Federal Charges Pressed Against Stanford Researcher for Connections to the Chinese Military

A visiting scholar at Stanford University’s neurology department was recently busted for visa fraud.

According to a report from Campus Reform, the FBI discovered that the professor in question was allegedly employed by the Chinese military and put false information about her employment status on her visa application.

A U.S. Department of Justice press release reported that Chen Song came into the United States in 2018 through a J-1 nonimmigrant visa. Song asserted that she was working for Xi Diaoyutai Hospital in Beijing. However, the Department of Justice found some revealing information that demonstrated how she was not forthright about her employment status. In open-source versions of the four research articles that she submitted alongside her application to Stanford, it was revealed that she was an employee at the People’s Liberation Army Air Force hospital in Xi’an, China.

Additionally, as of July 13, a Chinese health care provider listed Song as a doctor at another PLA Air Force hospital. The Justice Department reported that there was a picture of Song in a military uniform included.

During an investigation, the Justice Department was able to discover a folder that Song deleted titled “2018 Visiting School Important Information”. They found it in her computer’s hard drive. The folder allegedly had a letter addressed to the Chinese Consulate in New York. In it, she explained that the employer she listed was a false front. Furthermore, she noted that the PLA Air Force gave her permission to continue working at Stanford by another year.

If convicted, Song could potentially face 10 years in prison and $250,000-fine.

The Office of the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California will be tasked with this case. Song is among the most recent academics receiving charges for her connections to China. The East Asian country is a geopolitical rival and will exploit any of the U.S.’s policy weakness to its advantage.

One of those will be migration policy, which the U.S. desperately needs to overhaul. National security is among the many reasons American policymakers should consider tougher policies on mass migration.