HRF expresses grave concern over the partnerships between leading Western universities and research institutions and China’s state-backed AI labs tied to surveillance, repression, and human rights violations, as revealed in a new joint report with @StrategyRisks.

The report documents 3,000 papers co-authored by Zhejiang Lab and SAIRI, labs with deep ties to China’s surveillance and security apparatus, with leading universities including MIT, Stanford, and Oxford.

Western government funding —including from NSF, NIH, UKRI, DARPA, ONR, and Horizon Europe — is repeatedly acknowledged in these publications. Such collaborations give authoritarian-aligned labs access to cutting-edge technical knowledge and facilitate mass surveillance and human rights abuses.

The findings outline how current gaps in oversight enable authoritarians to leverage research partnerships to facilitate AI-powered rights violations.