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Byron Wan

@Byron_Wan

Dec 2

Wendy Mao (毛立文), Stanford’s Earth Sciences Chair and Deputy Director of Stanford’s Institute for Materials and Energy Sciences at SLAC, has co-authored over 50 publications, trained 5 employees, and maintained a visiting scholar position at 🇨🇳 HPSTAR, an “alias” for China's nuclear weapons program.

In 2020, the 🇨🇳 Center for High Pressure Science and Technology, or HPSTAR, was added to 🇺🇸 Department of Commerce's Entity List, which identifies organizations that pose a significant risk to national security. Since its 2020 Entity List designation, Mao has co-authoredat least 12 peer-reviewed papers with HPSTAR.

The US Entity List describes HPSTAR as an organization “owned by, operated by, or directly affiliated with the Chinese Academy of Engineering Physics (CAEP), which is the technology complex responsible for the research, development and testing of China's nuclear weapons and has been on the Entity List under the destination of China since June 30, 1997.”

According to Canada's 2024 Named Research Organizations List, HPSTAR is an “alias” for the institution behind China’s nuclear weapons program.

HPSTAR studies how materials behave under extreme pressures and temperatures using diamond-anvil cells, synchrotron beams, and X-ray diffraction. Mao is a leading US researcher in this very field.

"It is true that high-pressure experiments are used by scientists working on the domain of nuclear weapons. If anyone is using the diamond anvil cell or shock waves to study materials relevant to nuclear weapons, that's highly sensitive. If those same methods are then applied to sensitive nuclear materials, the combination of these kinds of experiments with these materials starts raising eyebrows."

Both Mao and HPSTAR extensively use diamond anvil cells and shock waves to study materials.

Mao and HPSTAR’s public research papers do not directly involve weapons testing, design, or development. However, these precise high-pressure measurements and theoretical knowledge are the necessary foundations of modern nuclear and advanced weapon design, where accurate modeling of materials under detonation-level conditions is critical.

Over the past two decades, Mao has co-authored at least 50 publications with HPSTAR. Funding acknowledgments show that Wendy Mao and HPSTAR co-authored research financed by US government agencies including DOE (including the National Nuclear Security Administration [NNSA], Argonne National Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and Brookhaven National Laboratory); DARPA; DOD; NSF; NIH; ARO; NASA.

Mao has trained at least five 🇨🇳 HPSTAR employees as PhD students in her Stanford and SLAC labs. At least one HPSTAR postdoctoral researcher simultaneously worked on DOE, NNSA, and DARPA-funded research at SLAC.

For example, one of Mao’s current PhD students worked at HPSTAR for three years, from 2015 to 2018, receiving an MS in Condensed Matter Physics before joining Stanford as a PhD student in Mao’s lab.

The other four were trained in Mao’s lab and returned to China to work at HPSTAR. These are only the individuals we were able to identify via web and archival searches.

“Mao has trained 5 PhD students affiliated with China’s nuclear weapons program. Stanford should not permit its federally funded research labs to become training grounds for entities affiliated with China’s nuclear program. Mao’s continued and extensive academic collaboration with 🇨🇳 HPSTAR is adequate grounds for termination.”

Mao served as a visiting scholar at 🇨🇳 HPSTAR’s Shanghai laboratory from at least 2016 to 2019. She also maintains a HPSTAR email address. Her internal Stanford CV and profile list 43 affiliations, but they do not disclose her position at 🇨🇳 HPSTAR.

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stanfordreview.org/investigation-…

“For someone with access to SLAC and other national labs, foreign affiliations must be disclosed under DOE Order 486.1A. Dr. Mao’s undisclosed HPSTAR role and active HPSTAR email raise legitimate concerns about whether federal disclosure rules were followed and whether Stanford had the information needed to manage foreign-influence risk.”

As a professor with appointments at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and other sensitive national labs, Mao is subject to this disclosure requirement.

Mao has also co-authored papers in Matter and Radiation at Extremes, a journal owned by CAEP, China’s nuclear development organization. She did so under a 2020 articletitled "Key problems of the four-dimensional Earth system."

The respective organizations responsible for the development of the US and China’s nuclear weapons programs, 🇺🇸 National Nuclear Security Administration and 🇨🇳 CAEP’s National Security Academic Fund, are co-funders for several of Mao’s projects.

China’s nuclear program started the National Security Academic Fund to strengthen “exploratory national security basic scientific research.” According to leaked documents from China’s nuclear program, translated by Georgetown University, “The NSAF Fund has broken new ground for CAEP in attracting technological forces across China to start basic research with the pulling force of national security requirements.”

