Based Camp - US Colleges Caught Assisting Chinese Spies! (Giant Network Exposed)

00:00:00.000 Hello, Malcolm. I'm excited to be speaking with you today because we're going to talk about the

00:00:04.160 university to spy for China pipeline through the lens of one young woman's plight. Elsa Johnson

00:00:13.100 is a good old fashioned American girl. She attended a Chinese language immersion school 0.67

00:00:19.840 from kindergarten through eighth grade in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and just developed

00:00:24.540 this lifelong love of the Chinese language, of Mandarin, of China in general. She is a high

00:00:31.700 achiever. She gets into Stanford University. She's so happy. She became a research assistant at the

00:00:36.780 Hoover Institution, where she studied Chinese industry and military tactics. And then here's

00:00:42.620 where things go a little sideways. So I'm going to read a little bit from her congressional

00:00:47.060 testimony, because surprise, surprise, things go so sideways that this spring, she finds herself

00:00:52.860 testifying to the House Committee on Education in the Workforce, asking them to do something

00:00:57.060 about this really serious problem. So she said in her testimony, in June 2024, a few days after I

00:01:04.520 spoke with one of my supervisors at Hoover about Chinese recruitment tactics targeting American

00:01:09.940 academics, a man calling himself Charles Chen reached out to me on Instagram. He had over 100

00:01:16.040 mutual followers with me and had photos of Stanford on his profile. I had no reason to believe he was

00:01:22.120 anything other than a fellow student. Over the following weeks, Chen's messages grew more

00:01:27.060 concerning. He told me he was from China and asked detailed questions about my research and

00:01:32.960 background in Chinese. He offered to pay for a trip to China, send me a flight itinerary from

00:01:38.860 Los Angeles to Shanghai, and send screenshots of a bank wire to prove he could afford my

00:01:45.180 accommodations once I got there. He also sent me a document outlining a policy that would allow me

00:01:51.020 to travel to china without a visa which is super shady and like the chinese consulate is not hard

00:01:57.740 to get to from stanford why would they do that why would they have her travel without a visa like i 0.98

00:02:02.880 don't know that yeah that whole thing i know they didn't want it in the american books that she

00:02:08.120 traveled to china because then she might be easier to pick up by like the cia and stuff like this

00:02:13.080 oh because it would be in her american passport that's right okay he sent me videos of americans

00:02:18.760 who had gotten rich and famous in China and insisted that I too could find wealth and fame

00:02:24.480 in the PRC. Later on, he began incessantly pressuring me to move our conversation to

00:02:30.700 WeChat, a Chinese government monitored messaging app. When I didn't respond to Charles Chen fast

00:02:36.900 enough, he would delete and resend his messages. He even referenced the whereabouts of Stanford

00:02:42.220 students who were in China at the time of our correspondence. Then in July, he publicly commented

00:02:48.180 on one of my Instagram posts in Mandarin asking me to delete the screenshots I'd taken of our

00:02:54.540 private conversation. I had not told anyone I had taken screenshots and I do not know how he knew.

00:03:01.740 The only explanation I could come up with was that my phone or my account had been compromised

00:03:06.020 somehow. Clearly her phone. Yeah. Because yeah, I mean, I guess there are some banking apps that

00:03:12.280 are able to detect if you're trying to take screenshots. I know this because they'll give

00:03:15.360 you like a little push notification saying screenshots are not authorized. So maybe the

00:03:18.920 app can pick up on that, but most likely it was her phone that was compromised. They'd like bugged

00:03:23.020 her phone or something. I contacted two China experts at Stanford, whom I trusted, and they

00:03:30.280 connected me with an FBI contact who handled CCP related espionage cases at the university.

00:03:36.200 I met with the FBI in September and handed over everything I had. The FBI confirmed that Charles

00:03:42.680 chen had no real affiliation with stanford he had likely posed as a student for years and used

00:03:48.140 multiple fabricated social media profiles to target students researching china related topics

00:03:54.100 i was told he was likely operating on behalf of chinese ministry of state security i later found

00:04:00.140 out that i was one of at least 10 other female students targeted by charles chen since 2020 1.00

00:04:05.520 female students why always female are they more malleable are they more stupid yeah i mean you 1.00

00:04:11.580 know look you're you're listening to base camp you don't need to hear him answer you don't need 1.00

00:04:16.160 to know why it was only females come on but she so what she did ultimately was she published an

00:04:22.180 account of this experience in the times of london and then after that she was followed and harassed

00:04:28.160 by the ccp and actually the reason why she gave that testimony to congress in the spring wasn't 0.87

00:04:33.960 like oh my god we have a spy problem it was oh my god i'm so tired of being harassed by the ccp and 0.80

00:04:40.440 universities need to be better at stopping this it was like not even like oh this because i'm over 0.99

00:04:46.240 here being like whoa can we can we like talk about the spy problem and she's just like i'm just so 0.91

00:04:51.620 done being harassed but the ccp is and a lot of people do not outside of tiktok which obviously 0.99

00:04:57.500 had a huge negative effect on the united states and trump 100 should have shut it down very stupid 0.98

00:05:01.600 yeah but he could have blamed it on the biden administration it would have been so easy yeah 0.99

00:05:06.580 trump you fool anyway outside of not shutting down tiktok ccp fundamentally like doesn't 0.92

00:05:13.180 understand america or american culture and we pointed out that often their attempts to make 0.95

00:05:19.880 americans angry at america or like so division in america are very different russia is like let's

00:05:24.820 fund blm as we pointed out like oh russia gets it they know like they know how to do it the money

