Chinese national flags flutter in front of the Great Hall of the People during the 2026 “two sessions on March 9, 2026 in Beijing, China.
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From recruitment of U.S. students to allegations surrounding Nvidia’s Jensen Huang affair, reports point to one Chinese intelligence agency: the Ministry of State Security.
The opaque government entity — which lacks an official website other than one supporting whistleblowers — has gained prominence with Beijing’s growing emphasis on national security since 2023. The ministry oversees a range of provincial and national-level bureaus, including for intelligence gathering.
While the MSS is not Beijing’s only intelligence entity, the ministry has often been named in high-profile cases. Following hacking attempts on U.S. entities, the U.S. Treasury Department has in recent years sanctioned Chinese entities and individuals it alleges are affiliated with MSS.
The Financial Times and The New York Times this month reported, citing sources, that U.S. government intelligence believe the MSS recruited businesswoman Alice Huang to gather information on Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. The two are not related. Jensen Huang admitted to an affair over the weekend, but it remains unclear whether any sensitive information was shared.
The MSS earlier this year approached an individual who knows Alice Huang — to find out more information about her business and connections, The FT reported Wednesday, citing the person who was questioned. The FT report said it was unclear whether she was suspected of any wrongdoing, and that the MSS inquiry followed news of a Singapore probe into the company related to chip-smuggling allegations.
Growing prominence
China established its Ministry of State Security in 1983, in part to respond to risks from the country’s new openness to foreigners after roughly three decades of tightly closed borders, according to research by Sheena Chestnut Greitens, an associate professor at the University of Texas-Austin.
The MSS appears to have gained political influence under Chinese President Xi Jinping to “strengthen China’s protections against espionage and foreign infiltration,” Greitens wrote last year in China Leadership Monitor. The publication is run by Minxin Pei, non-resident senior fellow of the German Marshall Fund of the United States.
In 2023 MSS launched a social media account on the WeChat messaging platform to increase public awareness of security issues. An article published Tuesday criticized an unidentified individual with a Chinese surname for fabricating allegations to a foreign organization that a colleague was a spy, after learning the colleague had secured an overseas posting that the individual had wanted.
China’s MSS is separate from China’s Cyberspace Administration as well as the Ministry of Public Security, whose Minister Wang Xiaohong met with then-U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
But the entities can work together. In September, State Security Minister Chen Yixin published a rare article in the cyberspace regulator’s magazine about the need to improve artificial intelligence governance and prevent related security risks. The piece came out just as prominent U.S. AI company executives warned about the risks from uncontrolled development of the technology.
Chen has met with his Vietnamese and Laotian counterparts in Beijing this year, according to official Chinese readouts.
Focus on tech
Beijing has increasingly targeted the U.S. tech sector in an attempt to narrow the gap in artificial intelligence capabilities, Matt Pearl, director of the strategic technologies program at the U.S.-based think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies, previously told CNBC.
An MSS agent allegedly posed as a Stanford student for years in order to gather sensitive information, the Silicon Valley university’s newspaper reported last year.
The report also cited “Stanford experts on Chinese intelligence-gathering efforts who wished to remain anonymous” as saying the MSS used civilians as a way to “quietly extract the know-how behind American innovation.”
Other cases reinforce the trend, although not necessarily tied to MSS directly.
In June, U.S.-based cybersecurity giant CrowdStrike said Chinese entities broadly accounted for more than half of state-sponsored intrusions targeting technology companies, especially their AI assets, in the 12 months through March 31.
Brian Abbott, founder and CEO of U.S.-based start-up Agentiq Capital, previously told CNBC that he believed an employee he hired from China last year was an agent of Beijing who purposely altered code and website content to prevent the company from getting venture capital funding.
The individual was dismissed earlier this year, Abbott said, and the company filed a complaint with the FBI. CNBC was unable to independently verify the allegation or a connection to MSS.
Separately, U.S. investigators believed a former senior U.S. Federal Reserve official passed information about the central bank to a Chinese government spy.
