Tag: china

Anthropic Removes “Scary” Secret Claude Tracker After Developer Stumbles Across It

Anthropic has removed hidden detection code from its Claude Code tool after a developer reverse-engineered the binary and exposed how the company was subtly monitoring users in China.

The code, which Anthropic described as an experiment launched in March, used a form of prompt steganography to signal information about a user’s environment back to Anthropic’s servers. It was designed to help detect unauthorized resellers and attempts by other organizations to distill Claude’s capabilities into their own models.

How The Detection Worked

The mechanism was first spotted by a Reddit user known as LegitMichel777, who stumbled on it while trying to restore a disabled feature in Claude Code. A separate developer known as Thereallo independently confirmed the finding the same day, June 30, publishing a technical breakdown of exactly how it worked.

The checks only ran in one specific situation: when a user pointed Claude Code at a different server instead of Anthropic’s own – something companies commonly do when they route their traffic through internal systems or third-party gateways. From there, it checked two things:

  • Whether the user’s computer was set to a Chinese time zone (Shanghai or Urumqi).
  • Whether the new server address matched a hidden list of Chinese AI companies (including well-known names like DeepSeek, Zhipu, and Moonshot) or known resale and proxy services.

If either check came back positive, Claude Code would quietly tweak a line of text called the “system prompt” – background instructions the app automatically sends to the AI model with every request, invisible to the person typing. Specifically, it changed how the date was written in that line:

  • If the user was in a Chinese time zone, the date switched from using dashes to slashes (e.g., 2026/06/30 instead of 2026-06-30).
  • The apostrophe in the phrase “Today’s date is…” was swapped for one of three lookalike characters, each one a different signal, depending on which combination of checks the session had triggered.

None of this was visible to users, or likely even to the AI model itself in normal use – the characters look identical on screen. But Anthropic’s servers could read the difference instantly. The lists of flagged domains and keywords were also scrambled inside the app’s code using a basic encryption trick, so they wouldn’t show up if someone just opened the file and searched for them.

Thereallo called the approach “prompt steganography” – hiding a signal inside ordinary-looking text – and noted it let Anthropic sort and flag sessions without needing any separate, visible tracking system.

Anthropic’s Explanation

Last Tuesday, Anthropic engineer Thariq Shihipar, who works on the Claude Code team, confirmed the feature on X:

“This is an experiment we launched in March that was meant to prevent account abuse from unauthorized resellers and protect against distillation. The team has landed stronger mitigations since then and we’ve actually been meaning to take this down for a while. We merged the PR and this should be fully rolled back in tomorrow’s release.”

Anthropic has stated that unauthorized resellers have been selling access to Claude accounts and subscriptions at steep discounts in certain markets. The company has also publicly documented large-scale efforts by Chinese AI labs to distill its models by querying them at high volume through proxies and fraudulent accounts.

Anthropic removed the detection logic shortly after it became public.

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Missouri State University Been Training Chinese Communists In Business

Missouri has voted strongly Republican since the 2000 election. A red state! How nice. Not exactly. Look deeper.

The Missouri State University, a tax-payer-funded institution like all state schools, has been offering an MBA program to Chinese nationals. Their website seems to be proud of that:

“Missouri State University

Missouri State University is a comprehensive institution offering undergraduate and graduate programs, including the professional doctorate. The university educates students to be global citizen scholars committed to public affairs.

It’s that last line to which I call your attention. “Global citizen scholars.”

Since the year, 2000, MSU HAS TRAINED OVER 1,500 CURRENT AND FUTURE MANAGERS FOR CHINESE STATE-OWNED ENTERPRISES AND GOVERNMENT BODIES – INCLUDING THE DEFENSE INDUSTRY – BY THE YEAR 2018!!

Global Citizen Scholars.

The amount that US Taxpayer’s have been spent on this runs into the tens of millions of dollars, or more, says Strategy Risks, a business intelligence firm focused on global risks which is based in New York City. I believe it has to have been much more.

The estimate of taxpayer funding rests on the most detailed figures available, which appear in a recruiting presentation from the Chinese Agricultural University, according to the report.

A report, “Heartland For Hire,” from Strategy Risks, provides the first public accounting of several MSU master’s programs that have “trained more than 1,500 current and future managers for Chinese state-owned enterprises and government bodies” since the programs began in 2001.

Graduates from these MBA and Executive MBA programs have gone on “to senior roles in China’s defense industry, strategic supply chains, and surveillance-technology sector”—including those sanctioned for aiding the People’s Liberation Army and providing technology to Russia for its war against Ukraine.