00:05:29.860 that they spent on the trump presidency which they thought would be subversive they spent on blm

00:05:34.180 like blm was a russian funded movement go watch our video on it like the receipts are really clear

00:05:39.680 and by the way russia is not our friend don't make that mistake it's weird that anyone ever did but 0.70

00:05:46.480 you know some people are very gullible but anyway the ccp but when they try to attack us they don't 0.86

00:05:52.120 get it they're like america like can you really trust your government here's where the u.s 1.00

00:05:56.820 government has lied to you and people are like yeah i mean that checks out right like the u.s 0.73

00:06:01.660 everyone lies to us all the time because americans like in the ccp you can't like 0.61

00:06:05.660 distrust your government you can't be like oh yeah yeah this is the the questions i have about 0.97

00:06:09.800 my government you know but in america like oh this is fucking normal and was her they took 0.88

00:06:15.260 someone who probably i mean i think the reason she was on their list was she probably had anti-american 0.91

00:06:18.760 or socialist sympathies probably like a far progressive and they made the mistake of deciding 0.53

00:06:25.040 to harass her when they could have just kept quiet and she probably would have just let it go

00:06:30.620 right like but they made it clear that they saw her as an enemy and they were going to treat her

00:06:34.920 like an enemy which is fascinating no no this is this is far more systematic than i think you're

00:06:40.800 aware so first i'll describe how she was harassed as she states in her testimony last summer while

00:06:47.140 conducting research in china in washington dc i began receiving regular phone calls from unknown

00:06:52.360 u.s numbers when i answered the calls in english the callers would switch to mandarin in one case

00:06:57.460 the caller referenced my mother. These bizarre calls were intimidation attempts designed to

00:07:02.500 remind me that neither my family nor I is safe from the transnational repression by the CCP.

00:07:08.640 Then this past fall, the FBI informed me that I'm being physically monitored

00:07:12.780 on Stanford's campus by agents of the Chinese Communist Party. They told me that my family

00:07:18.460 is also at risk of being monitored. As a 21-year-old who grew up loving the Chinese

00:07:22.400 language and culture, I never imagined that studying it would put me in a position where

00:07:25.780 foreign intelligence services tracking my movements on my own campus and monitoring my

00:07:30.200 family i fear for my safety and my family's safety so i'm going to get into how this is a systematic

00:07:36.340 thing but first i want to i want you before you get into that go into how they attempted to lure

00:07:41.140 her i mean i think that this is actually fairly interesting oh yeah like they tried to get her

00:07:46.840 into china first just to see like basically that's how they get you then this is that this is how you

00:07:52.280 get all these people who are total shills for china even though otherwise like just temperamentally

00:07:57.060 and politically you wouldn't expect them to be well yeah elon obviously is a good example here

00:08:01.380 right like that i think this is one of his biggest blind spots this is like soft spot for china but

00:08:07.040 i mean i don't know i mean i think and i'm gonna get into this as well like there there is he it

00:08:13.760 would be financially unwise uh and business-wise unwise for him to come out of course but i mean

00:08:18.780 even in totally private conversations he's still pro-china right like it makes no sense to me but

00:08:24.120 i think that once you support them within a certain context publicly which you need to to do business

00:08:28.600 and he's done an amazing job at getting like tesla's i think one of the only fact like companies

00:08:33.620 that's really allowed to operate there independently so he's done a good job in in regards to that

00:08:38.840 but like so they wanted her to get into china right give her a bunch of nice stuff the idea

00:08:43.480 of her getting rich in china i think is also interesting like i wonder exactly how that's

00:08:48.820 supposed to work my best guess is what they do is they give you a bunch of assets in china that you 0.97

00:08:55.620 can't easily get out of china so you are hugely dependent financially on making sure that the ccp

00:09:02.480 looks good yeah possibly um and possibly this this could just be like how bribe payments are

00:09:08.860 essentially made in many cases where like you get a job and the job doesn't actually do anything but

00:09:14.400 you get this really high salary for basically doing nothing and the salary is your bribe

00:09:18.660 so that could also be just kind of how it works you know anyway continue from here but that was

00:09:24.200 interesting to me as well like do people actually make this money or do they just dangle this in 0.97

00:09:27.360 front of them i would guess they probably do yeah it's probably worth it for the ccp to shill out 0.71

00:09:31.560 money for stuff like this yeah so why why can this even be happening on university campuses in the 0.87

00:09:38.660 first place? And the answer is that both private schools in the U.S. and both public and private

00:09:44.020 universities in the U.S. kind of need Chinese students. So the Department of Homeland Security

00:09:50.040 analysis, it was a SEVIS analysis. I'm not familiar with SEVIS, but anyway, that found 47%

00:09:56.680 of all foreign K-12 students in 2019 were from China. That number went down after the pandemic,

00:10:02.080 but almost half of private school foreign students and basically all foreign students in

00:10:08.080 the United States who are K-12 are private because public schools don't really take foreign students

00:10:14.340 than who aren't like refugees or illegal immigrants, you know, like visiting. I mean, 0.99

00:10:19.720 obviously, yeah, of course. That's huge. Universities also have incredibly high numbers

00:10:25.720 of Chinese students. About one quarter of foreign, that is to say international university students

00:10:30.900 in the United States are from China. The absolute number of Chinese students has fallen from the

00:10:36.380 pre-pandemic peak of around 370,000 in 2019 to under 280,000 in like 2023 to 2024. But China

00:10:47.080 remains one of the top two sending countries alongside India. And I mean, yes, they're very,

00:10:53.000 very populous countries. But basically, if US universities were to stop accepting Chinese

00:10:59.000 students, they would be seeing a pretty significant gap in funding. This is also an issue in the

00:11:06.360 In fact, the United Kingdom is likely to now accept more Chinese international students

00:11:11.280 and accept fewer students from some other countries, because in order to keep their

00:11:16.500 sponsor license that allows them to basically give visas, like I'm sure you remember when

00:11:20.620 you went to St. Andrews and when I went to Cambridge, we had to get those universities

00:11:24.280 to sponsor our visas as students.

