Software engineer Liu Dadong, who fled China to the U.S. in 2019, revealed that he once worked on a Chinese Navy project designed to monitor soldiers via smartphone apps. While at a small tech firm in Beijing’s Zhongguancun in 2017, Liu was told to help develop an app for a military bid.
The app had full control over soldiers’ phones – tracking all actions such as app usage, browsing history, calls, typed content, photos, locations, and sensitive keyword searches. The app also maintained a sensitive term list that was regularly updated using official data sources.
Data collected was transmitted to a central server in real time.
Liu said tests confirmed the app’s full access to phone activities. They even tested a “geofencing” (regional monitoring) feature: the app would trigger alerts if a phone moved beyond a preset location range (e.g. 100 meters).
He emphasized that surveillance today reaches all levels of electronic devices, but the most insidious threat lies in chips. “Because chips are tiny and complex, detecting embedded trojans is nearly impossible without blueprints – one reason the Chinese Communist Party is racing to develop domestic semiconductors (to replace foreign chips).”
Source: Epoch Times, July 21, 2025
https://hk.epochtimes.com/news/2025-07-21/80668044