However, the report notes that the materials Strategy Risks found gave “conflicting accounts of the program’s finances.” Public recruiting materials for the MBA program describe “different prices, subsidy arrangements, and responsible payers.”

This bears repeating:

A publicly funded university in the State of Missouri, USA, provided a steady flow of business training to the Chinese Communist Party for over 20 years. The ads for the program still appeared on Chinese websites as late as 2024 – when DJT took office for the second term. During his first, you will see he placed this on a watch/special licensing list. Read on.

There is more.

By 2015, 107 finance positions from the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC) system entities had completed the MSU MBA program, according to the report.

AVIC is “China’s primary state-owned aviation and defense conglomerate,” which the Department of War designated as a “Communist Chinese military company” in June 2020, and an Executive Order from the Trump administration “prohibited Americans from holding securities in any company on that list.”

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Big Pharma Is Running Drug Trials in a Chinese Concentration Camp Zone

Trivia question: What do Botox, Ozempic knockoff Mounjaro, and the cancer drug Keytruda all have in common?

They were all partly developed using clinical trial data from China. Specifically, from Chinese military hospitals. And, in a bunch of cases, from Xinjiang. That’s the place where the CCP has locked more than a million ethnic Uyghurs in concentration camps.

The House Select Committee on the CCP just sent letters to five major drugmakers—AbbVie, Bristol Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly, Merck, and Pfizer—demanding answers about their clinical trials in China. The numbers, pulled straight from ClinicalTrials.gov, are unnerving. Merck alone ran at least 40 trials at PRC military medical centers and 31 more in Xinjiang. AbbVie: 17 Xinjiang trials, 16 at military hospitals. Similar story with Pfizer, Eli Lilly and BMS.

Is this a problem? Well, Committee Chairman and Congressman John Moolenaar said that “data developed through clinical trials at those hospitals could fuel the CCP’s military biotechnology research.”

But let’s say you don’t care about the CCP’s bioweapons program. Maybe you care about ethics?

Xinjiang is where the CCP is running a genocide against Uyghur Muslims. So when a drug trial recruits “volunteers” from inside that system, the word “voluntary” is probably a euphemism. China’s trial system enrolls patients three to five times faster than America’s. That sounds efficient until you ask why. Getting meaningful informed consent tends to slow things down. Forced labor camps tend not to have that problem.

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McConnell’s China-Connected Wife Met with China’s VP in Beijing 3 Days After Her Husband Was Rushed to Hospital

Former U.S. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao traveled to Beijing just three days after her husband, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), was rushed to the hospital following an apparent heart attack that required CPR.

Chao, a former transportation secretary, met with Chinese Vice President Han Zheng on June 17. There are images published by Chinese outlets showing the two seated together during talks ostensibly focused on relations between Washington and Beijing.

In his meeting with Chao, Chinese Vice President Han Zheng called for China and the United States to take more steps to improve ties, saying both sides should work together to move the relationship forward. He said the two countries should follow through on the consensus reached by their leaders to build a more constructive and stable U.S.-China relationship.

Chao’s trip came as McConnell’s office continued to provide only limited information about the senator’s health. While aides have acknowledged that McConnell remains hospitalized, they have not publicly addressed the extent of his condition or explained how his Senate business is being managed during his absence.

“Senator McConnell was admitted to the hospital this morning. He is receiving excellent care,” spokesperson David Popp said in a statement on June 14.

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China-Linked Socialist NGO Derailed $23.6 Billion In Data Center Buildouts: Report

Our note on Thursday titled “World’s Largest Data Center Project On Verge Of Collapse After Blackstone Unexpectedly Pulls Out” detailed Blackstone dialing back its presence from Northern Virginia’s data-center alley, raising questions about whether the AI infrastructure buildout, colliding with local resistance movements, has begun to hit hard limits.

Just days after agreeing to sell stakes in three Virginia data centers to Digital Realty Trust for $3.5 billion, Blackstone’s QTS Realty Trust is reportedly abandoning plans for its portion of the massive Prince William Digital Gateway project. The 2,100-acre campus was expected to include as many as 37 data-center buildings and require city-scale power supplies.

“For community organizers and residents that spent the last five years opposing the Digital Gateway, QTS’s pullout will now validate a playbook that involved pressure campaigns on local politicians and legal attacks. It will also unleash even more powerful blowback nationwide against these unwanted developments,” we noted.

That brings us to the composition of the local resistance. Multiple reports suggest data center opposition is not entirely organic.