00:11:26.820 Yeah.

00:11:26.940 So to keep their sponsor licenses, universities in the UK soon need 95% of enrolled students

00:11:32.580 to actually start their course.

00:11:34.140 This is up from 90%. And then they also need 90% to complete up from 85%. And they need a visa

00:11:42.060 refusal rate under 5%. That's down from 10%. And because these thresholds are really strict,

00:11:47.160 and they're not really sure when they're going to start to be imposed, some universities are

00:11:52.020 already no longer recruiting from countries that have lower visa grant or compliance rates.

00:11:58.120 And that includes Bangladesh, Ghana, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Nigeria.

00:12:03.780 And that means that they're going to be turning a lot more to China because they're very good with visa. 0.99

00:12:09.640 Fascinating, but also stupid. 0.98

00:12:11.780 So at St. Andrews, one of the things I remember about the Chinese students, they were the most likely to drop out. 0.99

00:12:17.220 That's really interesting.

00:12:18.200 There were two Chinese students in my graduate class, and one, I think, just maybe didn't

00:12:25.300 complete the course and really struggled with English.

00:12:29.440 This is what we saw as well at St. Andrews, is they typically didn't really understand

00:12:35.040 English, and it was weird that they would attempt to go to an English school without

00:12:38.700 understanding English.

00:12:39.840 I mean, maybe they had thought that this worked in China, and that this is regular for Chinese

00:12:45.000 students at top universities like Cambridge and St. Andrews.

00:12:47.680 Yeah.

00:12:48.200 Is that they go and it's clear that they're not close to understanding English.

00:12:52.860 Yeah.

00:12:53.060 Like they can't have a casual conversation.

00:12:55.700 And that's going to make it extremely hard to do well in school.

00:12:59.120 But they're still accepted at super high rates because when, and this is the same even for like US schools.

00:13:06.000 Hold on, actually, side note here.

00:13:07.580 I should be clear.

00:13:08.980 This isn't true of any other national group that I was aware of.

00:13:12.880 Oh, same.

00:13:13.560 Yeah.

00:13:13.740 Yeah, there were lots of other international students in my Cambridge class.

00:13:17.500 and also my undergraduate oh at gwu especially like in washington dc so many kids that was the

00:13:24.400 first time i ever met someone from kazakhstan that was my first time ever meeting someone from

00:13:28.180 so many countries yeah you'll meet people from kazakhstan and from pakistan and from the you

00:13:33.240 know all over africa and like yeah none of them ever had any problem speaking no but nobody yeah

00:13:39.580 it was only ever china that is it was only the chinese my god though you're so right what's up

00:13:46.160 with that i i mean the languages are very different to be fair like it's very it's pretty easy to like

00:13:52.540 well relatively speaking and learn another romance language i think it might have to do with the way

00:13:57.880 the corruption in their education system works and that they don't actually think that they actually

00:14:02.620 need to know a thing to know a thing they they think that there is a way to to cheat around it

00:14:08.120 which yeah the korean students spoke we had a korean i mean i obviously had like korean foreign

00:14:13.320 nationals in both undergraduate and in my graduate classes they were perfect English

00:14:17.800 Japanese as well that is yeah so it's not even like oh well they have a different alphabet they

00:14:23.540 have different huh yeah it was true in my boarding schools as well is that we had a bunch of Korean 0.98

00:14:29.540 kids and they all spoke perfect English yeah these kids and they didn't speak English very well

00:14:33.500 weird weird weird so but the not just weird there's something to take away from this which

00:14:39.940 is i think that their education system is so corrupted that they genuinely dissociate actually

00:14:46.060 i don't know that's it i mean we there are other things going on with like money laundering where

00:14:51.520 it's a lot easier to do it if you have a student who has a visa or something like that like we know

00:14:57.340 through both surrogacy and through foreign students a lot of chinese families will launder 0.63

00:15:02.920 money through real estate and other things and so for that reason it doesn't really matter 0.68

00:15:08.740 if your chinese student is learning something or getting good grades at university what matters is

00:15:14.240 that you're offshoring money so who cares i think that has more to do with it than anything else 0.70

00:15:20.780 if we're being honest like everyone else is there to learn and then we got some kids over here who

00:15:26.460 are here just laundering money whatever it's fine and the university learning is getting that money

00:15:32.700 flow they roll over and take it because in the end foreign students pay you know either you know

00:15:39.180 foreign tuition fees out of state tuition fees that especially state-funded universities really

00:15:44.160 need so even in the united states universities that are uniquely vulnerable and like in to this

00:15:50.840 dynamic and in need of these foreign students are often state universities who you know especially

00:15:57.600 as states face funding cuts really need the money from not only out of states but especially foreign

00:16:05.160 students and Chinese students are you know happy to to fill those gaps so it's very hard to talk

00:16:13.440 to a university about like hey hey maybe you know can you like scrutinize this group a little more

00:16:20.000 can you like run an inquiry into some harassment campaigns going on on campus because

00:16:25.960 there is, and we're going to talk about it, going to be in reaction, this huge ruffled feathers and

00:16:34.140 the big threats of basically money just disappearing, vaporizing, that the universities

00:16:38.820 increasingly need. And also keep in mind the demographic headwinds that are facing universities.

