Good afternoon, Chair and committee members.
I am a professor and Canada research chair at McGill University. My research interests include AI, cybersecurity, and malware analysis.
The CCP and Chinese state-affiliated companies have expressed strong interest in my research. In the past years, a large Chinese 5G company repeatedly approached me for different collaborations.
In 2018, a Chinese company attempted to recruit me as a consultant for their AI team. That company offered three times—yes, three times—my salary to work for them as a consultant while remaining a professor at McGill. Out of curiosity, I asked them, “What do you want me to do?” Their response was, “You just need to reply to our emails.”
In Chinese, this recruitment strategy is called “feed, trap and kill”. They first use lucrative offers to attract their targets. Once a professor relies on their funding, they will start making unreasonable requests, including transferring IP rights, getting sensitive data or asking the professor to say something that may not be true.
After I rejected their offer, they contacted me every one or two years to offer different types of collaborations. They also started to approach my graduate students. Fortunately, none of my students have joined the company.
Through the China Scholarship Council, CSC, many international students from China are fully funded to study and participate in research in Canada. Not many people understand that international students face undue pressure in funding agreements with the Chinese government. If the students violate a rule or refuse to follow instructions, the Chinese government will ask their family to pay back the scholarship.
As a professor, I fully understand and respect the importance of academic freedom, but universities have the responsibility to explain the risks to professors who take CSC-sponsored students into their research teams. Some of the risks can be mitigated if university research officers are educated in identifying foreign interference and foreign state entities. I'm happy to share other CCP infiltrations in the academic community. Thank you.
Now I will pass the floor to Cherie.