A recent watchdog report
revealed that several top-ranked American universities have brought in
Chinese academics who have links to Chinese military-linked technology
firms like tech behemoth Huawei and other Chinese firms linked to the
CCP’s state security endeavors.
A conservative non-profit watchdog group, the American Accountability Foundation,
reported that it found nearly two dozen Chinese academics working at
elite U.S. schools and labs “who, because of the dual-use threat of
their research, close ties to the military research sector in China,
and/or clear ties to the Chinese Communist Party" and as such "should be
expelled from the United States or never be re-admitted."
The new AAF report pointed out that multiple Chinese
students working at American universities had previously collaborated on
projects with researchers at Huawei, including working with researchers
at the Internal Cybersecurity Lab at Huawei.
"National champions" feed military programs
Just the News also found that at least one of the
Chinese academics had also worked at iFlytek — a similarly blacklisted
Chinese company which often collaborates with Huawei. The U.S. National
Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence stated
in 2021 that “national champion” firms such as Huawei and iFlytek help
“lead development of AI technologies at home” and “advance
state-directed priorities that feed military and security programs.”
The Congressional Executive Commission on China said
in 2019 that “Chinese security authorities continued to work with
domestic companies” — including Huawei and iFlytek — “to expand the
reach and analytical power of government surveillance systems.”
Just the News previously detailed the fact that a number of U.S. colleges and universities have brought on members of the Chinese Communist Party as well as participants
in the infamous “Thousand Talents Program” which has historically been
used to steal U.S. technological and scientific know-how for the benefit
of China.
The AAF report also pointed out that a Chinese scientist
now working at an American university had previously worked at the
Aviation Industry Corporation of China, or AVIC, a CCP defense
conglomerate blacklisted by the U.S. government. The Chinese state-owned military company is considered to be among the largest defense companies in the world.
The report by AAF also pointed out that a Chinese scientist
working at an American school had previously worked at China’s Center
for High Pressure Science and Technology Advanced Research — also blacklisted by the U.S. government.
The new AAF research document — titled "Chinese Scientist Infiltration Threat Assessments" — says
that Chinese students working at some of America’s top colleges, often
receiving U.S. government funding to conduct research into advanced
technologies, have troubling histories which could pose a risk to U.S.
national security.
The U.S. colleges in question which have brought on the
Chinese scientists linked to blacklisted CCP companies — Cornell
University, Georgia Tech, the University of Southern California, and
Purdue University — did not respond to emailed requests for comment
from Just the News.
None of the Chinese academics responded to requests for comment either.
The Huawei threat — now inside U.S. universities
The AAF report argued that Guangyao Chen “poses a high
national-security and dual-use risk due to his expertise in adversarial
machine learning” and that “this risk is amplified by his training at
Peking University, PRC government funding, and collaborations with PRC
universities and Huawei, placing his work squarely within China’s
military-civil fusion ecosystem.”
Chen currently appears to be affiliated with Cornell. The ResearchGate page for Chen says that his “top co-authors” include Lin Du, a researcher at Huawei. Chen appears to have conducted multiple research projects with the Huawei researcher. The Huawei scientist’s ResearchGate profile lists Du’s skills and expertise as being “computer vision,” “object recognition,” and “machine learning.”
The House Intelligence Committee in 2012 assessed
that “the risks associated with Huawei’s […] provision of equipment to
U.S. critical infrastructure could undermine core U.S. national security
interests” and said that Huawei poses “a security threat to the United
States and to our systems.”
The heads of the FBI, CIA, NSA, the Office of the Director
of National Intelligence, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the
National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency all warned
in 2018 against using Huawei services or equipment. In addition, the
Commerce Department concluded in 2020 that “Huawei is engaged in
activities that are contrary to U.S. national security or foreign policy
interests and its non-U.S. affiliates pose a significant risk of
involvement in activities contrary to the national security of the
United States.”
The FCC added Huawei to its blacklist as well, concluding
in 2020 that Huawei “poses a national security threat to our nation’s
communications networks and the communications supply chain.”
Meng Wanzhou, Huawei’s CFO and the daughter of the
company’s founder, was arrested by Canadian authorities in December 2018
at the request of the U.S., indicted in the Eastern District of New York in January 2019, and charged with bank fraud and wire fraud as well as conspiracy to commit both, but was allowed to walk free by the Biden Administration in 2021 in a deferred prosecution agreement wherein she admitted violating U.S. law.
The GitHub profile for Chen says
that “I’m currently a Postdoctoral Researcher at AI for Science
Institute, Cornell University” and that he received his PhD from Peking
University and his undergraduate degree from Wuhan University.
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) said
that Peking University “is assessed as high risk for its high number of
defense laboratories and defense research areas, strong relationship
with the defense industry, supervision by SASTIND, secret-level security
clearance, and links to China’s nuclear weapons program.”
