Why fake AI calls impersonating US officials are ‘the new normal'
'It's now easy and quick to clone someone's voice using AI tools, which now require less than 15 seconds of someone's voice to create a believable voice clone,' said Rachel Tobac, chief executive of SocialProof Security, a firm that trains people to defend against such attacks.
'Just six months ago, I needed a clear one-to-two-minute sample of someone's voice without background noise or music to create a believable voice clone — not so anymore.'
'Voice-cloning is the new normal (in terms of) impersonation social-engineering attempts,' she said.
Rubio told CNN on Thursday that he expects more AI-based efforts to impersonate him.
'It won't be the last time you see me or others, for that matter. Maybe some of you will be impersonated,' Rubio said on a trip to Malaysia.
'Within days of becoming Secretary of State, I had foreign ministers calling the State Department asking if I had just texted them,' said Rubio, who is also the national security adviser. 'This is just the reality of the 21st Century, AI and fake stuff that's going on.'
In Rubio's case, an imposter called at least five people, including three foreign ministers, a governor and a senator. The unknown attacker set up an account on the Signal messaging platform in mid-June using the display name 'marco.rubio@state.gov,' according to a State Department cable last week on the incident viewed by CNN.
'The actor left voicemails on Signal for at least two targeted individuals, and in one instance, sent a text message inviting the individual to communicate on Signal,' the cable said.
An AI-based robocall last year that mimicked the voice of then-President Joe Biden and tried to dissuade voters from voting in a primary was a wake-up call for senior US officials over the risks that AI could pose to the electoral process.
For public figures whose voices are everywhere online, the cloning process is even simpler, said Steve Grobman, chief technology officer at cybersecurity firm McAfee.
'What's most concerning is that with AI-powered clones, seeing – or hearing – is no longer believing, and even trained professionals can be fooled, especially when a familiar voice makes an urgent request,' Grobman told CNN. 'It's also why we need smarter tools to help people tell what's real and what's not. We can't rely on our own instincts anymore.'
However, Rubio and others who heard audio of the call imitating him said it didn't quite sound like him, meaning whoever was behind it didn't go to great lengths to match his voice.
The audacity of the ruse is what has some US officials alarmed. A month before the fake Rubio calls began, the FBI warned in May that unidentified 'malicious actors' were impersonating senior US officials to target their contacts in government. The aim was to build a rapport with the target to then access their online accounts. The ultimate goal of the scheme — whether to steal information or money — was unclear.
White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, a trusted confidant of President Donald Trump, was one of the government officials being impersonated, CNN and other news outlets reported.
Early into the FBI investigation of the Wiles impersonation, officials suspected the impersonator was a criminal rather than state actor, multiple sources familiar with the matter said. But investigators also examined if there was any connection to Iran — given that Tehran-linked hackers were believed to have previously hacked Wiles' phone.
CNN has requested comment from the FBI on the status of the investigation. Rubio said he referred the matter to the FBI and the State Department's diplomatic security when he found out about it last week.
Even before news of the Rubio and Wiles imposters broke, employees across the federal bureaucracy were trying to tighten up their phone communications in response to an entirely different and more sophisticated threat. Chinese government-backed hackers broke into America's biggest telecom providers as part of an effort to spy on senior US officials, Washington alleges, in activity that was revealed last year.
In the wake of that hack, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security urged government employees to use encrypted messaging platforms so the hackers could not snoop on their texts.
There is no way to prevent people from setting up fake accounts and using any of a dozen free pieces of software online to clone someone's voice. So the FBI and the State Department have been publicly and privately warning US officials to take extra care in their communications, and to tell their circle of contacts about the impersonation schemes.