00:16:44.220 Universities are shutting down across the United States every single year. This is a game of life

00:16:49.340 and death. They are dying. They cannot afford any hit to their financial income. So this idea that

00:16:55.680 they might do something that would anger one of their most valuable, most high paying student

00:17:01.640 classes. Like true. They can't, which is kind of why it was this exercise in frustration that poor

00:17:08.500 Elsa decided to testify in front of Congress. Anyway, one of the primary, and this is interesting

00:17:15.380 to me, bodies through which the CCP enacts its agenda in universities is called the CSSA. It's

00:17:25.160 the chinese students and scholars association it's it's basically the official organization

00:17:31.040 for overseas chinese students and it's registered at most colleges and universities that are outside

00:17:37.600 of china so this is an international thing it's described by like journalists and activist groups

00:17:42.700 as a government organized non-government organization so it's an ngo but it was that

00:17:50.280 was created by the ccp yeah they they they basically though and this is something also

00:17:55.620 that elsa argues in her testimony to congress they were created by the ccp to monitor chinese

00:18:01.000 students abroad and mobilize them against dissenting views and that that is also something

00:18:08.060 the state department alleges they receive guidance so these like it's basically like student clubs

00:18:12.840 and orgs receive guidance from the ccp through chinese embassies and consulates and then they 0.74

00:18:18.880 align their activities with beijing's political objectives rather than just like oh like you know 0.77

00:18:23.800 the students are into this thing like we're gonna have a picnic it's more like well china says do

00:18:28.200 this and say they do that they they participate in the ccp's united front work more on that later

00:18:34.380 and this also involves using students and groups for surveillance and also for influence would they

00:18:45.220 also use it for harassment campaigns and stuff like this has been like very aggressive like

00:18:49.680 there's been some instances in like australia and stuff like that where some students who are

00:18:53.340 from china will attempt to protest china and these people will like really aggressively go

00:18:57.560 after them yeah they'll make note of them they will counter protest they will make them feel

00:19:02.240 very uncomfortable and in some cases local chinese consulates have to approve cssa presidential

00:19:09.720 candidates so they're not even like privately governed or like student only governed they

00:19:15.340 have to like get like a write-off from the embassies and they also accept funding it's yeah

00:19:21.320 this is it's it's it's weird that like there's the yeah this is allowed and that the u.s government

00:19:28.420 is just like sure whatever you know keep going yeah because also like universities this is where

00:19:33.660 tech transfer takes place this is where research takes place like these are our nation's centers

00:19:39.820 for tech and scientific development administration should get in on this i can see why the progressives

00:19:45.700 wouldn't want to get on this but like we certainly should it's a it's a national security risk and

00:19:50.620 that's why i'm like oh this is something i i'm surprised is happening i mean i 100 percent

00:19:55.820 understand the dynamics at play given the financial incentives and that universities are

00:19:59.160 bone right but like we're okay with universities going out of business you know yeah so screw them

00:20:05.040 yeah but stanford university is still like a hub and it's also you know in the in the hotbed of

00:20:11.020 ai development in silicon valley in general and i'm going to also touch on that there are also

00:20:16.000 these confucius institutes at universities and elsa testified uh about those two she said quote

00:20:22.480 a bipartisan senate investigation found that 70 percent of schools with a confucius institute

00:20:28.620 these are programs that promote chinese language and culture that received more than 250 000

00:20:34.140 in a given year failed to report it properly because there are these reporting requirements

00:20:38.860 but they're just not they're just not bothering because you know like no one yet on like what

00:20:44.040 laws no one who who's checking anymore no one checks the mods are asleep that is like the big

00:20:50.300 thing with society these days so elsa does note the mods are asleep in society that is so true

00:20:57.440 yeah and it's very scary she she notes in her testimony saying quote congressman tim walberg

00:21:03.920 has co-signed a letter to the secretary of state marco rubio requesting that cssas be evaluated

00:21:10.060 for designation as foreign missions under the foreign missions act and she calls that a step

00:21:15.520 in the right direction but oh my god but no no you don't know a step in the right direction isn't

00:21:21.200 like a letter a co-signed a letter to the secretary of state he posted a comment

00:21:28.160 it's it's like someone posting a comment on this video being like i was a step in the right

00:21:33.300 direction i mean like we read the comments and thank you so much and we we love your feedback

00:21:38.100 but like don't think that leaving a comment on anyone's video or sending anyone a letter

00:21:42.680 is going to change the world like so basically nothing's being done i mean she does also note

00:21:48.880 that section 117 of the higher education act requires post-secondary institutions to disclose

00:21:55.000 foreign gifts or contracts totaling 250 000 or more and the department of education recently

00:22:01.200 approved a new foreign funding reporting portal that launched earlier this year so people can

00:22:06.380 actually see but as she also pointed out in her testimony the confucius institute like 70 of the

00:22:13.800 time doesn't even report like no you know no one's no one's actually enforcing why don't they shut

00:22:18.000 it down if it's not reporting i do not understand how lax our legal system is well who's gonna pay

00:22:23.240 for someone to actually check you know there's that well how do they know 70 of the time it

00:22:29.140 doesn't report it unless they have checked well they must have done just specifically with the

00:22:33.220 confucius institute a spot check you know some sort of audit well then shut it down i i know

