Chinese state actors used artificial intelligence assistant Claude to surveil dissident and religious communities, including practitioners of Falun Gong and staff at The Epoch Times’ sister outlet NTD, tech company Anthropic says.

The actors targeted groups that Beijing suppresses, using the AI model to build dossiers on religious leaders and identify potential levers for the regime to exploit, according to Anthropic’s Sept. 10 threat intelligence report.

In this way, the Chinese actors were using AI to do the work that traditionally would take a team of analysts, the company said. It describes the activities as part of the effort of sophisticated threat actors testing safeguards, a risk that will only increase as the technology advances.

A person behind one of the accounts identified himself as an information security officer for the Chinese state, according to the report.

Anthropic assessed the accounts as part of a China-based intelligence operation, noting that the activities adhere closely to the priorities of China’s religious affairs apparatus, the top Chinese intelligence agency, and the United Front Work Department, the party-state body that co-opts the Chinese diaspora and targets the regime’s critics.

Anthropic said it banned the accounts and strengthened its systems to detect similar activity.

‘Intelligence Collection Desk’

In one campaign, Anthropic identified an operator running a “religious affairs intelligence collection desk.” The user used Claude to begin four concurrent work streams in which the AI model would ingest material in multiple languages, translate it, and produce Chinese-language dossiers, reports, and daily digests.

The operation targeted senior Catholic cardinals across Asia, Presbyterian Church leadership in Taiwan, Tibetan Buddhists and exiled leaders, practitioners of Falun Gong, and NTD.

The actors drew information from Chinese platforms, such as WeChat, RedNote, TikTok’s Chinese counterpart Douyin, and Weibo, as well as Western platforms LinkedIn, Instagram, Threads, X, and Facebook. They collected sensitive information such as birthdays and immigration dates, and attempted to map religious venues through floor plans, facade images, and structural diagrams.

The reporting cycle is daily, and appears to be intended for internal state security offices, the report states. The actors asked for a target’s China-related activities, “negative information,” and personal or organizational vulnerabilities that could provide leverage, according to Anthropic.

The operators also instructed Claude to adopt “China’s standpoint” and use terminology Chinese authorities used against targets, such as “illegal separatists.”

From one machine, the operation generated 2,475 finished dossiers and reports in 30 days, according to the report.

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual practice centered on meditative exercises and the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. First introduced to the public in China in 1992, the practice quickly spread by word of mouth to reach an estimated 70 million to 100 million practitioners by the decade’s end.

The Chinese Communist Party launched a nationwide persecution of the practice in July 1999. Since then, millions have suffered arbitrary detention, forced labor, and torture, and some even death by forced organ harvesting.

One surveilled person works as an instructor at Fei Tian College Northern Campus in Middletown, New York. The institution is affiliated with Shen Yun Performing Arts, a classical Chinese dance company started by Falun Gong practitioners in 2006.

In its global tours each year, Shen Yun showcases traditional Chinese culture under the tagline “China before communism,” while highlighting human rights abuses in modern-day China, including the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners.

Anthropic said the Chinese state actor compiled information on educators and others in the Falun Gong diaspora. It didn’t reveal how the actors targeted NTD.

The company did not respond to questions from The Epoch Times.

Broader Pressure Campaign

U.S.-based Falun Gong practitioners and Shen Yun have experienced hundreds of cases of transnational repression in the United States since 2020, according to the Falun Dafa Information Center.

Reported repression tactics included physical assault, property damage, violent threats, and reprisals against relatives in China. The targets included Shen Yun performers, staff, and volunteers who promoted Shen Yun performances.

In 50 cases, surveillance was involved, the center told The Epoch Times. It pointed to an incident in which a man’s China-based relatives received warnings from the Chinese security police shortly after he mentioned to his friends that he was traveling to Taiwan, a sign that the regime was monitoring him.

The center said it hasn’t identified other targets beyond what’s already in the Anthropic report.

Anthropic said leaders of the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan were the subjects of multiple dossiers and “venue reconnaissance,” while senior Catholic cardinals across Asia were individually profiled. The actors also asked Claude to produce state security-style intelligence reports on Christian missionary networks tied to Singapore, Hong Kong, and mainland China.

The company separately identified three accounts linked to Chinese municipal public security and state security organs that used Claude to monitor overseas dissidents and human rights groups.

In one case, a local state security bureau sought advance information on locations where overseas protests and other gatherings would take place. The requested details included the gathering point, route, and endpoint of a pro-democracy march in Vancouver, Canada; venues for Uyghur cultural events in Turkey; and Oslo Freedom Forum screenings. It described the activity as “pre-operational venue intelligence.”