A House Committee hearing held Thursday highlighted a rising national security threat that lawmakers and experts say is growing within college campuses — the increasing prevalence of transnational repression, foreign espionage, and the smuggling of hazardous materials perpetrated by agents of China’s communist regime.

The House Education Workforce Committee hearing featured the testimony of Elsa Johnson, a junior at Stanford University who is pursuing a degree in East Asian studies with a focus on China. She described how agents of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) began stalking her and her family.

“In the spring of my freshman year at Stanford, I began working as a research assistant at the Hoover Institution focused on Chinese industry and military tactics,” she recounted. “That summer, a man calling himself Charles Chen reached out to me on social media. He had mutual followers with me and photos of Stanford on his profile. Over the following weeks, he asked detailed questions about my background, offered to pay for a trip to China, sent me a flight itinerary to Shanghai, and pressured me to move our conversation to WeChat, an app that is monitored by the CCP. Then he publicly commented on one of my Instagram posts in Mandarin, asking me to delete screenshots I had taken of our conversation. I do not know how he knew I had these screenshots. The FBI confirmed he had no affiliation with Stanford. He was likely operating on behalf of China’s Ministry of State Security.”

Johnson, who serves as editor in chief of the independent campus outlet The Stanford Review, then described how the harassment of her and at least 10 other female students increased after she co-authored an investigation published last May exposing how CCP operatives are conducting espionage operations on Stanford’s campus and are threatening and pressuring Chinese students to participate.

“The incidents worsened,” she emphasized. “I began receiving intimidation calls where callers would switch to Mandarin, and in one case, the caller referenced my mother. Just this week, I received another call from a U.S. number. After exchanging hellos, the caller switched to Mandarin and asked whether I had finished dinner. I have also received threatening scam emails attempting to convince me to take down my reporting on this issue. This fall, the FBI informed me that I am being physically monitored on Stanford’s campus by agents of the CCP and that my family is also being watched.”

Despite this, Stanford offered Johnson no help. “There was no university resource to call, no tip line to contact. I was a freshman navigating a foreign intelligence operation with no institutional support. After our investigations were published, Stanford issued a statement saying it was looking into the reports. That was almost a year ago, and nothing meaningful has changed. The university has not established a reporting mechanism for transnational repression and has not provided resources for students targeted by foreign governments.”

But the CCP’s subversion efforts at college campuses are hardly limited to Stanford. In June 2025, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that two Chinese nationals were charged with attempting to smuggle a toxic fungus that could be used as a bioweapon into a University of Michigan (UM) laboratory. Five months later, three more Chinese nationals affiliated with UM were charged with conspiracy to smuggle biological materials into the U.S.

During Tuesday’s hearing, UM President Domenico Grasso testified that the university is implementing measures to combat the foreign espionage that occurred at the college in recent months.

“In each case, individuals carried out their unlawful acts without the university’s knowledge,” he insisted. “Once alerted, we acted swiftly and decisively, working with federal law enforcement, promptly terminating student work visas and severing all ties with those individuals. The university has a comprehensive research, security, and compliance program, which includes risk management for international collaborations, mandatory training, and data security protocols to ensure secure and safe research.

Grasso further contended that UM is “meeting the increased threat with increased security. We are setting university- wide standards for visiting researchers and expanding use of background checks. We are enhancing oversight of biological materials, entering or leaving university labs, and strengthening physical security. And we are working to open more regular lines of communication with federal regulatory, law enforcement, and intelligence agencies.”

Meanwhile, lawmakers like Rep. Burgess Owens (R-Utah) say that the threat China poses to the U.S. remains “very, very serious because we have an enemy that knows no bounds.”

During Thursday’s edition of “Washington Watch,” he went on to argue that many Americans in academia turn a blind eye to the threats that are emanating from the CCP and other foreign adversaries. “[M]y dad was a World War II vet. They grew up, and I grew up in a time where the word ‘traitor’ meant something, and we’ve kind of lost that meaning,” he lamented. “So not only do we have a very aggressive enemy [in] China that would love to do everything they can to disrupt and destroy our system of freedom here, but we have people in our country [who] don’t mind for greed and prominence and power to [allow] them to take advantage of our school system here.”

“We’ve had a remarkable amount of attacks against our system during the Biden administration,” Owens added. “I’m thankful now that we have a president who understands it. … [Some] colleges … are addressing it correctly, and some colleges are still lagging in that process, but this is where we have to draw a line. Our colleges should be for Americans and for those who love our system. And those countries that do not abide by what we’re doing — we need to start looking at maybe not having them come here at all.”