: firsthand was too fearful to recount their story, even via
Speaker 2: encrypted messaging. The risk is too high, they explained. Transnational repression,
Speaker 2: sixty four million dollars in Chinese funding and allegations of
Speaker 2: racial profiling are contributed to a pervasive culture of silence
Speaker 2: at Stanford. By the way, this is coming from the
Speaker 2: Stanford Review dot org website. It is this pervasive silence
Speaker 2: that has compelled us to write. After interviewing multiple anonymous
Speaker 2: Stanford faculties, students, and China experts, we can confirm that
Speaker 2: the CCP is orchestrating a widespread intelligence gathering campaign at Stanford.
Speaker 2: And short, there are Chinese spies at Stanford. It's not
Speaker 2: only Stanford folks, They're all over the place. This is
Speaker 2: what makes it very complicated because there's a lot of
Speaker 2: innocent Chinese people who have nothing to do with this.
Speaker 2: To investigate the concerns, they interviewed over a dozen individuals again, students, professors,
Speaker 2: so forth, and experts. The majority of interviews spoke under
Speaker 2: the condition of an anonymity, citing fears of retaliation from
Speaker 2: both the CCP and Stanford. Under its Made in China
Speaker 2: twenty twenty five, plan, China aims to unseat the US
Speaker 2: as the dominant force in frontier technologies. Speaking out a
Speaker 2: China Ta Hall event, the former US National Security Council
Speaker 2: Director Matthew Chirpin characterized the Chinese espionage of Stanford. The
Speaker 2: Chinese state incentivized the students to violate conflicts of commitment
Speaker 2: and interest, ensuring they bring back technology otherwise restricted by
Speaker 2: expert controls. The FBI says this is one of the
Speaker 2: largest transfers of wealth and human history. When it comes
Speaker 2: to theft of academic research, Stanford experts have said that
Speaker 2: CCP is employed a crowdsourced approach to gathering information at Stanford,
Speaker 2: dubbed non traditional collection. The Chinese ministry uses civilians unaffiliated
Speaker 2: with the intelligence community to acquire and report sensitive information.
Speaker 2: The aim of non traditional collectors isn't necessarily to steal
Speaker 2: classified docs, but rather to quietly extract and know how
Speaker 2: behind American innovation. This includes conclusions from Stanford research projects, methodology,
Speaker 2: software workflow labs, things of that nature. Stanford staff has
Speaker 2: said this is extensively practiced at Stanford, particularly in AI
Speaker 2: and robotics. The China expert familiar with Stanford confirmed that
Speaker 2: over eleven hundred Chinese international students are on campus, a
Speaker 2: select number are actively reporting to the CCP, so you
Speaker 2: can see it's a big problem, and this is just
Speaker 2: Stanford did a great job on this. You can read
Speaker 2: the whole report over at Stanford Review dot org. So
Speaker 2: it's an amazing story. The Chinese Scholarship Council, which funds
Speaker 2: an estimated fifteen percent of Chinese students at American universities,
Speaker 2: as regarded as a primary avenue of information gathering China.
Speaker 2: Experts speaking anonymously, confirmed that it required students to regularly
Speaker 2: submit situation reports to Chinese diplomatic missions about their research.
Speaker 2: These experts also confirm that the CCP uses these reports
Speaker 2: to identify and acquire sensitive technology information. A former Edinburgh
Speaker 2: University student claimed that CSC recipients from monitored by Chinese
Speaker 2: handlers will require them to report a dissent and events
Speaker 2: covering sensitive topics. An anonymous Stanford faculty member said that
Speaker 2: if Chinese students have handlers at Edinburgh, you can be
Speaker 2: assured they have them at Stanford, so again and see
Speaker 2: they're really inculcated. And this is why the current administration
Speaker 2: one of the reasons, I think, is really concerned about
Speaker 2: certain the nationals of different countries and the universities. There's
Speaker 2: a lot of information here. This isn't you. Russia has
Speaker 2: been doing this for decades. Here. They had a huge
Speaker 2: operation thirty years ago. You probably remember it, the married
Speaker 2: couples that acted like there were grad students when they
Speaker 2: were actually already PhDs. In Russia. There's a lot and
Speaker 2: getting research information is huge. The case of Stanford student
Speaker 2: Chen Song illustrates a very important point. The CCP demands
Speaker 2: total compliance and directs individuals towards sensitive information. In twenty twenty,
Speaker 2: Song was indicted for lying about her affiliation with the
Speaker 2: Chinese military form of known formerly known as the PLA
Speaker 2: and the charging documents prosecutor's acute Song of concealing her
Speaker 2: involvement in the PLA to obtain a J one visa
Speaker 2: to conduct research at Stanford. The DOJ document's alleged Song
Speaker 2: sent multiple updates to a Chinese government entity detailing nature
Speaker 2: results in value of her research. This is according to
Speaker 2: the FBI, time and again, the Chinese government prioritizes stealing
Speaker 2: US research. The case of the student this song is
Speaker 2: the only well known espionage incident publicly acknowledged by Stanford
Speaker 2: the least. However, according to Stanford insiders, espionage cases are
Speaker 2: only disclosed to the public and extraordinary circumstances. Therefore, it
Speaker 2: is Sandford's policy that have investigative authorities to maintain privacy,
Speaker 2: choosing instead to cancel student visas without public notice. Hence
Speaker 2: what we have going on right now. So wild story,
Speaker 2: but a lot of espionage happening over there. I mean,
Speaker 2: there's espionage happening in all the major universities. Stanford is
Speaker 2: not an exception, so we'll wrap it up there. But
Speaker 2: it's a great article. You can read more about it
Speaker 2: at Stanford Review dot org.