Government agencies 'must now focus on defense and catching attackers using deepfakes in action,' Tobac, the cybersecurity executive, told CNN. 'One way to do that is to use another method of communication to verify identity before taking action on a sensitive request.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CNN
an hour ago
- CNN
The deadly drug that's complicating US-China trade
Since US President Donald Trump – just days into his second term – began imposing tariffs on China for its role in the flow of deadly opioids like fentanyl into the United States, Beijing's message has been clear. The fentanyl crisis is the 'US's problem,' Chinese officials have repeatedly said, and China has already done 'tremendous work' to address the issue. 'We stand ready for practical cooperation with the US based on equality and mutual respect. That said, we firmly oppose the US pressuring, threatening and blackmailing China under the pretext of the fentanyl issue,' a spokesperson said in March, after Trump's fentanyl tariffs were raised to 20% on all Chinese imports into the US. But as those tariffs remain in place months later and, despite a truce de-escalating other duties, Beijing is signaling it's paying attention to the issue – and may be prepared to do more. China late last month announced it will add two more fentanyl precursors to its list of controlled substances – an expected step that brought it in line with international regulations, which its diplomats presented as a mark of 'active participation' in global drug control. Days earlier, Chinese authorities also extended control over another class of drug known as nitazenes – powerful synthetic opioids raising alarm among global health officials. The same day, Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong told US Ambassador to China David Perdue that Beijing was open to strengthening 'practical cooperation' on drug control. The Trump administration blames China for 'sustaining' the influx into the US of fentanyl, a lab-made, synthetic opioid dozens of times more potent than heroin. Abuse of the drug and its analogues has fueled a drug overdose crisis in the US, killing tens of thousands of Americans annually, though those numbers saw a significant drop last year. In Beijing's view, it's gone above and beyond international norms to stem the outflow of the drug and its component chemicals from its vast pharmaceuticals sector. In 2019 Beijing controlled fentanyl as a drug class – a significant move that drastically reduced the flow of the finished drug directly from China to the US, according to experts and US officials. It didn't take long for criminal networks to adapt, however. Chinese outfits shifted to selling precursor chemicals often to cartel-backed labs in Mexico, which then make and ship illegal fentanyl and similar drugs to the US. Chinese authorities have since controlled a number of these precursor chemicals. But experts and US officials say more could be done – as Beijing remains the largest source for products used to make illegal fentanyl and other synthetic drugs in Mexico and other countries. Chinese officials haven't explicitly linked their recent efforts at controlling two more of these substances to relations with the US, instead calling them another example of the 'goodwill China has shown,' and continuing to reject the premise of the US tariffs. But Beijing is likely expecting it will get credit for the latest moves in trade negotiations with the US. The question, however, is whether the steps will move the needle for Washington – and whether the two sides will be able to cooperate on the issue if their overall relations remain rocky. 'If Washington does not publicly recognize Chinese steps and show responsiveness to Beijing's own concerns, then bilateral law enforcement cooperation likely will falter going forward,' said Ryan Hass, director of the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution. As US-China ties have chafed on everything from technology to China's militarization of the South China Sea, few issues have appeared more personal to American leaders than China's role as a producer of the drugs and chemicals fueling an opioid crisis in the US. During his first term, Trump hailed Chinese leader Xi Jinping's 'wonderful humanitarian gesture' of designating fentanyl a controlled substance in China. Some six years later, however, Trump began his second term accusing China of 'actively sustaining and expanding the business of poisoning our citizens' – an accusation vehemently denied by China. That message also contrasts with assessments from the US Drug Enforcement Agency which, in an annual report released in May, said fentanyl purity declined throughout 2024, consistent with indications that fentanyl cooks in Mexico were having trouble obtaining key precursor chemicals. That was as some China-based suppliers were 'wary of supplying controlled precursors … demonstrating an awareness on their part that the Chinese government is controlling more fentanyl precursors,' it said. Beijing's latest moves to control the two additional fentanyl precursors and nitazenes are positive actions that could have an impact on illicit drug supply chains, experts say. But they are also 'clever maneuvering' from China, according to Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow at the Strobe Talbott Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology at the Brookings Institution. A UN convention on illicit drugs added the two fentanyl precursors to its list of controlled substances last year, meaning signatory countries such as China must follow suit. China controlled a number of nitazenes in 2024 and the latest step, which expands those controls, was already in the works last fall, Felbab-Brown said. 