00:22:39.440 well but no because i'm sure they got tons of pushback from universities who are like yeah by

00:22:43.660 the way if you do that i'm going bankrupt so can you not like it's very like we we we survive off

00:22:50.240 of the chinese spies that's like our major source of income these days like the u.s students don't 0.55

00:22:56.480 want our fancy degrees anymore you know in china or still pay for them yeah well yeah for for money

00:23:01.540 laundering purposes anyway this whole thing though about transnational repression i hear about it

00:23:07.720 every now and then i'm kind of on the fence about it because like okay do you think it's a good idea

00:23:13.280 we should get into more transnational repression i just i feel like they could do a better job

00:23:18.120 maybe it's that we're harassed so much where i'm just like i'm so unfazed by it you know someone

00:23:23.160 someone new being like i'm gonna have your children taken away from you i'm gonna attack 0.90

00:23:27.860 you with a baseball bat i'm gonna find you know like i know where you live i'm gonna you know 0.99

00:23:31.920 like all these things like i'm kind of like so you think just like blue sky is better at this

00:23:38.820 and china is like i don't know it's just like everyone's everyone's gonna you know making all 0.52

00:23:44.040 these threats and actually you know following through with them you see like someone another

00:23:47.740 attempted trump assassin was found on the streets of dc again today like what so anyway though

00:23:53.580 have you heard the the plan in brussels and they did like a 74 page report on this so like who

00:23:59.900 knows it could move ahead yeah really want to merge blue sky and x to force x users to see blue sky

00:24:06.760 hypos but and mastodon as well but potentially not the other way around just because they're

00:24:12.340 so mad that all of their little foot soldiers have isolated themselves that's really cute

00:24:16.820 i don't know that's that's so cute like that level of like umbrage uh and bristling resentment

00:24:24.620 is it's like x in the users where it's like i consent i consent and then brussels over the

00:24:29.360 shoulder like i don't it's good that's good transnational repression so this is this is the

00:24:37.740 thing that elsa is complaining about not the spies because forget that it's it's the repression 0.87

00:24:42.760 according to a 2024 freedom house report which is it's something she cites in her testimony

00:24:49.360 international students visiting scholars and faculty in the united states are being targeted

00:24:55.580 by foreign governments and their agents tactics of transnational repression on campuses include

00:25:01.640 digital and physical surveillance harassment assault threats and coercion by proxy and while

00:25:07.780 they cite i think 38 countries that are found to do this it's just like hey let's bully our citizens 1.00

00:25:15.980 abroad the ccp is obviously the number one for like country doing yeah i mean they're great at 1.00

00:25:21.560 So here are the things that they do. The classroom discussions and campus events on topics like Hong Kong or Xinjiang or Tibet or Chinese politics, they're monitored. And then the information is relayed to Chinese diplomatic staff or officials via networks, such as Chinese students and scholars associations and platforms like WeChat. 1.00

00:25:42.520 And then students who organize or join protests, to your point, Malcolm, like the white paper protests or the zero COVID vigils, the report being filmed and shouted down or physically intimidated by pro-CCP students or CSSA affiliates.

00:25:57.460 And sometimes this results in assaults or other, you know, shouting matches at demonstrations.

00:26:04.020 Though I think if you show up to a frickin' protest, expect that.

00:26:08.100 Yeah, expect a shouting match. Come on.

00:26:09.460 authorities in china will also contact or visit students family members back home

00:26:15.580 to warn them about the students activism abroad creating this intense psychological pressure

00:26:20.820 on the student who's you know speaking out their parents are going to call freaked out to be like 0.98

00:26:26.200 what are you doing and that would genuinely have me scared because china does disappear people 0.99

00:26:30.760 and that would be enough for me so that's that's for real it is scary if you're actually a chinese

00:26:35.720 citizen who has family in China. Pro CCP actors will also use social media and messaging apps to

00:26:42.260 threaten or smear or expose students who are critical of the CCP. So you might also, if you

00:26:48.600 have any dirt on you, you know, God help you. CSSAs are also known for monitoring Chinese students 0.95

00:26:55.640 and they mobilize them to oppose speakers at events that are critical of Beijing. And they

00:27:00.680 also just help to inform students' choices. Like apparently a lot of Chinese students are just less 1.00

00:27:07.200 likely to take courses that might steer them in the wrong direction vis-a-vis CCP stances.

00:27:14.600 And then also the Confucius Institutes and CCP-linked programs contribute to this atmosphere

00:27:19.460 where students just avoid any sensitive topics or pro-democracy activity just to protect their

00:27:25.860 their safety. So in her testimony, Elsa talks about how like the FBI would actively work with

00:27:33.780 her and be like, yeah, we see people are following you around campus. But Stanford basically did

00:27:39.220 nothing. And she's very, very angry about this. And I can understand why. And obviously, this is

00:27:44.740 due to financial pressure. But in one analysis found that Chinese students contributed around

00:27:50.180 12 billion dollars to the u.s economy in 2016 to 2017 alone and then a large the keep in mind how

00:27:57.920 effing crazy this is isn't a student saying like i'm being harassed yeah there's a student being

00:28:02.740 saying i have a note from the fbi saying i'm being harassed on campus can we do something about this

00:28:09.160 yeah yeah and and you know so a thing that she points out which is interesting to me and i don't

00:28:15.500 know why specifically this university is doing it but she points out that the university of

00:28:20.880 wisconsin-madison has already created an information guide and reporting structure that directs targeted

