Technological Espionage · Full chronicle and history

According to the Financial Times, multiple people familiar with the matter said that US officials wrote a memo this year based on intelligence, suggesting that Jensen Huang had a romantic relationship with Megaspeed executive Alice Huang, whom intelligence agencies believe was recruited by the Ministry of State Security to engage in espionage. Nvidia declined to comment.

A report by Safeguard Defenders mentions that Italian police are investigating individuals suspected of long-term stalking, surveillance, and threats against Teacher Li Is Not Your Teacher.

On October 30, The New York Times, citing anonymous sources, reported that US intelligence agencies determined that Alice Huang, an executive at data center company Megaspeed, passed intelligence to Beijing and discovered she had close contact with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. Trump was informed of the intelligence about a year ago but took no action. Nvidia stated it was normal customer contact, and the Chinese Embassy in the US denounced the accusations as a smear.

On October 28, The Information reported that the latest models from DeepSeek and Moonshot AI are suspected of using output from OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra for distillation training. In September, OpenAI traced distillation activities that began in July to individuals associated with Moonshot AI. Anthropic stated that it has reduced the data acquisition for distillation attacks against Claude by approximately 90% to 99%.

On October 23, Milan prosecutors concluded their investigation into 10 individuals suspected of stalking the operator of the Teacher Li account. Among them, 8 are Chinese citizens and 2 are Italian citizens. There are currently no convictions.

The U.S. State Department announced a $10 million reward for Zhang Yu, a board member of Shanghai Shiyan Technology Company, accusing him of being hired by the Shanghai State Security Bureau to steal COVID research data from American universities and immunovirologists.

According to CBS, on October 4, the day Zhang Wanying was arrested, about 10 FBI agents with a search warrant broke down the door and entered Fatai Miao's residence in Irvine, California. The family denied that the trip to Seattle had political purposes, saying Miao went to China to care for his sick wife.

On September 30, the UK's MI5 rarely issued an independent espionage alert, pointing out that China's General Technology Research Institute has close ties with the Ministry of State Security and has funded more than 100 British scholars to research AI, cybersecurity, covert communications and steganography, warning that those who continue to cooperate could be prosecuted under the National Security Law. The Chinese Embassy in the UK denied the allegations.

On September 17, Japan's Asahi Kasei Corporation reported that former employee Shoichi Furukawa was arrested for allegedly violating the Unfair Competition Prevention Act by leaking semiconductor packaging material manufacturing secrets to Shandong Shengquan New Materials Co., Ltd. Asahi Kasei plans to sue both parties and demand the destruction of the relevant materials. The compromised secrets involve manufacturing data for epoxy resin curing agents.

On September 16, a video played by prosecutors during Huawei's criminal trial in New York was officially released, showing Huawei employees stealing parts of T-Mobile's phone-testing robot, Tappy. Huawei denies that the company engaged in organized theft, arguing that it was the action of individual employees and that management had already dealt with it.

According to The Wall Street Journal, ZRON built an analytics dashboard that integrates public information and private data, introducing large models such as Alibaba and DeepSeek, which can automatically generate intelligence reports and organize event timelines, improving the readability and practicality of intelligence products.

On September 13, 2026, South Korea passed an amendment to its criminal law, expanding the scope of the espionage offense from "enemy states" to "foreign or equivalent entities", and it came into force on the same day. Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Mao Ning responded that China consistently requires enterprises to comply with laws and regulations, and also calls on all countries to provide a fair, impartial, non-discriminatory business environment. Statistics from the Korean police show that of the 33 overseas technology leakage cases seized in 2025, 54.5% flowed to China. Previously, a South Korean court sentenced a former Samsung researcher to seven years in prison in April for leaking semiconductor technology to China.

On September 9, the criminal lawsuit filed by the US Department of Justice against Huawei and its subsidiaries officially opened in federal court. The presiding judge is Ann Donnelly, and the trial is expected to last several months. Prosecutors accuse Huawei of operating a criminal enterprise for over 20 years through theft, lies, and cover-ups, facing approximately 12 charges including racketeering, conspiracy to steal trade secrets, bank fraud, money laundering, and obstruction of justice.