'The Trump administration just reset the clock, did not recognize what China had already done and had committed to do, did not give China any credit for that. As a result, it also now is in a position where China can be promising to do exactly the same actions that it had promised to the Biden administration and use that as part of the bargaining,' Felbab-Brown said. A 'more effective posture' would have been to embrace China's efforts in 2024 and then ask it to fill in the 'substantial and impactful' holes in its drug control program, she added. Beijing has fiercely defended its record when it comes to controlling fentanyl and other synthetic drugs, releasing a 7,000-word white paper outlining its efforts in March, days after Trump imposed his second raft of fentanyl-linked tariffs. It has also balked at a Congressional report released last year accusing the ruling Chinese Communist Party of directly subsidizing the manufacture and export of illicit fentanyl materials and other synthetic narcotics through tax rebates. In China, where the Communist Party keeps a tight grip on all aspects of society, there's comparatively limited opioid abuse, according to official data – a situation Beijing uses to suggest the problem is about American appetite for the drug, not Chinese supply. That also means Chinese officials feel they've gone out of their way to work with Washington on a US domestic issue – efforts they see as being greeted first by a lack of American appreciation, and then by tariffs. Scientists in China on the front lines of identifying new precursors being used by criminal groups also point to reducing demand in the US as a key factor, given the challenges of controlling chemicals involved in synthesizing opioids. 'You really can't solve the fentanyl problem through control alone… the most fundamental issue is still reducing demand,' Hua Zhendong, deputy director of a drug analysis division at a counternarcotics laboratory under China's Ministry of Public Security, told CNN in an interview last September. He pointed to how some chemicals have widespread use in legitimate products, making them impractical to control, while chemicals used to make fentanyl can be easily adjusted to evade rules but still produce the product. 'It's always been like a cat-and-mouse game, because there could be thousands of potential substances for synthesizing fentanyl, we can't proactively control them all – we can only passively follow behind,' said Hua, whose lab was working regularly with US counterparts at the time of the interview to share information on emerging chemicals. Outside observers agree that US efforts to curb demand are critical for mitigating the opioid crisis. They note too that even if no chemicals came from China, fentanyl makers would look to other countries with large pharmaceuticals and chemicals industries, such as India. Despite the challenges of enforcement in a vast sector where goods are often shipped in covert ways by busy air and sea routes, observers also say that more can be done in China. That includes tightening regulations to enable tougher punishments for people who sell controlled precursors to criminal groups or their middlemen unknowingly. Experts also say more could also be done to enforce existing regulations, especially in terms of how central government edicts are enforced by local authorities across China. 'Scheduling drugs and precursors that lead to the production of illegal drugs is one step of many needed in China,' said David Luckey, a senior international and defense researcher at RAND, a US-based think tank. 'I would suggest better still would be actually preventing Chinese companies from selling and distributing these harmful chemicals and drugs to criminal organizations in Mexico.' In addition to China, Trump placed tariffs on Mexico and Canada earlier this year, accusing them of not doing enough to curb migration and fentanyl trafficking, but carved out significant exemptions to those tariff rates. The US earlier this year designated Mexican cartels it alleges are involved in fentanyl trafficking as foreign terrorist organizations. 'China is a command economy with extreme control of its population – I think if the Chinese Communist Party didn't want Chinese companies doing this, the CCP could do more to stop it, and be more effective in stopping it,' Luckey said. An annual US State Department report on narcotics controls released in March described China's 'significant steps' working with the US last year to reduce precursor exports, which it said included cracking down on online platforms and companies selling them, making arrests, and adding 55 synthetic drugs and precursor chemicals to control lists. China's Ministry of Public Security last month said it had seized more than 1,400 tons of various precursor chemicals, and 151 related criminal cases were resolved in 2024. But authorities in China also acknowledge the scope of the problem, with a recent report noting that channels and means for smuggling chemicals out of the country 'were increasing' and 'constantly being updated,' creating 'greater challenges.' Beijing – which seeks to present itself as a responsible global player – has its own reasons for not wanting to be seen as an international purveyor of illicit drugs. But Chinese officials have long linked cooperation with the US on the issue to the health of the broader relationship. China cut off drug control cooperation completely in August 2022 in retaliation for then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan. It then took a friendly summit between Xi and former US President Joe Biden in late 2023 to get collaboration back on track. This time around, China has bristled at the Trump administration's off-the-bat imposition of tariffs, saying it 'undermines' cooperation. The White House did not respond to a CNN request for comment on China's latest control steps. 'If the US truly wants to cooperate with China, it should face up to the objective facts, correct its wrongdoing, and seek dialogue with China,' a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said last month when asked whether those measures were done in cooperation with the US or at its behest. But Beijing is also keenly aware that the current tariffs are hitting at a time when China's economy has already been struggling with domestic challenges – and there's no certainty those duties couldn't rise again under Trump's capricious trade policy. 'Since the 20% tariff is specifically linked to cooperation on fentanyl, the Chinese might be hoping for a package deal that includes trade, counternarcotics, among other things,' said Yun Sun, director of the China program at the Stimson Center think tank in Washington. 'The Chinese hope to remove the 20% tariff … (and are) eager to get President Trump to visit China this year, so they need to work out good progress,' she said.