00:28:26.580 students to relevant offices and connects them with law enforcement and she wants stanford to

00:28:31.420 just do the same thing she's like this doesn't require a congressional act like stanford please

00:28:35.680 but good for you university of wisconsin-madison i don't know why you have such a good school i

00:28:41.760 seriously considered it before i got into saint andrews i don't know anything about it it's just

00:28:45.840 the high quality state school it's just good it's also where they went to in that 70s show

00:28:50.820 oh i i didn't watch that show because i can't stand 70s aesthetics so that makes sense

00:28:55.420 the the big element of this and why this is happening and and why i think we should

00:29:01.600 acknowledge this and understand this is that that there's one of the three magic weapons of ccp

00:29:10.800 theory is this united front it's about basically seizing and maintaining power and it's supposed

00:29:20.620 to basically unite all fronts that can be united so this is part of a very concerted and presumably

00:29:27.000 well-funded strategy and the idea is to unite all fronts that can be united in order to neutralize

00:29:34.080 opposition and build the broad as possible coalition of around ccp objectives it's basically

00:29:40.360 you know how you described the urban monoculture uh as being this this this culture that says that

00:29:45.120 it like accepts diversity and it tries to be you know as inclusive as possible and everyone should

00:29:50.160 be you know a member and you could be from any religious background but then if you scratch just

00:29:54.980 beneath the surface everyone has exactly the same views and values yeah that's kind of what they're

00:29:59.960 going for so domestically the united front focuses on groups that the party sees as important but not

00:30:06.340 fully under its control, like ethnic minorities or religious communities or private entrepreneurs

00:30:11.480 or intellectuals or non-communist democratic parties, the new middle class, the professional

00:30:16.360 strata. And then they try to draw these groups that are not like CCP hardliners into party-led

00:30:24.520 institutions such as the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and various

00:30:30.560 other mass organizations where they get limited representation, but they're expected to take the

00:30:35.640 CCP's lead. So they're basically like, yes, you're like, united front, let's all be together. But

00:30:41.020 let's be clear, you're going to toe the line. And again, it's just very urban monoculture coded to

00:30:48.280 me. Overseas, though, the way that this works is they try to shape foreign environments in ways

00:30:53.420 that are favorable to the CCP by influencing the Chinese diaspora communities, and also elites in

00:30:59.240 media and academic institutions and businesses and politicians in other countries. And the

00:31:05.120 The activities described by governments and researchers who are looking into the effects of the United Front strategy include promoting pro-Beijing narratives and building relationships with foreign elites like Elon Musk, or guiding or co-opting Chinese language media, gathering intelligence, facilitating illicit technology transfer, and in some cases interfering in foreign politics.

00:31:28.160 Not as effectively as Russia does, in our opinion, but, you know, it's a thing.

00:31:32.540 And definitely these student orgs that are very active at universities are a meaningful branch of this. The fact that embassies are funneling money to them, which is not being reported, and even sometimes approving their presidents is just enough for me to be like, okay, this is just a clear and organized strategy.

00:31:51.940 And I do think that universities should be clear to people about this. Like, hey, our university is a place that is contributing to the technological and scientific advancement of our country. And also, there are foreign national organizations that are at this university that are trying to basically send all that information to their country. And let's just be aware of that as a thing.

00:32:16.500 remember like there used to be these posters like loose lips sink ships you know we used to talk

00:32:21.820 about this culturally as a country but i just don't know if like you can sell that to the type

00:32:27.780 of person who works at an ai company and that's a big concern because there already have been

00:32:33.400 concrete ai ip related theft cases and chinese nationals so a chinese national working at google

00:32:40.440 in california was arrested in 2024 and charged with stealing over 500 confidential files on

00:32:47.960 google's advanced ai infrastructure and chips on google like google they're they have they're not

00:32:53.660 messing around like they're not a fly-by-night seat of the pants like ai startup in the same way

00:33:01.060 that's like anthropic right like they're they're careful now they are but you know maybe they'd

00:33:07.660 make me say google though i mean they have like the big money but the doj alleges that this guy

00:33:12.620 uploaded files describing google's tpu-based data center architecture and ai supercomputing platform

00:33:19.540 to a personal account while secretly working for two chinese-based china-based tech startups

00:33:26.500 and building ai platforms and large model infrastructure the fbi director christopher

00:33:32.560 ray framed this as part of the links affiliates of companies based in the people's republic of

00:33:37.660 china are willing to go to steal american innovation this it is clear i mean like everyone

00:33:43.320 knows because this is just china's like overtly open strategy with regard to like putting it 0.58

00:33:49.520 diplomatically tech transfer is they will steal american tech and or reverse engineer it which is

00:33:56.720 what's really been happening mostly with with clod and with open ai related ip they seem to

00:34:03.500 just mostly be reverse engineering it for now but their whole strategy is yeah we're just going to

00:34:08.480 steal it china is doing many other interesting things in ai innovation with a really heavy focus

00:34:14.520 for what i've read and heard from some insiders on like robotics so they're doing they're doing

00:34:21.440 innovative stuff too and but they're still totally sticking to their old tried and true

00:34:26.380 just copy it and steal its strategy and they should because it has worked well for them

00:34:30.560 it's worked well so far i mean it's it's long term i not obviously their country's sort of

00:34:35.740 falling apart right now which is you know yeah but you know they then more than anyone else

00:34:43.340 needs the deus ex machina of ai and of tech to fix the problem so they are extra and they're

00:34:49.700 extra incentivized to steal tech and the u.s government on many fronts i'm not going to read