Mao is listed as a co-author, contributing the aforementioned “national security basic research,” to at least 6 NSAF-funded research projects with HPSTAR collaborators. In funding acknowledgments, HPSTAR is described as an institution “supported by [CAEP’s] NSAF (grant no: U1530402).”

On Nov 23, 2024, Mao was published as a co-author on a paper titled “Iron Bonding with Light Elements: Implications for Planetary Cores Beyond the Binary System.” Wenzhong Wang, from the University of Science and Technology of China, is listed as a collaborator. This paper also acknowledges funding from NASA’s Exoplanet Program.

The Wolf Amendment prohibits the use of NASA grants from collaboration “with institutions of the People’s Republic of China.” According to NASA’s document on the matter, “that means that it's not enough that a NASA grantee simply avoids sending funds to PRC; rather, the grantee may not spend any NASA grant money on any part of a bilateral project with PRC.”

“The Wolf Amendment bars NASA-funded researchers from participating in bilateral projects with Chinese institutions unless a waiver is granted. When a NASA-supported Stanford professor co-authors research with a scientist from a PRC university, the burden is on the institution to show an exemption. Stanford-Mao doesn't have an exemption. Without one, this places the work squarely in a serious Wolf Amendment risk area.”

The Review was unable to verify whether authorization for an exception was granted.

As recently as Sep 12, 2025, Mao published a paper with three HPSTAR co-authors. The research paper featured HPSTAR researchers using cutting-edge equipment at US government laboratories, including X-ray diffraction conducted by the High Pressure Collaborative Access Team at Argonne’s Advanced Photon Source, the Beamline 12.2.2 at Lawrence Berkeley’s Advanced Light Source, and XRD measurements supported by the National Nuclear Security Administration.

“Fundamental research is generally legal, but export controls still apply to hands-on access to sensitive equipment. When export-controlled lasers at SLAC or national laboratories intersect with Stanford HPSTAR-linked students [Mao’s SLAC-trained PhD students] and collaborators, it creates a real risk of transferring controlled US technology and know-how to a PRC-aligned institution.”

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“HPSTAR should not have been granted access to or use of DOE national laboratories. Mao and her collaborators very likely facilitated the use of export-controlled items, including those regulated under the Export Administration Regulations, Category 6, such as sensors and lasers, and Category 3, including electronics and X-ray detectors, for HPSTAR, an institution affiliated with China’s nuclear weapons program. This is a shocking lapse of research security.”

For example, a research project was authored by Wendy Mao, Jin Liu of HPSTAR (formerly a PhD student in Mao’s lab), and Yue Meng of Argonne National Laboratory, among others. The research is “supported by the National Nuclear Security Administration… acknowledges… the use of computing resources from Brookhaven National Laboratory… and X-ray diffraction… conducted at Argonne National Laboratory… HPSTAR is supported by NSAF.” In this case, the NNSA and CAEP’s NSAF are co-funding Chinese “exploratory national security basic scientific research,” using sensitive national laboratories.

“Dr. Mao effectively provides HPSTAR-linked scientists access to US national-lab resources, training, equipment, and funded research, through her positions at Stanford and SLAC. That kind of access is exactly what China’s research system tries to cultivate abroad.”

In 2023, Chairman Mike Lee of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources wrote a letter warning “Oak Ridge, Los Alamos, and Argonne National Laboratories regarding reports that researchers at all three labs have engaged in research collaborations leveraging… the PRC’s military for federally funded research in sensitive fields.”

Beyond HPSTAR and CAEP, Mao conducted research with the Beijing Institute of Technology and Northwestern Polytechnical University (NWPU). Both institutions are part of China’s Seven Sons of National Defense: key research institutions for the Chinese military. These publications acknowledge co-funding from the DOE and DARPA.

Mao also conducted research with Shanghai Jiao Tong University's National Key Laboratory of Science and Technology on Nano Fabrication, which is also a key Chinese military-designated laboratory.

Wendy Mao’s father, Ho-Kwang Mao (毛河光), was one of the leading US experts in high-pressure physics, a fundamental science behind nuclear weapons development.

He led the NNSA co-sponsored Carnegie-DOE Alliance Center (CDAC). Under his supervision, the center collaborated with and trained NNSA’s staff to ensure nuclear-weapons readiness and stockpile maintenance. Upon recruitment by CAEP in 2012, Ho-Kwang Mao established HPSTAR as a subordinate institution.