CNN
2 hours ago
- CNN
The deadly drug that's complicating US-China trade
Since US President Donald Trump – just days into his second term – began imposing tariffs on China for its role in the flow of deadly opioids like fentanyl into the United States, Beijing's message has been clear. The fentanyl crisis is the 'US's problem,' Chinese officials have repeatedly said, and China has already done 'tremendous work' to address the issue. 'We stand ready for practical cooperation with the US based on equality and mutual respect. That said, we firmly oppose the US pressuring, threatening and blackmailing China under the pretext of the fentanyl issue,' a spokesperson said in March, after Trump's fentanyl tariffs were raised to 20% on all Chinese imports into the US. But as those tariffs remain in place months later and, despite a truce de-escalating other duties, Beijing is signaling it's paying attention to the issue – and may be prepared to do more. China late last month announced it will add two more fentanyl precursors to its list of controlled substances – an expected step that brought it in line with international regulations, which its diplomats presented as a mark of 'active participation' in global drug control. Days earlier, Chinese authorities also extended control over another class of drug known as nitazenes – powerful synthetic opioids raising alarm among global health officials. The same day, Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong told US Ambassador to China David Perdue that Beijing was open to strengthening 'practical cooperation' on drug control. The Trump administration blames China for 'sustaining' the influx into the US of fentanyl, a lab-made, synthetic opioid dozens of times more potent than heroin. Abuse of the drug and its analogues has fueled a drug overdose crisis in the US, killing tens of thousands of Americans annually, though those numbers saw a significant drop last year. In Beijing's view, it's gone above and beyond international norms to stem the outflow of the drug and its component chemicals from its vast pharmaceuticals sector. In 2019 Beijing controlled fentanyl as a drug class – a significant move that drastically reduced the flow of the finished drug directly from China to the US, according to experts and US officials. It didn't take long for criminal networks to adapt, however. Chinese outfits shifted to selling precursor chemicals often to cartel-backed labs in Mexico, which then make and ship illegal fentanyl and similar drugs to the US. Chinese authorities have since controlled a number of these precursor chemicals. But experts and US officials say more could be done – as Beijing remains the largest source for products used to make illegal fentanyl and other synthetic drugs in Mexico and other countries. Chinese officials haven't explicitly linked their recent efforts at controlling two more of these substances to relations with the US, instead calling them another example of the 'goodwill China has shown,' and continuing to reject the premise of the US tariffs. But Beijing is likely expecting it will get credit for the latest moves in trade negotiations with the US. The question, however, is whether the steps will move the needle for Washington – and whether the two sides will be able to cooperate on the issue if their overall relations remain rocky. 'If Washington does not publicly recognize Chinese steps and show responsiveness to Beijing's own concerns, then bilateral law enforcement cooperation likely will falter going forward,' said Ryan Hass, director of the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution. As US-China ties have chafed on everything from technology to China's militarization of the South China Sea, few issues have appeared more personal to American leaders than China's role as a producer of the drugs and chemicals fueling an opioid crisis in the US. During his first term, Trump hailed Chinese leader Xi Jinping's 'wonderful humanitarian gesture' of designating fentanyl a controlled substance in China. Some six years later, however, Trump began his second term accusing China of 'actively sustaining and expanding the business of poisoning our citizens' – an accusation vehemently denied by China. That message also contrasts with assessments from the US Drug Enforcement Agency which, in an annual report released in May, said fentanyl purity declined throughout 2024, consistent with indications that fentanyl cooks in Mexico were having trouble obtaining key precursor chemicals. That was as some China-based suppliers were 'wary of supplying controlled precursors … demonstrating an awareness on their part that the Chinese government is controlling more fentanyl precursors,' it said. Beijing's latest moves to control the two additional fentanyl precursors and nitazenes are positive actions that could have an impact on illicit drug supply chains, experts say. But they are also 'clever maneuvering' from China, according to Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow at the Strobe Talbott Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology at the Brookings Institution. A UN convention on illicit drugs added the two fentanyl precursors to its list of controlled substances last year, meaning signatory countries such as China must follow suit. China controlled a number of nitazenes in 2024 and the latest step, which expands those controls, was already in the works last fall, Felbab-Brown said. 