00:34:56.020 all of them that that i pulled up is is very explicit about the fact that this is a major

00:35:01.120 security risk and this is one of the big themes of ai is like who's going to have agi first who's

00:35:05.720 going to have like the the ultimate ai weapon the house select committee on the ccp held a hearing

00:35:11.980 on china and ai this year where the chair stated that chinese companies quote rely on western ai

00:35:18.280 models end quote and are buying what they legally can and stealing what they cannot at every layer

00:35:24.360 of the technology stack witnesses framed theft and replication of u.s models and tools as a

00:35:29.540 central cheat code in ai strategy and most of the cases in which ai ip has been stolen just aren't

00:35:37.560 public because frankly they're so embarrassing and so dangerous that they just don't want things

00:35:42.220 to come out now to be fair open ai especially after sort of coming they had like this come

00:35:48.320 to jesus moment when deep seek first like i guess hit the market and everyone was like oh my god

00:35:53.300 they got really public about how important it was to protect themselves i guess and they have like

00:36:03.440 biometrics protected rooms with like you to do a retinal scan or whatever but

00:36:08.180 it's only a matter of time until this stuff is stolen and i i just feel like people should be

00:36:14.500 a little bit more aware of the fact that spying is actively happening malcolm and i actually like 0.83

00:36:20.500 you and i'm out about spies chinese people

00:36:23.780 they all might be spies that's what she's saying well we we've been accused of being spies we've

00:36:31.580 been like yeah we've been accused of being spies we joke about it all the time but also like

00:36:36.380 jokes aside now i'm kind of like oh god you know why did all the other spies get money and not us

00:36:44.240 yeah no one's promising us fancy spy dogs i am so cheap you support my family yeah we want to be

00:36:52.920 spy family make make us the real spy family i will not send you like confidential information

00:36:57.760 because i don't have access to it but i can at least stop saying bad things about you for a

00:37:01.280 little bit of money yeah yeah we'll be paid shills we'll we'll help with the united front

00:37:05.860 we would be such bad shills for china we'd be really no like we'd be legit bad shills for

00:37:14.140 china we'd be really bad shills for europe i'm trying to think who could actually like 0.54

00:37:18.060 israel could pay us we'd be decent enough just stop doing the the mean videos

00:37:23.940 yeah or remember when qatar was gonna fly us out to one of the the doha debates

00:37:30.300 and then and then no immediately like in our next few podcasts you're like oh qatar so

00:37:37.600 whatever i can't even remember what you said about them that was not flattering but like you can't

00:37:42.560 help you can't help but like anti-shill for people and and that robbed us of a potential

00:37:48.940 i don't think this class flight to do with it oh well i like fancy flights i like fancy things

00:37:58.260 anyway i'm literally covered in infant urine right now i she needs a break she needs some 0.99

00:38:05.800 bribery she needs some grease payments speaking of grease payments if you're wondering why we 1.00

00:38:10.040 don't have a reform video going live today we did we filmed it we even filmed it over the weekend

00:38:14.260 it was kids crawling over us and everything but the video got corrupted somehow so i'm going to

00:38:19.180 be putting it on our paid uh sub stack and patreon uh immediately i'm sorry about that guys um i i

00:38:26.920 want to have it here but it's going to perform terribly in the algo because it like it starts

00:38:30.620 without my video even working and we had no idea uh obviously it's a big change and i would just

00:38:37.380 film one today that we could have go live tomorrow

00:38:39.340 when it's still relevant, but we have a news crew coming

00:38:41.280 over today, so we can't do

00:38:43.360 that. So sorry about that, guys.

00:38:45.280 But hey, excuse to give us money.

00:38:47.820 Money, please.

00:38:49.620 Oh, no, no, there's no money.

00:38:53.020 Money,

00:38:53.700 please.

00:38:55.480 Money, please.

00:38:56.580 Well, let's end early today.

00:38:59.760 Let's get started early, because I'm also

00:39:01.280 about to fall asleep. That's why I was eating those jelly beans,

00:39:03.280 trying to get a little bit of sugar to keep me awake.

00:39:05.280 Oh, I'm so sorry. I bore you to death.

00:39:07.380 with my my grating female voice i'm sorry guys i know you had to listen to the the female today 0.79

00:39:14.060 i'm just getting up so much earlier these days you know yeah no malcolm is sorry guys he's still

00:39:19.980 not getting sleep okay then i will are you gonna go buy your potato and your shallot because i want

00:39:26.040 to taste forest found soup foraged oh yeah then it's an invasive species from china right yes

00:39:39.140 china get rid of this chinese mushrooms golden oyster mushrooms yeah so thematic i guess yeah

00:39:47.740 nothing nothing says i love you too don't do you want me to pick up your food so you don't fall 0.89

00:39:54.940 sleep at the wheel i'll make it i don't i don't like those odds i'll make it that's not what you

00:40:02.940 want to hear i had a bunch of jelly beans i'm up i'm up i'm up i don't know what flavor all the

00:40:10.360 flavors that's the freaking point of jelly beans all the flavors and i fill our grocery cart with

00:40:18.120 like apples and bananas and broccoli cauliflower and then i see this giant container of jelly

00:40:26.280 beams as titan calls them jelly beans jelly beams octavian still calls them his blanket

00:40:34.460 blanket banquet blanket blanket

00:40:39.560 today he told us about how he's gonna have a chinook helicopter move the house to the woods

00:40:45.840 yeah because a spot she thought was beautiful in the woods i that spot is perfect and so he said

