The woman who appeared before the Munich Labor Court earlier this year was once considered a star of German scientific research. The researcher, whose name we are shortening to Z., was celebrated, honoured, and in high demand. She revolutionised an entire field; her lectures filled halls, she was showered with praise and prestigious awards. She was among the most frequently cited researchers in Germany and gained international attention as a top talent.
But her employment with the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Luft- und Raumfahrtzentrum, DLR) quietly came to an end almost unnoticed. No one spoke publicly about the reasons for her dismissal. In 2022, Z. lost her prestigious position there, and took legal action.
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It was a suspicion of espionage that led to the DLR’s break with the brilliant researcher from China. A grave allegation that could destroy her career, should it be substantiated.
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At this stage, it is neither possible to confirm nor deny whether Z. was in fact spying for China at the DLR.
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[As an] investigation reveals, Z. maintains extensive connections to the Chinese defence apparatus. In Munich, she orchestrates a network of doctoral candidates and visiting researchers who previously worked at institutions linked to the military in China.
It cannot be ruled out that intelligence from Munich may have flowed into Chinese military technology. Several of the institutions with which Z. collaborated on research projects are involved in China’s notorious satellite programme. Experts suspect that the programme is intended, among other things, to monitor naval movements in the South China Sea – crucial to the territorial dispute over Taiwan.
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At the TUM she is responsible for publicly funded multi-million-euro projects in the field of remote sensing combined with AI or social media data. She develops highly complex algorithms to extract geoinformation from satellite imagery – enabling, for example, the mapping of cities or the tracking of natural disasters.
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According to the official project description, the research findings [of projects led by Z.] would be “invaluable for many scientific, governmental, and planning tasks.” This project supposedly puts Germany in “pole position” in the race for this technology.
In another publicly funded project, Z. explored the extent to which social media posts can be integrated into Earth observation, and delivered impressive findings. Her algorithms help determine, for instance, whether buildings are residential properties or offices. In her interview with the Helmholtz magazine, she says: “We know, for example, that in a residential building, many tweets are sent in the morning and evening, whereas in an office building, they are mainly sent during the day.”
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For those at the TUM, where she remained a professor, the exact circumstances of her dismissal from the DLR were initially unknown. However, some of the roughly 40 members of staff at her department began to prick up their ears. Rumours started to circulate among employees in the department about supposed irregularities on the servers under Z.’s supervision.
It was the period shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Experts assumed that China could attack Taiwan in the near future. In light of global political threats, research collaborations with China were under greater scrutiny than ever before. Since 2022, CORRECTIV has published several investigations revealing how the Chinese state apparatus systematically uses research findings from international collaborations to advance its military technologies. This has been state doctrine in China for years and is referred to as the “military-civil fusion”.
Just over a year ago, a woman from Z.’s immediate professional circle contacted CORRECTIV with an initial tip-off. She wondered whether the research being carried out at the department might be falling into the hands of the Chinese military.
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Z.’s biography is certainly impressive, but her official CV at on the TUM website does not disclose where she got her bachelor’s degree: namely, the National University of Defence Technology (NUDT) in Changsha – China’s most important military institution. It reports directly to the Central Military Commission, the highest military authority in the People’s Republic.
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A “very large volume of data” from the satellite was reportedly transferred to a server under Z.’s supervision. Apparently, there was a “permanent streaming connection” between this server at the TUM and the DLR. While this was, in principle, permitted, the DLR’s counterintelligence team later determined that the server had not been adequately secured. According to their findings, it was not protected by the “TUM’s firewall” and was accessible from anywhere on the internet.
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According to the DLR, a hacker attack on the server occurred in May 2022. The server was allegedly used for so-called Bitcoin mining – where cybercriminals illegally generate cryptocurrency using third-party servers or computers. The DLR concluded that “unauthorised third parties” thereby had access to all data stored on the server – including to the aforementioned sensitive satellite data.
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She [Z.] hired individuals from institutions with military affiliations in China on many occasions, at times bypassing the DLR’s security clearance procedures. According to the DLR’s written statement to the works council, one such case was the original trigger for her dismissal in 2022: Z. is said to have made multiple attempts to continue funding a doctoral student with DLR funds, despite the institution’s rejection of him. Z. responded by saying that “there were never any specific or individual security concerns” about the researcher in questions. This, she argued, amounted to blanket suspicion.
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