In fact, one familiar player appears to be involved, a name our readers know well, and the U.S. government certainly recognizes because a China-based billionaire funds the socialist NGO network.

Y Combinator founder Garry Tan, also founder of Garry’s List, a civic engagement organization, cited the Bitcoin Policy Institute’s recent report on how a “coordinated foreign influence campaign against American AI — running through CCP state media, a Shanghai-based Marxist’s nonprofit network, and foreign billionaire dark money that has funneled $2B+ into US advocacy infrastructure.”

Garry’s List noted, “AI doomerism isn’t as organic as it looks.“

That China-based Marxist’s nonprofit network spreading across the US is supported by Neville Roy Singham, who has reportedly funneled hundreds of millions of dollars into left-wing nonprofits, media operations, and activist networks that seek to sow chaos and spread communism inside the US.

Earlier this week, U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton for the Southern District of New York, authorized by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, was authorized to examine whether Singham, NGOs he funded, or their leaders committed wire fraud, bank fraud, money laundering, or other financial crimes.

Given that federal investigators are circling the socialists in the Singham NGO network, Garry’s List noted that Singham’s Party for Socialism and Liberation has “run 21 campaigns across 14 states that delayed, scaled back, or blocked $23.6 billion in AI infrastructure investment.”

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Anthropic Moves To Shut Loopholes Letting Chinese Tech Firms Access Claude

Days after the Commerce Department lifted three-week-old export controls on Anthropic’s Fable and Mythos AI models over national security concerns, a new report says the company is moving to close loopholes that have allowed Chinese firms to access its most advanced models.

The Financial Times cites people familiar with the matter who say Chinese companies, such as Ant Financial, used overseas subsidiaries, cloud providers, and internal corporate networks to access AI chatbots such as Claude Code.  

To note, Alibaba owns about one-third of Ant Financial. Alibaba was recently blacklisted by the US Government over concerns that it was effectively an arm of the Chinese military.

Ant reportedly provided employees with corporate Claude accounts routed through its Singapore-linked intranet, while ByteDance employees have used VPNs and expense reimbursements for personal Claude subscriptions.

The workarounds do not appear to violate US or Chinese law, but they breach Anthropic’s terms of service, which ban Chinese companies and Beijing-controlled foreign entities from using its models.

Anthropic said it prohibits access from unsupported regions, including China, and continuously updates enforcement systems to detect evasion.

FT provided more details on its crackdown:

As part of its efforts to crack down on unauthorised access, Anthropic has targeted “transfer station” services, which relay requests from users in mainland China through Claude accounts registered overseas before returning the responses.

However, larger Chinese AI groups generally avoid transfer stations because the services’ operators are widely suspected of storing or reselling prompts. Executives worry rivals could analyse those requests to understand how they are using advanced models to improve their own systems.

What’s ironic is that a company behind one of the world’s most advanced coding models apparently failed to build the proper guardrails needed to keep Chinese firms from accessing it, even as it works to close those loopholes.

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Protester Sets Himself on Fire Outside UN Headquarters in New York City

A protester set himself ablaze outside the United Nations headquarters in Manhattan on Thursday evening.

The man planted a Tibetan flag on the sidewalk near East 42nd Street and First Avenue before igniting himself in full view of UN surveillance cameras.

Authorities recovered signs and papers at the scene reading “China Out of Tibet.”

An NYPD officer was photographed holding one of the signs as emergency crews rushed to the scene.

The protester was transported to Bellevue Hospital with severe burns and was later pronounced dead.

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Self-Exiled Chinese Billionaire Guo Wengui Sentenced To 30 Years In U.S. Prison For Massive Fraud – “Let’s Take Down The CCP!”

Guo Wengui, a self-exiled Chinese billionaire and vocal critic of the Chinese Communist Party, was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison Monday for orchestrating a sprawling financial fraud that prosecutors say defrauded more than 1,000 victims worldwide of hundreds of millions of dollars.

U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres handed down the sentence in a Manhattan courtroom filled with Guo’s supporters. She described how Guo preyed on investors who hoped to support democracy in China, using their money to fund a lavish lifestyle while showing no remorse, wrote Politico.

“You took advantage of people’s dreams,” Torres said, adding that Guo “takes no responsibility for his actions and instead insists his conduct caused no loss and harmed no one.”

Before sentencing, Guo, also known as Miles Guo or Ho Wan Kwok, complained about his treatment in custody. He told the court through an interpreter that he had been ill and needed medical attention earlier that day. He briefly defended himself, saying his only goal in coming to the United States was “to destroy the CCP.”

