Stanford student Elsa Johnson says she was targeted by a suspected Chinese agent who tried to recruit her as a spy, offering money and free travel to China.
In a first-person account she wrote for The Times of London on Thursday, Johnson said she first received a message on Instagram in June 2024 from a man calling himself "Charles Chen" and claiming to be a Stanford international student. His social media page showed photos of campus life and California outings, but inconsistencies quickly emerged.
At first, Chen's messages were casual. He asked if Johnson spoke Mandarin — a detail not on her profile but correct. Soon, his tone shifted. He praised her, dangled promises of fame in China, and urged her to travel there. Chen even sent a $912 flight itinerary to Shanghai, claimed he would pay her expenses, and showed proof of a $5,485 bank transfer.
Johnson said she began screenshotting the conversations, recognizing a familiar "playbook": friendly chats that escalate to offers of free trips, cash and eventual questions about research or academic work. Other Stanford students in STEM fields had reported similar outreach.
Her suspicions deepened when Chen pressured her to move their chats to WeChat, China's heavily monitored messaging app. If she delayed responding, he deleted and resent his messages. When Johnson ignored him, he publicly commented on her Instagram asking her to delete screenshots — though she had never told him she'd taken them.
Alarmed, she contacted professors and was referred to the FBI. Investigators confirmed Chen was not a Stanford student and was likely tied to China's Ministry of State Security. Johnson later identified at least 10 other women targeted in the same manner since 2020.
Experts told her that Beijing views young American women as useful propaganda assets, part of a broader CCP strategy to infiltrate U.S. universities and gain access to cutting-edge research in AI, robotics, and defense technology.
Johnson, who has studied Mandarin since childhood, said the experience left her shaken but determined to warn peers.
"It is frightening yet ingenious what the CCP is doing," she said. "If you ever get a message out of the blue from a stranger telling you to visit China, be on your guard."
Johnson's story was nearly identical to those of other students reported on by The Stanford Review in May, prompting Sen. Ashley Moody, R-Fla., to tell Newsmax the U.S. needs to get serious about Chinese spies on college campuses.
"Nothing against Chinese students if they want to learn, but if you have a government that is enlisting them and ... requiring them by law under penalty to be espionage agents when they get here, we cannot keep inviting them into our nation," Moody said.
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