Dozens of members of the Chinese Students and Scholars Association, which the State Department says was established to “monitor Chinese students and mobilize them against views that dissent from the [Chinese Communist Party],” have found their way into high-level positions at American technology firms, pharmaceutical corporations, academia, and national labs — sparking industrial espionage concerns.
CSSAs are campus organizations with known chapters at roughly 150 American colleges and universities. Their purported mission is to provide Chinese international students with social and logistical services. However, CSSA chapters are overseen by the CCP’s United Front Work Department, a global network of party loyalists tasked with gathering intelligence and exerting influence, according to the State Department. Chinese intelligence officers regularly serve as the primary point of contact for CSSA members, according to a 2018 congressional report, and chapters are often funded and directed by Chinese consulates. Reports have linked CSSA to the CCP’s Thousand Talents Plan, a component of Beijing’s strategy to recruit elite talent and acquire trade secrets.
Despite the CSSA’s well-reported links to the Chinese government’s influence and intelligence operations, American companies and institutions possessing sensitive trade information have hired dozens of the group’s alumni in recent years. A Washington Examiner review of public records identified nearly 100 individuals occupying technical roles in such industries who were previously CSSA members, the majority of whom had held leadership positions within the organization.
Of the individuals identified by the Washington Examiner, about 40% were in senior roles and, among those working in the tech sector, more than a third had jobs related to artificial intelligence or machine learning. There are sectors where the United States and China are involved in what some have dubbed an “arms race.” Notable corporations and organizations employing CSSA alumni included the National Institutes of Health, Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, Tesla, Pfizer, Merck, AstraZeneca, and the AI giant Anthropic.
“CSSA membership is a major red flag that will translate into security risks for U.S. employers,” Michael Lucci, CEO of the national security organization State Armor, told the Washington Examiner. “The U.S. State Department has flagged CSSAs as CCP infrastructure used to surveil Chinese nationals and crush campus dissent against the CCP regime. CSSAs also participate in the theft of military-use technologies. CSSAs are overseen by Beijing’s global political warfare machine, the United Front Work Department. Companies that hire CSSA members should reconsider the prudence of employing individuals who participated in an organization known to crush democratic voices and steal technology.”
Industrial espionage concerns are nothing new in relation to CSSA chapters. In 2005, the French newspaper Le Monde reported that a CSSA chapter in Belgium had served as the hub for a “Belgian-based economic espionage network” that included “hundreds of Chinese spies working at various levels of European industry.”
Concerns of trade secrets leaking may be heightened by the fact that many CSSA alumni are working directly in research and development roles where they would have access to cutting-edge American technology. Among these are principal scientists at the pharmaceutical firms AstraZeneca, Genentech, and Merck, a principal investigator at Boeing, a principal research manager at Microsoft, a research manager at Anthropic, as well as a senior principal at Amazon Lab126, among many others.
CSSA alumni further secured their position in the United States’s research ecosystem by securing gigs as academic researchers, professors, and administrators at institutions including Yale, Stanford, the University of Washington, Dartmouth, Columbia, Cornell, Duke, and the University of Pennsylvania, alongside others, the Washington Examiner found.
The New York Times reported in 2017 that CSSA chapters “worked in tandem with Beijing to promote a pro-Chinese agenda and tamp down anti-Chinese speech on Western campuses.” Indeed, multiple outlets have covered CSSA chapters rallying for pro-CCP speakers and organizing protests against dissidents.
Though the federal government is aware of the CSSA’s links to the CCP, it allows some chapters to operate right under its nose.
The NIH, as well as the Department of Energy-run Brookhaven National Laboratory, at one point had active CSSA chapters, the Washington Examiner has learned. Social media posts reviewed by the Washington Examiner suggest that the Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards & Technology, which specializes in cybersecurity, and the Food and Drug Administration also had CSSA chapters as of at least 2016, though it is unclear if they are still active.
The NIH, Department of Energy, and Department of Commerce did not respond to requests for comment. An FDA staffer familiar with the situation told the Washington Examiner that leadership was unaware of an active CSSA chapter within their agency.
Some states have taken preemptive action to prevent espionage from occurring. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), for example, signed legislation in 2023 barring Chinese international students from being employed in certain university labs without special permission. The University of Florida’s CSSA chapter president, later implicated in an illegal plot to ship lab materials to China, protested the law at the time.
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The Washington Examiner’s analysis is not comprehensive as it relied on public-facing social media profiles. Not every CSSA alumnus has a social media presence and, even if they do, they don’t necessarily disclose their affiliation with the group. Further, the Washington Examiner only scraped social media profiles based in a select number of metropolitan areas. The actual number of CSSA alumni working in sensitive industries is likely far greater than what was identified above.
There are no laws on the books that make hiring former CSSA members illegal.
Google, Meta, Microsoft, Tesla, Pfizer, Merck, AstraZeneca, and Anthropic did not respond to requests for comment. Nvidia and Amazon declined to comment.