'The Trump administration just reset the clock, did not recognize what China had already done and had committed to do, did not give China any credit for that. As a result, it also now is in a position where China can be promising to do exactly the same actions that it had promised to the Biden administration and use that as part of the bargaining,' Felbab-Brown said. A 'more effective posture' would have been to embrace China's efforts in 2024 and then ask it to fill in the 'substantial and impactful' holes in its drug control program, she added. Beijing has fiercely defended its record when it comes to controlling fentanyl and other synthetic drugs, releasing a 7,000-word white paper outlining its efforts in March, days after Trump imposed his second raft of fentanyl-linked tariffs. It has also balked at a Congressional report released last year accusing the ruling Chinese Communist Party of directly subsidizing the manufacture and export of illicit fentanyl materials and other synthetic narcotics through tax rebates. In China, where the Communist Party keeps a tight grip on all aspects of society, there's comparatively limited opioid abuse, according to official data – a situation Beijing uses to suggest the problem is about American appetite for the drug, not Chinese supply. That also means Chinese officials feel they've gone out of their way to work with Washington on a US domestic issue – efforts they see as being greeted first by a lack of American appreciation, and then by tariffs. Scientists in China on the front lines of identifying new precursors being used by criminal groups also point to reducing demand in the US as a key factor, given the challenges of controlling chemicals involved in synthesizing opioids. 'You really can't solve the fentanyl problem through control alone… the most fundamental issue is still reducing demand,' Hua Zhendong, deputy director of a drug analysis division at a counternarcotics laboratory under China's Ministry of Public Security, told CNN in an interview last September. He pointed to how some chemicals have widespread use in legitimate products, making them impractical to control, while chemicals used to make fentanyl can be easily adjusted to evade rules but still produce the product. 'It's always been like a cat-and-mouse game, because there could be thousands of potential substances for synthesizing fentanyl, we can't proactively control them all – we can only passively follow behind,' said Hua, whose lab was working regularly with US counterparts at the time of the interview to share information on emerging chemicals. Outside observers agree that US efforts to curb demand are critical for mitigating the opioid crisis. They note too that even if no chemicals came from China, fentanyl makers would look to other countries with large pharmaceuticals and chemicals industries, such as India. Despite the challenges of enforcement in a vast sector where goods are often shipped in covert ways by busy air and sea routes, observers also say that more can be done in China. That includes tightening regulations to enable tougher punishments for people who sell controlled precursors to criminal groups or their middlemen unknowingly. Experts also say more could also be done to enforce existing regulations, especially in terms of how central government edicts are enforced by local authorities across China. 'Scheduling drugs and precursors that lead to the production of illegal drugs is one step of many needed in China,' said David Luckey, a senior international and defense researcher at RAND, a US-based think tank. 'I would suggest better still would be actually preventing Chinese companies from selling and distributing these harmful chemicals and drugs to criminal organizations in Mexico.' In addition to China, Trump placed tariffs on Mexico and Canada earlier this year, accusing them of not doing enough to curb migration and fentanyl trafficking, but carved out significant exemptions to those tariff rates. The US earlier this year designated Mexican cartels it alleges are involved in fentanyl trafficking as foreign terrorist organizations. 