On September 11, 2026, responding to South Korean police statistics showing that 54.5% of the 33 overseas technology leak cases uncovered in 2025 flowed to China, and that South Korea is about to expand the scope of espionage charges, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning stated that China demands that enterprises comply with laws and regulations, and at the same time calls on all countries to provide a fair, just, and non-discriminatory business environment.

On September 11, 2026, the US AI giant Anthropic released a long-form investigative report detailing how Chinese AI companies such as Moonshot AI and DeepSeek, while distilling own models from US models like Claude, allegedly sent real internal prompts and sensitive data of users from the People's Liberation Army, police, and state-owned enterprises to US AI platforms, sparking strong concern over model distillation security and data leakage.

On September 10, the Chinese Communist Party's Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Public Security, and National Immigration Administration issued a joint response, saying that the claims circulating online that "exit will be comprehensively tightened" and "it will become harder for ordinary people to leave the country" are a misreading, and that the new rules only target online fraud, high-risk destinations, and travelers with abnormal travel patterns, with normal exit unaffected.

According to foreign media reports, around September 9, during Huawei's criminal trial in the United States, federal prosecutors played a 54-second surveillance video for the jury, claiming that the footage shows Huawei employees taking parts from T-Mobile's locked robotics laboratory and packing them into a bag, and alleging that Huawei had been continuously stealing US trade secrets for 20 years. Huawei's lawyers denied the charges, saying the government is blaming the entire company for the actions of individual employees.

The federal court in the Eastern District of New York has begun jury selection and the trial for the Huawei case, with Judge Ann Donnelly presiding. Prosecutors accuse Huawei of 20 years of theft, lying, and cover-ups, involving 12 charges, including using the Hong Kong-based company Skycom to conduct business in Iran to deceive U.S. and European banks, stealing trade secrets, and obstruction of justice.

A Chinese national who has lived abroad for a long time said that police, on the pretext of a verification check, demanded their passport, visa, living and work details, WeChat records, as well as a video call and real-time location sharing.

According to a report by the Italian media "Il Foglio" on August 26, a woman from Zhejiang in her forties, who was suspected of harassing and stalking Teacher Li, was deported by Italy last Saturday upon arriving at Milan Malpensa Airport with her 8-year-old daughter.

On August 24, 2026, Chinese citizens living in Singapore and elsewhere reported that police in their domestic household registration jurisdiction had demanded via WeChat that they submit personal photos and proof of overseas employment, warning that they would bear the consequences themselves; others who had returned to China said they were summoned by police and had their phones checked for entry and exit records.

Decades of scientific research achievements at the National Research Council of Canada were stolen by China.

On August 18, 2026, a former Samsung engineer testified at the Seoul District Court that China's ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT), in the early period after its founding in 2016, obtained Samsung's 18-nanometer DRAM process data by recruiting South Korean engineers, and South Korean prosecutors alleged that it thereby saved on R&D trial and error.

Taiwan's Keelung District Prosecutors Office announced the detention of Nvidia senior business development manager Zhang Denglong, accusing him of allegedly smuggling controlled AI chips to mainland China.

On July 22, White House officials accused Chinese artificial intelligence company Moonshot AI of illegally distilling Anthropic's Fable model to develop the K3 system, and of obtaining banned Nvidia chips.

In July 2026, Tencent QQ Browser added the "Teacher Li Is Not Your Teacher" social accounts, Telegram bots, and the rights-defense project website exposing cross-border repression and excessive working hours to its blocklist, prohibiting access.

On June 10, artificial intelligence company Anthropic sent a letter to the U.S. Senate accusing Alibaba of launching a large-scale model distillation attack against its Cloud AI using nearly 25,000 fake accounts to illegally extract model capabilities.