Wuhan University the center of military research
The House Select Committee on the CCP assessed
in 2025 that Wuhan University “conducts research in at least five
designated defense research areas, trains People’s Liberation Army cyber
warfare specialists, and plays a central role in China’s Beidou
satellite system, which supports missile guidance and military
intelligence operations.”
Chen is currently listed
as a postdoctoral associate at Cornell’s school of chemical and
biomolecular engineering through the Fengqui You Lab. Neither Chen nor
Cornell responded to a request for comment.
Fengqui You, a Cornell professor, leads the Fengqui You Research Group at Cornell, which is “pushing the boundaries of systems engineering, artificial intelligence, and data science.”
Chen is listed as a member and Fengqui You is listed as the principal investigator for the lab. You attended Tsinghua University, which the House Select Committee on the CCP has warned about. You did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The House Select Committee on the CCP warned
in 2024 that Tsinghua is “co-supervised by the State Administration for
Science, Technology, and Industry for National Defense, an arm of the
Chinese government … which seeks to leverage these universities for
defense purposes” and that Tsinghua “has a documented history of serving
the PRC’s national security and defense apparatus, including
involvement in defense research and alleged cyberattacks targeting
various international entities.”
“His technical focus and institutional ties create a
credible pathway for transferring adversarial-AI knowledge that could be
used to compromise or weaponize AI systems critical to U.S. national
security,” the report by AAF says of Chen.
Chinese academic with links to Huawei and iFlytek wins DARPA award in U.S.
The report by AAF said that Cen Zhang’s “prior work with
Chinese entities and his influential role at Georgia Tech is highly
concerning given the nature of computer science’s impact on U.S.
national security.”
Zhang co-authored a 2021 paper on “Practical Binary Fuzzing Framework for Programs of IoT and Mobile Devices” — related to security vulnerabilities for mobile phones and other smart devices — with co-authors Xiaoxing Luo and Miaohua Li from the Internal Cyber Security Lab at Huawei Technologies.
Zhang has also conducted research with Hongxu Chen, who now lists himself as a lead engineer at Huawei, and who also went to Nanyang Technological University.
Zhang’s personal curriculum vitae also says he was previously an algorithm and engine development engineer for iFlytek. Zhang says on his GitHub page that he won the “Best New Employee Award of Year” at iFlytek in 2017.
The firm has long received state support and recognition from China’s government. The company was named a national “AI champion” by the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology in 2018.
The Commerce Department said
in October 2019 that iFlytek was among more than two dozen Chinese
entities added to a U.S. blacklist, saying they were “implicated in
human rights violations and abuses in the implementation of China’s
campaign of repression, mass arbitrary detention, and high-technology
surveillance against Uighurs, Kazakhs, and other members of Muslim
minority groups.” Liu Qingfeng, iFlytek’s founder and CEO, is also a deputy to the National People’s Congress, the CCP’s rubber-stamp national legislature.
Liu told the Chinese state-run Global Times in 2020 that the blacklist against it had not slowed it down and touted his partnership with Huawei. A 2018 magazine article shared
by Huawei asserted that “iFlytek and Huawei have formed a strategic
partnership to develop practical applications for voice and AI
technology.”
The Washington Post revealed
in 2021 that Huawei, as part of a pitch to assist Chinese authorities
in analyzing voices for “national security” purposes, made slides
showing that an “iFlytek Voiceprint Management Platform” (developed by
both Huawei and iFlytek) could identify individuals through a massive
“voiceprint” database.
Fu Liting, the marketing director of the Public Security Division at the Smart City Business Group of iFlytek, told the CCP-run China Daily in 2022 that “we work with the police by applying our artificial intelligence.”
Human Rights Watch said in 2017 that iFlytek says
it helped China’s Ministry of Public Security build a national voice
pattern database and set up a ministry laboratory in AI voice technology
to “solve cases” in Xinjiang and Tibet. The watchdog group said the
company “is also the designated supplier of voice pattern collection
systems purchased by Xinjiang and Anhui police bureaus.”
U.S. gov't rewards Chinese agents
Zhang’s U.S.-based team appears to have won a recent Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency competition called the AI Cyber Challenge (AIxCC). The DARPA challenge said
it was “excited to have Anthropic, Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, the Linux
Foundation, the Open Source Security Foundation, Black Hat USA, and DEF
CON as collaborators in this effort.” The competition website said Team
Atlantic — which Zhang was on — came in first place and won $4 million.
Team Atlanta said
that it “claimed victory in DARPA’s AI Cyber Challenge, showcasing the
capabilities of our autonomous security technology.” The JAVA software team lead was Zhang.
The Team Atlanta page
for Zhang said that “Atlantis-Java is a specialized bug-finding
subsystem … specifically designed for Java CPV [CertPathValidator]
detection in the AIxCC competition. It integrates fuzzing, program
analysis, and LLM capabilities” — similar topics to the ones he had
researched alongside Huawei co-authors.