00:40:54.440 it'll bring the house and it'll bring the teddy bear in the house over so we don't have to worry

00:40:58.880 about that well and we're also going to buy vans and then drive them into the chinook helicopter

00:41:03.500 and the kids will be in the vans when they drive yeah it's a whole thing he also said he was gonna

00:41:08.960 he was gonna move the climbing dome over the one that we got oh you did okay that's good that's

00:41:13.660 good so it is done everything he needs down there that's funny the idea of like moving the climbing

00:41:19.900 down in the the whole house yeah no he's he thought about it a lot he's like how much does

00:41:26.100 our house weigh he's trying to figure it out i think the the the average house weighs according

00:41:33.060 to alexa around 300 and 300 000 pounds so ours must weigh a lot more because the average american

00:41:41.640 house now is made out of like particle board and sawdust so ours made out of all this like

00:41:47.300 local stone has to be a lot more it has to weigh a lot more i think it's going to be harder to move

00:41:54.500 in a shinook helicopter i think it's going to fall apart malcolm i think octavian's going to

00:41:59.360 break our house with his shinook helicopter but whatever you know then we'll have a shinook

00:42:05.560 helicopter he just wants to live in a helicopter anyway so it's fine sorry i'll let you get your 0.71

00:42:10.220 potato go i love you don't die did you see the recipe is it doable oh we'll do it was a coconut

00:42:19.520 milk with my plan because i said that'll give it a more luxurious taste

00:42:22.780 the part you know you can skip is the making the broth

00:42:30.260 this is so written by ai because no one no one would say 700 to 900 grams fresh golden oyster

00:42:42.940 mushrooms the more the better they carry the show use mostly caps save some i think i got mad at it

00:42:48.120 the first time it was like chop up some oyster mushrooms and then put it in a mushroom broth

00:42:52.880 and i'm like i don't want a freaking canned mushroom broth for my mushroom soup yeah that's

00:42:58.480 disgusting yukon gold potato peeled and diced this might take a really long time to 0.69

00:43:05.360 bring to a simmer 15 to 20 minutes oh i guess if you go now and i start right away

00:43:10.480 oh blend uh oh yeah we're pureeing it pureeing the what the soup which part of it the whole thing

00:43:21.080 does it say blend at the end because it certainly doesn't blend at the beginning

00:43:25.880 yeah it blends at the end and oh you're gonna need cream

00:43:29.080 you know it says you can use coconut milk instead of cream

00:43:32.840 oh okay yeah very explicitly

00:43:34.920 mushrooms

00:43:37.560 yeah

00:43:39.660 full blend potato plus cream

00:43:44.660 yeah yeah it's a cream of mushroom

00:43:47.780 soup yeah

00:43:54.020 separate so i'm sauteing the onions sorry i'm sauteing the mushrooms

00:44:00.400 for the first and then

00:44:07.620 i put into water and then i simmer them for 20 minutes and then i strain

00:44:17.180 and then i add a softened potato

00:44:21.220 why don't you ask for a different recipe okay yeah did you ask grok grok can't cook

00:44:29.560 go to perplexity and ask a recipe and tell me what i'm getting

00:44:33.040 you could do it right now simone okay oh and that's i will a cream of mushroom soup okay

00:44:40.720 not like a normal mug because then it's going to give you like weird

00:44:43.900 please give me a cream of mushroom soup recipe that is compatible with foraged golden oyster

00:44:51.500 mushrooms perplexing why would you even ask no grok is a man ai and not like a chef man ai just

00:45:05.360 a normal man ai there we go okay so we need one pound of golden oyster mushrooms totally have

00:45:15.180 three tablespoons of butter check olive oil check medium yellow onion or two shallots diced so we

00:45:22.960 need the shallots garlic have it one cup fret one oh sorry one teaspoon fresh thyme we don't

00:45:28.620 necessarily need that and i think we might have it dried kosher salt black pepper flour chicken

00:45:34.860 vegetable broth i have bouillon which i can use heavy cream half and half or whole milk we have

00:45:40.220 whole milk soy sauce or tamari we have soy sauce at least we might have tamari lemon juice or dry

00:45:48.380 sherry optional but recommended so you prep the onions you saute them you build the base

00:45:55.900 you thicken it and then you blend to make a smooth soup and then you finish

00:46:05.580 gently by stirring in the cream and soy sauce

00:46:10.940 i think this would be better with heavy cream but do it with heavy cream

00:46:16.700 we don't have any heavy cream so can you get two shallots and heavy cream yes

00:46:22.380 beautiful and if you want to get chicken broth you can but we have bullion that i

00:46:29.500 can use to reconstitute broth chicken broth will probably be easier if i get it right

00:46:33.740 yeah you know what we might have some i have bullion cubes i really shouldn't be lazy

00:46:39.420 so don't yeah don't buy things let's save money all right love you i love you too

00:46:52.380 Let me handle him, I probably want to take care of this guy, my hand.

00:47:06.380 Mommy, I wanted to hold a chicken.

00:47:09.380 Okay, go pick one up, my love.

00:47:11.380 It's taller than me.

00:47:14.380 Titan seems pretty good at catching him.

00:47:17.380 Wow, they're so pretty.

00:47:36.900 Okay, I'll see what I can do.

00:47:39.640 Guys, be nice.

00:47:42.380 Thank you, friends.

00:47:44.780 Yeah, there you go, Indy.

00:47:45.960 Gently, thank you.

00:47:47.380 Thank you.

Based Camp - May 11, 2026

US Colleges Caught Assisting Chinese Spies! (Giant Network Exposed)

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