This investigation confirms that Wendy Mao has maintained extensive collaboration with organizations advancing China's nuclear program. This raises a fundamental question: how should US institutions respond? What is clear is that the status quo of inaction is untenable.

Over a year ago, documentation of Mao’s collaborations — including her formal role at HPSTAR — was presented to DOE, the FBI, and Stanford University. Yet federal agencies, including the DOE, DoD, DARPA, and multiple national laboratories, continue to fund research that intersects with US-listed entities such as HPSTAR.

To be clear, export-control restrictions, foreign-affiliation disclosure rules, and potential Wolf Amendment issues remain relevant. But the bulk of Mao’s work with HPSTAR appears to fall under the federal definition of fundamental research, meaning the results are “published and shared broadly, with no restrictions for proprietary or national-security reasons.” Under current law, such collaboration with a US-listed entity is generally permitted.

Wendy Mao’s case is not an outlier. It is a revealing example of a much larger institutional problem at Stanford.

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Byron Wan

@Byron_Wan

Jan 22, 2024

https://twitter.com/byron_wan/status/1749349576648380802

Another woman in the video is Adelina Zhang (张宁), who has been serving as hosts in various 🇨🇳 state events in the UK for years. She’s also worked with Newton Leng, the man who yelled at Brendan in the video.

h/t @samdunningo @ftiauto_ptdauto

1/n sohu.com/a/726632135_23…

https://twitter.com/byron_wan/status/1749349576648380802

Adelina Zhang has clearly undergone plastic surgery (left pic: Zhang in 2017)

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The CCP moved fast: they’ve scrubbed the Sohu article in the first tweet in this thread already!

Luckily I’ve archived the same article on another website!!!

3/nweb.archive.org/web/2024012301…

Read 4 tweets

Byron Wan

@Byron_Wan

Mar 26, 2023

Serbia, Mar 19: 🇨🇳 state-owned China Communications Construction Company demolished the monument to fallen soldiers of the First and Second World Wars in the village of Negrishori during the construction of the Pakovraće - Požega highway.

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The demolition sparked an outrage among veterans’ groups and local residents.

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👇🏻 the monument

In 2021 🇨🇳 China Communications Construction Company promised that the monument would be relocated and the Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments in Kraljevo would be informed in advance. But the Chinese company simply demolished it…

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👇🏻 the monument in pieces

Read 6 tweets

Byron Wan

@Byron_Wan

Mar 24, 2023

🚨 Hong Kong department store Sogo removed LA-based artist Patrick Amadon’s digital artwork No Rioters, an Art Basel exhibit, that contained references to jailed dissidents such as Benny Tai, Joshua Wong and Gwyneth Ho, at the “request” of HK Police.

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Patrick Amadon: “It was too much watching Art Week in Hong Kong pretend the Chinese government didn’t crush a democracy and turn Hong Kong into a vassal surveillance state... because it’s a convenient location for a good market.”

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news.artnet.com/art-world/prot…

“I think it sends the message that money can buy absolution yet again.”

The international community is colluding with the CCP-backed administration to put on an “everything is fine” facade for the police state.

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apnews.com/article/hong-k…

Read 4 tweets

Byron Wan

@Byron_Wan

Feb 8, 2023

twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

Tina Zhang (张), a 34-year-old 🇨🇳 woman from Qingdao, Shandong province, posted videos on Douyin of her hanging out on Yanaha Island (屋那霸岛) — the biggest uninhabited island in Okinawa — which she claimed she bought in 2020.

Yanaha is just ~60km from 🇺🇸 Kadena Air Base.

1/n twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

The videos went viral on social media and 🇨🇳 news media 红星新闻 ran a story on it on Feb 3…

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🇯🇵 news site Sakisiru broke the news in Japan, causing an uproar and sparking national security concerns. I’m not sure if there’s any coverage in mainstream Japanese media though.

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sakisiru.jp/40825

Read 5 tweets

Byron Wan

@Byron_Wan

Nov 26, 2022

twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

Shanghai, Nov 26: people gather on Urumqi Middle Road (乌鲁木齐中路) to commemorate those who died in the blaze in Urumqi on Nov 24 while repeatedly yelling “不要核酸要自由” ([we] don’t want PCR tests; [we] want freedom!)…

1/n twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

People face up to the cops arriving at the scene…

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🔥 You won’t believe this: the people on Urumqi Middle Road in Shanghai are yelling “共产党、下台! 共产党、下台!” (Communist Party, step down! Communist Party, step down!)

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