00:00My name is Elsa Johnson. I'm a junior at Stanford University studying East Asian
00:04Studies with a focus on China and I serve as the editor-in-chief of the
00:08Stanford Review, the independent paper on campus. I'm here because I was
00:13personally targeted by a suspected agent of the Chinese Communist Party while
00:17conducting research at Stanford. In the spring of my freshman year at Stanford,
00:21I began working as a research assistant at the Hoover Institution focused on
00:25Chinese industry and military tactics. That summer, a man calling himself
00:30Charles Chen reached out to me on social media. He had mutual followers with me
00:35and photos of Stanford on his profile. Over the following weeks, he asked
00:39detailed questions about my background, offered to pay for a trip to China, sent
00:44me a flight itinerary to Shanghai, and pressured me to move our conversation to
00:48WeChat, an app that is monitored by the CCP. Then he publicly commented on one of
00:53my Instagram posts in Mandarin, asking me to delete screenshots I had taken of our
00:58conversation. I do not know how he knew I had these screenshots. The FBI confirmed
01:04he had no affiliation with Stanford. He was likely operating on behalf of China's
01:08Ministry of State Security. After my co-author Garrett Malloy and I published
01:12our investigation, the incidents worsened. I began receiving intimidation calls
01:18where callers would switch to Mandarin, and in one case the caller referenced my
01:22mother. This fall, the FBI informed me that I'm being physically monitored on
01:26Stanford's campus by agents of the CCP, and that my family is also being watched.
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