DARPA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Zhang’s Github says that he received his PhD at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. His curriculum vitae also says he received a master’s degree at the University of Science and Technology of China.
The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security said in 2024 that that Chinese school was added
to its blacklist “for acquiring and attempting to acquire U.S.-origin
items in support of advancing China's quantum technology capabilities,
which has serious ramifications for U.S. national security given the
military applications of quantum technologies” and for being “involved
in advancing China's nuclear program development.”
A paper written
by Zhang when he was still at the Singapore university included seven
co-authors from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Other prior papers
written by Zhang were often co-authored
by scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences as well as Chinese
universities such as Peking University, Huazhong University of Science
and Technology, Xi'an Jiaotong University, and Zhejiang University.
Zhang’s GitHub page says he is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Systems Software and Security Lab at Georgia Tech.
This lab says that its “Funding Support” includes federal government sources such as DARPA, NSF, Office of Naval Research, and Sandia National Laboratories, as well as tech companies such as Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and OpenAI.
Neither Zhang nor Georgia Tech responded to a request for comment.
The AAF report assessed that Zheng’s “inside knowledge of
leading defense collaborators and AI platforms is a significant threat
in the race between China and the U.S. for AI superiority.”
Chinese scientist at U.S. college worked for China’s largest military aircraft company
The AAF report claims that Xiaobin Zhao “presents
a high national-security risk because his research in quantum sensing,
metrology, and communications directly supports technologies critical to
next generation military systems, including areas explicitly identified
by the U.S. government as strategically sensitive” and that “the risk
is heightened by his funding from PRC state programs operating under
military-civil fusion and his prior work with AVIC, a PLA-controlled
defense conglomerate.”
The Google Scholar page for Zhao lists him at USC. Neither Zhao nor USC responded to a request for comment.
Zhao’s online bio says he interned at the Aviation Industry Corporation of China, or AVIC, in 2013. The Chinese state-owned military company is considered to be among the largest defense companies in the world.
A key AVIC subsidiary known as the China National
Aero-Technology Import and Export Corporation, or CATIC, has also been
considered a U.S. national security threat since 1990. President George
H.W. Bush issued an order
in January 1990 that concluded CATIC “might take action that threatens
to impair the national security of the United States of America.”
The House Select Committee on China warned in 1998 about AVIC and its subsidiary CATIC, and the Government Accountability Office in 1996 detailed
a scheme by CATIC to get U.S.-based McDonnell Douglas to “co-produce 40
MD-80 and MD-90 aircraft in China for the country’s domestic ‘trunk’
routes.”
CATIC was charged
by the Justice Department in 1999 with violating the Export
Administration Act and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act
“regarding details of a 1994 sale of American machining equipment, some
of which was diverted to a Chinese military site.”
The Commerce Department said in 2001 that TAL Industries was allegedly part of the "conspiracy" to export machine tools from the U.S. to CATIC.
The State Department said
in 2002 that most of the charges related to CATIC were dismissed, but
that "TAL Industries Inc., however, was convicted of violating the EAA
and was sentenced on May 11, 2001, to five years of corporate probation"
and "payment of a $1 million fine."
The AVIC website in 2015 made it clear that its business units included “defense” as well as aviation. The “AVIC Evolution” section said
the company was the successor to the Chinese government’s Ministry of
Aerospace Industry. Now-former Chinese defense minister Li Shangfu had
previously been a board member of AVIC Avionics Equipment.
AVIC and its subsidiaries were blacklisted by the Pentagon in 2020 for being “Chinese Military Companies Operating in the United States.” AVIC Avionics was also sanctioned by the Treasury Department in 2021 and placed on the “Chinese Military-Industrial Complex Companies List.”
The blacklist added that the Chinese center is “operated
by, or directly affiliated with, the Chinese Academy of Engineering
Physics, which is the technology complex responsible for the research,
development and testing of China's nuclear weapons.”
The House Select Committee on the CCP said in 2024 that AVIC is “the principal producer of military aircraft for the PLA.”
The House committee said that “major index providers and
asset managers” in the U.S. “channel billions of dollars to PRC
companies on U.S. government red-flag lists for advancing the PRC’s
military and supporting the CCP’s human rights abuses” including $178
million from U.S. industry.
The committee also noted that AVIC sells aircraft to the Iranian regime’s Aerospace Force. AVIC has also supported Russia during its war with Ukraine.
Zhao previously attended Hong Kong University. He also attended Northwestern Polytechnical University according to his online biography. The latter university has long been on U.S. government blacklists, including being blacklisted by the Pentagon, and it has been dubbed one of the CCP’s “Seven Sons of National Defense.”