The judge ordered Guo to forfeit $889 million in restitution. Victims who wrote to the court described losing life savings, suffering severe anxiety, and facing family shame over the failed investments.

One victim who testified at trial, Wei Chen, told the judge that Guo’s fraud “destroyed my life” and that of her family.

From tycoon to fugitive

Guo fled China about a decade ago and rebranded himself in the U.S. as a prominent critic of the Chinese government. He cultivated ties with American conservatives, most notably forming a close alliance with political strategist Steve Bannon. In 2020, the two announced plans to overthrow the Chinese Communist Party.

Before his arrest in 2023, Guo lived extravagantly in a luxury apartment overlooking Central Park, owned yachts, race cars, and designer goods, and was a member of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club.

Prosecutors said Guo raised more than $1 billion from investors between 2018 and 2023 through fraudulent schemes involving his media company GTV Media Group, the Himalaya Farm Alliance, and the Himalaya Exchange. Much of the money allegedly went to support his opulent lifestyle rather than the promised projects.

A federal jury convicted him on nine of 12 counts after a seven-week trial, added Politico.

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Senate Farm Bill Defunds USDA Animal Labs in China, Russia, and Other Adversarial Nations in Response to White Coat Waste Investigations

The Senate’s newly released version of the 2026 Farm Bill includes White Coat Waste-backed language that prohibits the U.S. Department of Agriculture from funding animal research laboratories in China, Russia, and other adversarial nations.

The provision, led by Republican Sen. Joni Ernst, appears as Section 7130 on page 495 of the bill and marks a major step toward protecting American taxpayers from subsidizing cruel and wasteful experiments in foreign laboratories.

Section 7130, titled “Limitation on certain research in countries of concern,” bars the Secretary of Agriculture, acting through the Under Secretary for Research, Education, and Economics, from conducting or funding any research, education, or extension activities involving vertebrate animals in “the People’s Republic of China, the Russian Federation, or any other foreign country of concern.”

The restriction applies to work done in those countries or in collaboration with them.

A narrow waiver will be available on a case-by-case basis only when necessary for national security, animal or crop health, or public health, safety, or welfare, but any waiver requires at least 30 days’ advance notification to congressional committees with detailed justification, including the location, collaborators, species of animals involved, costs, and duration.

This follows years of White Coat Waste investigations that uncovered shocking examples of USDA money flowing to dangerous animal experiments abroad.

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Montana Puts Behavioral Health Reform in China‑Linked Hands and a Boy Ends Up with Traumatic Brain Injury

Montana’s lawmakers promised a historic fix. With a $300 million behavioral health investment and a high‑priced consulting firm, the State’s lawmakers said they would “transform” and “mend” a system that had failed vulnerable people for years. Behind that language was a decision AbleChild flagged from the start: the state handed the redesign of its behavioral health system to Alvarez & Marsal, a private firm with business ties in China, instead of building transparent, accountable capacity in Montana. That choice was not a technical detail. It was the blueprint for what would count as “reform.”

A $300 Million “Mend” That Left a 13‑Year‑Old in a Hospital Bed

While consultants and state lawmakers talked about strategy and transformation, the state continued quietly sending children to Provo Canyon School in Utah, for-profit residential psychiatric and behavioral facility with a long history of complaints and abuse allegations. Montana has paid Provo Canyon roughly $26 million over the last decade, proving this was a pipeline, not a one‑off placement.

Then a 13‑year‑old Montana boy allegedly suffered a traumatic brain injury at Provo Canyon. Families, backed by Paris Hilton, have now taken the facility to court, alleging delays and failures in his care. Only after that catastrophic harm did Montana officials suspend new referrals to the facility.  This is what “mend” looks like in practice: a child badly injured in a facility the state has patronized for years, and reform arriving only after the fact.

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The China Question No One in Power Wants to Ask

The China connection is not about Provo Canyon being a Chinese institution. It is about who Montana chose to trust with redesigning its behavioral health system and how it impacts national security and vulnerable children.

Alvarez & Marsal is a global consulting firm that does business in and with China. Montana’s decision was to pay that firm, at hundreds of dollars an hour, help steer how a $300 million “Future Generations” behavioral health investment would be structured and spent. That included advising on the overall continuum of care, financing strategies, and the shape of state services.

At a minimum, the choice raises a basic question the public deserves answered: why would any American state outsource the redesign of its already failing behavioral health system to a consulting firm tied to China, instead of building transparent, accountable capacity at home? If the result of that choice is a polished reform narrative on paper and a child with a brain injury in real life, then the outsourcing model—not just its implementation—has to be on trial.

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