A little over two years ago, a man armed with an AK-47 assault rifle waited outside Iranian dissident Masih Alinejad’s home in Brooklyn, New York, eager to kidnap and permanently silence her at the behest of Iran’s leadership.
“The Islamic Republic is that close to me, even here in Brooklyn,” said Alinejad. Earlier this week, federal prosecutors in Manhattan indicted the men responsible for Alinejad’s attempted assassination.
The brazen attempt to murder Alinejad is part of a broader trend of transnational repression, where authoritarian regimes reach across their national borders to silence, harass, and even kill dissidents in other countries. In theory, those dissidents enjoy the freedom offered by open societies like the United States to speak their minds and criticize repressive regimes. But in practice, that freedom is limited because of transnational repression.
“Transnational repression is no longer an exceptional tool, but a normal and institutionalized practice for dozens of countries that seek to control their citizens abroad,” reports Freedom House, which has recorded over a thousand instances of transnational repression carried out by over 40 countries around the world since 2014.
While transnational repression is now a consistent and effective part of the authoritarian playbook, the long arm of authoritarian influence goes beyond regimes silencing their fiercest critics. And democracies have yet to fully grapple with the scope of the threat.
Dictators are expanding their reach into democratic countries not just to target political dissidents, but also to infiltrate companies to steal foreign secrets and co-opt the institutions of free societies to degrade the very norms of openness they were built to protect.
The United States is on the frontlines of this fight.
The Threat to American Companies
For dictators, all is fair in business and war. No nation embodies this sentiment better than China, which makes it a matter of policy to use its businesses as geopolitical tools to infiltrate American companies and steal proprietary secrets.
A recent report by the House Committee on Homeland Security shines a light on China’s hostile policies towards American companies. The figures are damning.
From January 2021 to October 2024, there were over 55 recorded instances of Chinese state-sponsored spying in 20 states. These cases range from the sharing of classified military intelligence to the regime in Beijing to the theft of American trade secrets. These numbers undoubtedly fail to represent the full picture of Chinese corporate espionage. FBI Director Christoper Wray testified in 2022 that the bureau opened new cases to combat CCP spying operations about every 12 hours.
The impact of this transnational attack doesn’t just harm businesses; it hurts all Americans.
“It’s the people of the United States who are the victims of what amounts to Chinese theft on a scale so massive that it represents one of the largest transfers of wealth in human history,” said Wray while addressing the issue of Chinese economic espionage nearly five years ago. “China is engaged in a whole-of-state effort to become the world’s only superpower by any means necessary.”
By targeting American companies on home soil, authoritarians have blurred the line between US economic and national security. That distinction becomes meaningless when the CCP extends its corporate influence to infiltrate global supply chains.
Last month, the House Committee on Homeland Security and the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party released a report outlining how the Chinese operated company Shanghai Zhenhua Heavy Industries (ZPMC) uses its dominance in the port crane market in the US to “serve as a Trojan horse capable of helping the CCP and the PRC military exploit and manipulate U.S. maritime equipment and technology at their request.” A startling 80 percent of the port cranes used in America belong to ZPMC.
Many American companies are aware of the threat they face when conducting business in mainland China, but few understand that the long authoritarian arm of China reaches beyond its borders.
The Threat to American Universities
Authoritarian influence extends to universities too. Once considered the bedrock of open societies, academic institutions have become a central target of authoritarian campaigns seeking to undermine the very liberties they were designed to cultivate.
In March, the Kremlin launched an operation, laundering propaganda using a network of fake news sites. Known as “Doppelganger,” the operation’s primary goal was to seed fake posts to highlight and deepen divisions in US academic communities, specifically students deeply polarized by the war in Gaza. Given the cloud of dread that hovered over the nation as campus protests deteriorated in the spring, it is hard to deny that the Kremlin succeeded in its efforts to deepen divisions in American society.
And when authoritarians are not trying to wage cognitive war campaigns on American student populations, they use the freedom offered by universities to digitally and physically surveil student groups, disrupt events, and even go after faculty.
Chinese hackers “Zoom-bombed” Uyghur activist Rayhan Asat, flooding her screen with images labeling her a “liar” while she was giving a presentation during an event at Brandeis University. Student groups criticizing the CCP’s zero-tolerance Covid-19 policies became targets of Chinese attempts to monitor their activities. And researchers who fled countries like Turkey and India to pursue research without being persecuted found fresh authoritarian harassment in American universities.
According to a report discussing transnational repression on college campuses and its impact on university populations, authoritarian influence “severely constrains their ability to participate in classes where discussion of politics or world events may be monitored.” The report goes on to note that foreign repression “limits their opportunities to make connections among like-minded members of the campus community, and prevents them from studying democracy or advocating for human rights.”
What Democracies Do Next
Authoritarians want more than just to disrupt classroom discussions, steal from American companies, and target dissidents. Each tactic is one part of a whole-of-society approach to attack the institutions and values that bind together open societies: free expression, free and fair markets, and the open inquiry of ideas.
Authoritarians are hoping for inaction. Whether it be students or administrations, doing nothing to stop this influence incentivizes more of it because it signals to regimes everywhere that the stewards of free societies will do nothing to defend themselves when their institutions are attacked.
American apathy towards foreign influence sends a very clear message to the regimes in Beijing, Tehran, and Moscow that democracy has lost its survival instinct.
The bad news is that apathy has overwhelmed the ears of despots. The good news is that Americans can recognize this and choose to send a different message—one that signals a commitment to democratic values and the defense of core institutions from those who have every intention of undermining them.
Next week, RDI will convene its second annual Frontlines of Freedom conference on combating transnational repression and authoritarian influence in open societies.
We are bringing together dissidents, business leaders, academics, and policymakers to discuss the scope of the authoritarian threat, what America can do to defend itself, and how democracies can begin working together to reinvigorate our shared survival instincts.
The whole-of-society threat posed by authoritarians is daunting. But democratic nations are capable of surmounting immense obstacles when their institutions are aligned at all levels. Overcoming this challenge will require nothing less than a whole-of-society effort from democracies too.
Sohan Mewada is an associate editor at the Renew Democracy Initiative.