The Commerce Department in 2021 described
the school as “a Chinese military university that is heavily involved
in military research and works closely with the People’s Liberation Army
on the advancement of its military capabilities.”
The USC lab is run by Quntao Zhuang, listed as the “Principal Investigator” at the lab, who graduated from Peking University. Zhuang did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
ASPI says
that Peking University “is assessed as high risk for its high number of
defence laboratories and defence research areas, strong relationship
with the defense industry, supervision by SASTIND, secret-level security
clearance, and links to China’s nuclear weapons program.”
The report by AAF said that “this combination of critical
dual-use technical expertise, direct historical ties to PLA-aligned
entities, and ongoing proximity to U.S. quantum research presents a
credible pathway by which sensitive knowledge could be transferred to
the PRC, materially enhancing China’s military modernization and
undermining U.S. national security advantages.”
Another scientist from blacklisted Chinese tech research center comes to the U.S.
The report by AAF said that Bijuan Chen “is a leading
researcher in an area of critical defense research who was trained at
one of China’s leading military research institutes, which the U.S.
government has labeled as a hostile actor who behaves in a way contrary
to U.S. national security interests.”
The report alleged that “despite Bijuan Chen having the
formative years of her career in an agency that the U.S. Government had
declared acts in ways contrary to the national security interests of the
United States, Chen still went to work with researchers working on
defense-related research.”
Chen is now listed as working at Purdue University. Neither Chen nor Purdue responded to requests for comment.
Chen’s online profile at the Center for High Pressure Science and Technology Advanced Research, or HPSTAR, says
that she received her PhD from the Institute of Physics at the Chinese
Academy of Sciences and obtained her undergraduate degree at Sichuan
University.
Chen’s “alumni” profile
at the Chinese center says that “her research interests in HPSTAR
mainly focus on the studies of mixed valent behaviors, exotic magnetism,
quantum phase transition and superconductivity in electron materials
under extreme pressures using X-ray spectroscopy and neutron
scattering.”
The Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security assessed
in 2020 that HPSTAR had been “determined by the U.S. Government to be
acting contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of
the United States … on the basis of their procurement of U.S.-origin
items for activities contrary to the national security or foreign policy
interests of the United States.”
The blacklist added that HPSTAR “operated by, or directly
affiliated with, the Chinese Academy of Engineering Physics, which is
the technology complex responsible for the research, development and
testing of China's nuclear weapons.” HPSTAR is also on the Pentagon’s list
of “foreign institutions engaging in problematic activity” with the
Defense Department saying the list is “an important continuing effort in
highlighting and countering mechanisms of unwanted technology transfer
to foreign countries of concern.”
Yang Ding’s former team leader at HPSTAR appears to have
been a part of the Thousand Talents Program, with HPSTAR saying that
Ding had received the “1000-Talents Award.”
Chen was previously listed as a “postdoctoral researcher” working on the “X-ray Science Group” led by Ding at HPSTAR. Ding is listed
as the “PI” — likely standing for “principal investigator” — for the
Chinese science group at the center, and Chen is listed as an “alumni”
of Ding’s group. The HPSTAR page lists Chen and Ding as co-authors on
research projects at HPSTAR.
The House Select Committee on the CCP said
in 2025 that Sichuan University was “affiliated” with SASTIND, saying
that these SASTIND schools “maintain specialized labs, programs, and
departments dedicated to military research” and “SASTIND plays a
critical role in managing China’s defense R&D outside the PLA.”
A host of institutes and centers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences have been blacklisted by the Commerce Department, including the Institute of Physics (where Chen received her PhD).
Chen’s LinkedIn profile says she has been a postdoctoral research fellow at Purdue since July 2025, and had been a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard.
She is listed as working at the Tongcang Li Research Group at Purdue, a “Quantum Sensing and Optomechanics Laboratory.”
The research group appears to have received millions of dollars in funding from the U.S. Department of Energy. Purdue and Tongcang Li were selected
in 2024 by the Department of Energy to help “lead the Quantum Photonics
Integrated Design Center Energy Frontier Research Center” in
collaboration with Los Alamos National Laboratory and other partners.
Chen’s Google Scholar page also says she worked at Harvard, where she was part of the Yao Group at Harvard, which says
that “our research lies at the interface between atomic, molecular, and
optical physics, condensed matter, and quantum information science.”
The AAF report concluded that “Chen still has ties to HPSTAR, and her
continued work in this critical area represents a significant threat for
transfer of vital research information aiding the Chinese at the
expense of the United States.”
FBI Director Kash Patel told Just the News
on Friday that “this FBI, under this leadership, has prioritized the
threat against it by the CCP against us, and we've taken swift action.”
It remains to be seen the extent to which the bureau’s efforts against
Beijing will extend to American colleges welcoming Chinese academics
linked to Huawei and other blacklisted Chinese firms.
