NEW: China's surveillance supply chains run through distributors built to keep sanctioned manufacturers hidden — and existing sanctions and export controls have yet to catch up to how the equipment actually moves. 🧵 1/6

Read 👇
buff.ly/GIBHPT9

Kondi @c4ads.org carefully explains the evidentiary boundary: the procurement record does not prove #无人机 #surveillance of any particular protest, but documents an emerging architecture spanning multiple administrative levels and police, PAP, & border security bodies:

One especially good line from this RFA #无人机 coverage: Kondi @c4ads.org stresses that the stated missions: counterterrorism, border security, “stability maintenance”, & monitoring crowds at monastery events, aren't outside interpretations but descriptions found in the state's own documents:

China is building an aerial architecture of control over Tibet. New @tibetwatch.org research traces police #drones, counter-drone systems, & flight bans, all through the Chinese state’s own records. The Party-state watches from above while closing the sky to #Tibetans tibetwatch.org/press-releas...

Essential reading: C4ADS' "Monitoring the Frontier" builds an original dataset from PRC government procurement records to map who actually supplies the #surveillance state: #Tibet as prototype, #Xinjiang as scale-up:

Want to know who China is watching in #Tibet? Read the procurement notices. A 2021 contract for cameras to monitor "returned personnel" led Prof Robert Barnett to a hidden #surveillance regime for evicted Buddhist nuns.

The Quiet State, #openaccess:

doi.org/10.1007/978-...

Next week: @c4ads.org *Monitoring the Frontier* on China's #surveillance in Tibet, the Uyghur region, Inner Mongolia, & Hong Kong, and my new Tibet Watch piece on UAVs in Tibet. Sanctioned firms' kit still reaches police via domestic distributors. Turquoise Roof's previous report on this 👇

Join us for "Inside #ChinaCapital"!

On Sept. 29 at 12 p.m. ET, ICIJ reporter Scilla Alecci and Bradley C. Parks, executive director of AidData at William & Mary, will discuss the global implications of ICBC’s lending practices in a live Zoom panel.

Sign up: buff.ly/ekEaigh

For civil society defenders the defensive question begins to shifts from "which CN APT is after us this month" to "which capability is in circulation, and how many APT groups hold it." www.volexity.com/blog/2026/09...

Team Cymru says it found 10,000+ “transfer stations” masking Chinese access to Western frontier #AI models, bypassing regional blocks, & potentially enabling #distillation.

Striking look at China's shadow AI infrastructure. teamcymru-01.webflow.io/post/llm-gat...

Excellent analysis of China’s hydraulic transformation of #Tibet. The real risk isn't simplistic “water weaponisation”:

Medog is advancing while the data & governance needed to distinguish dam impacts from accelerating climate change lag badly behind.

Next week: @c4ads.org *Monitoring the Frontier* on China's #surveillance in Tibet, the Uyghur region, Inner Mongolia, & Hong Kong, and my new Tibet Watch piece on UAVs in Tibet. Sanctioned firms' kit still reaches police via domestic distributors. Turquoise Roof's previous report on this 👇

www.ohchr.org/en/statement...

Richard Gere WSJ OpEd: @anthropic.com uncovered a Beijing-aligned operation using AI to investigate #Tibetan & other diaspora groups abroad, including @savetibet.bsky.social.

AI is becoming infrastructure for #transnationalrepression.

www.wsj.com/opinion/beij...

Join Citizen Lab director @rondeibert.bsky.social in Toronto for his keynote speech at SecTor on October 7.

He will be speaking about the Citizen Lab’s decades of work acting as “counterintelligence for civil society.”

Register: sector.informafestivals.com/2026/

Team Cymru says it found 10,000+ “transfer stations” masking Chinese access to Western frontier #AI models, bypassing regional blocks, & potentially enabling #distillation.

Striking look at China's shadow AI infrastructure. teamcymru-01.webflow.io/post/llm-gat...

@volexity.com's "Mind the (Patch) Gap" pt 2 is a threat intel report with a human rights story inside it. A third Chinese APT (UTA0565) ran the same chained Chrome x Windows exploits on 3–4 Sept, per Volexity still unpatched. For me, the lures are the story. 🧵 #socialengineering:

julianassange.org relaunched 17 Sept. Sole content: 庄子·山木 [Zhuangzi, "The Mountain Tree"], the useless tree / silent goose passage, ending on 先生将何处 ["Master, where will you stand?"] with Zhuangzi's reply omitted. Sino #Bluesky, thoughts pls? @bokane.org @beijingpalmer.bsky.social @samuelwa.de

Great detailed analysis here of recently exposed digital transnational repression targeting the Tibetan diaspora, and how it both builds on growing capacity in China and feeds that capacity for other forms of surveillance, domestic and transnational

turquoiseroof.org/spyware-as-a...