At a time when the tech rivalry between Washington and Beijing is intensifying, suspected Chinese state-aligned cyber operatives have reportedly launched a targeted social-engineering campaign, posing as former US government officials and leading private-sector researchers to steal sensitive insights on American artificial intelligence (AI) policy. According to findings published on Thursday (October 1) by Silicon Valley cybersecurity company Proofpoint, the espionage operation specifically targeted prominent US specialists focused on military applications of AI and semiconductor export controls.The targets included analysts, legal counsel, and academic scholars across American universities, national security think tanks, and law firms, the findings claim (via CNN). Gaining access to the personal accounts and correspondence of these experts may hand Beijing an inside look at how American institutions are debating national security guardrails, trade curbs and regulatory frameworks around cutting-edge machine learning.While Proofpoint confirmed it found no clear traces of compromised corporate systems, researchers cautioned that they may have uncovered only a slice of the intrusion attempts.“We are confident that [the hacking group] is a Chinese government-aligned threat actor based on targeting consistently in line with Chinese government interests, observed infrastructure and technical artifacts, and corroboration from industry partners,” Proofpoint staff researcher Mark Kelly told CNN.
Hackers impersonating White House leadership and Anthropic staff
The cyber operators deployed targeted deception campaigns across two distinct windows in February and July, adopting the identities of prominent figures in the artificial intelligence sector. They posed as a former White House tech advisor, fabricating communications purporting to come from Lynne Parker, who previously served as a senior White House technology policy director under both Donald Trump and Joe Biden.These cybercriminals reportedly also impersonated a senior team member at AI startup Anthropic, which had recently sparred with the White House over deployment guardrails. On February 26, the attackers sent an email titled “Request for Feedback on Military Integration of Claude” to an AI analyst at a US think tank, attempting to harvest login credentials.Parker, now associate vice chancellor emerita at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, said colleagues alerted her after receiving suspicious emails bearing her identity:“My first concern was for the colleagues who might receive the impersonated email. I wanted to warn them but realized that’s very difficult to do when I don’t know who is being targeted. On a personal level, I felt sadness that relationships I’ve built over my career were being exploited by bad actors to deceive others,” Parker told CNN.She stressed that defensive measures must protect the individuals shaping the country’s regulatory and strategic frameworks.
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