US cybersecurity company CrowdStrike released an investigation report pointing out that, as investment in the field of artificial intelligence surges, the greatest intelligence-probing threat faced by technology companies worldwide over the past year has come from hackers linked to the Chinese government.

US AI company Anthropic sent a letter to the Senate accusing Alibaba of using tens of thousands of accounts between April and June to launch a large-scale model distillation attack against Claude AI in order to replicate its capabilities.

In May 2026, the civil human rights initiative the Overseas Black Hand Files project officially launched in response to the Chinese authorities' long-arm jurisdiction over overseas dissidents, publicly soliciting and documenting cases of transnational repression carried out by China around the world.

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy released a memorandum harshly accusing entities primarily from China of stealing U.S. AI intellectual property through tens of thousands of proxy accounts and jailbreak technology systems.

In April 2026, a South Korean court found a former Samsung researcher guilty of leaking semiconductor technology to China's ChangXin Memory Technologies in violation of the Industrial Technology Protection Act, and sentenced him to seven years in prison.

On March 12, 2026, the Fourth Session of the 14th National People's Congress passed the Law on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress. Article 63 stipulates that overseas organizations and individuals who undermine ethnic unity and progress and incite ethnic division shall be held legally liable in accordance with the law, effective July 1.

In early March 2026, the Italian government, on national security grounds, ordered the deportation of 8 Chinese citizens suspected of surveilling and intimidating dissident Teacher Li (Li Ying).

On February 27, according to ABC News, HungryPanda in Australia experienced another dispute during the Spring Festival, and the company admitted to being in contact with Chinese police.

On August 5, 2026, the international non-governmental organization Human Rights Watch released a human rights report, pointing out that Chinese authorities continue to intensify strict crackdowns on domestic dissident groups and have extended long-arm jurisdiction and transnational repression tactics overseas.

Qiao Xinxin, the initiator of the Demolish the Wall Movement, was cross-border arrested in Laos by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) police and brought back to China. He was later secretly sentenced to 5 years in prison and subjected to torture in prison.

Former US Army helicopter pilot Shapour Moinian was contacted by fake tech recruiters via an employment website, provided aviation information to China, and made false statements on a security clearance review, resulting in a 20-month prison sentence in 2022.

On January 28, 2019, the U.S. Department of Justice announced 23 charges against Huawei and Meng Wanzhou, including bank and wire fraud, obstruction of justice, and the theft of trade secrets; the FBI said Huawei paid bonuses to employees who stole others' trade secrets.

The Jamestown Foundation released a report on the CCP's global expansion, pointing out that Chinese government agencies recruit influence agents within overseas Chinese communities and attempt to control discourse within those communities.

Since 2018, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) used Tang Yuanjing's longing for home as a lure of returning to China and successfully turned him.

A US civil jury has awarded T-Mobile $4.8 million in damages, primarily on breach of contract claims, in a case involving Huawei engineers accessing Tappy testing robot technology.

An investigation by South Korean prosecutors found that ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) drew up the "Hefei Plan" in early 2016, targeting Samsung's DRAM processes and talent; a former Samsung employee who jumped ship in 2016 was accused of providing large amounts of handwritten materials on DRAM technology.

Data from Freedom House's database shows that between 2014 and 2024, a total of 1,219 incidents of physical transnational repression occurred worldwide, of which the Chinese Communist Party was responsible for 272, accounting for 22%.

On May 10, 2007, a jury at the U.S. Federal Court in Santa Ana, California, found Chinese-American engineer Chi Mak guilty of conspiring to export U.S. defense technology to China and other charges, and in March 2008 he was sentenced to more than 24 years in prison.

After a communications trade show in Chicago closed in 2004, Fujitsu staff found an Asian man holding a Chinese passport issued a few weeks earlier photographing equipment at the booth with a camera; he was stopped by security, and the camera's memory card contained photos of equipment from Fujitsu and other companies.

Longtime FBI informant Katrina Leung and her handler James Smith have been arrested on suspicion of leaking classified technical operations and counterintelligence program information to Chinese intelligence officers.