'China is a command economy with extreme control of its population – I think if the Chinese Communist Party didn't want Chinese companies doing this, the CCP could do more to stop it, and be more effective in stopping it,' Luckey said. An annual US State Department report on narcotics controls released in March described China's 'significant steps' working with the US last year to reduce precursor exports, which it said included cracking down on online platforms and companies selling them, making arrests, and adding 55 synthetic drugs and precursor chemicals to control lists. China's Ministry of Public Security last month said it had seized more than 1,400 tons of various precursor chemicals, and 151 related criminal cases were resolved in 2024. But authorities in China also acknowledge the scope of the problem, with a recent report noting that channels and means for smuggling chemicals out of the country 'were increasing' and 'constantly being updated,' creating 'greater challenges.' Beijing – which seeks to present itself as a responsible global player – has its own reasons for not wanting to be seen as an international purveyor of illicit drugs. But Chinese officials have long linked cooperation with the US on the issue to the health of the broader relationship. China cut off drug control cooperation completely in August 2022 in retaliation for then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan. It then took a friendly summit between Xi and former US President Joe Biden in late 2023 to get collaboration back on track. This time around, China has bristled at the Trump administration's off-the-bat imposition of tariffs, saying it 'undermines' cooperation. The White House did not respond to a CNN request for comment on China's latest control steps. 'If the US truly wants to cooperate with China, it should face up to the objective facts, correct its wrongdoing, and seek dialogue with China,' a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said last month when asked whether those measures were done in cooperation with the US or at its behest. But Beijing is also keenly aware that the current tariffs are hitting at a time when China's economy has already been struggling with domestic challenges – and there's no certainty those duties couldn't rise again under Trump's capricious trade policy. 'Since the 20% tariff is specifically linked to cooperation on fentanyl, the Chinese might be hoping for a package deal that includes trade, counternarcotics, among other things,' said Yun Sun, director of the China program at the Stimson Center think tank in Washington. 'The Chinese hope to remove the 20% tariff … (and are) eager to get President Trump to visit China this year, so they need to work out good progress,' she said.
CNN
2 hours ago
- CNN
The deadly drug that's complicating US-China trade
Since US President Donald Trump – just days into his second term – began imposing tariffs on China for its role in the flow of deadly opioids like fentanyl into the United States, Beijing's message has been clear. The fentanyl crisis is the 'US's problem,' Chinese officials have repeatedly said, and China has already done 'tremendous work' to address the issue. 'We stand ready for practical cooperation with the US based on equality and mutual respect. That said, we firmly oppose the US pressuring, threatening and blackmailing China under the pretext of the fentanyl issue,' a spokesperson said in March, after Trump's fentanyl tariffs were raised to 20% on all Chinese imports into the US. But as those tariffs remain in place months later and, despite a truce de-escalating other duties, Beijing is signaling it's paying attention to the issue – and may be prepared to do more. China late last month announced it will add two more fentanyl precursors to its list of controlled substances – an expected step that brought it in line with international regulations, which its diplomats presented as a mark of 'active participation' in global drug control. Days earlier, Chinese authorities also extended control over another class of drug known as nitazenes – powerful synthetic opioids raising alarm among global health officials. The same day, Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong told US Ambassador to China David Perdue that Beijing was open to strengthening 'practical cooperation' on drug control. The Trump administration blames China for 'sustaining' the influx into the US of fentanyl, a lab-made, synthetic opioid dozens of times more potent than heroin. Abuse of the drug and its analogues has fueled a drug overdose crisis in the US, killing tens of thousands of Americans annually, though those numbers saw a significant drop last year. In Beijing's view, it's gone above and beyond international norms to stem the outflow of the drug and its component chemicals from its vast pharmaceuticals sector. In 2019 Beijing controlled fentanyl as a drug class – a significant move that drastically reduced the flow of the finished drug directly from China to the US, according to experts and US officials. It didn't take long for criminal networks to adapt, however. Chinese outfits shifted to selling precursor chemicals often to cartel-backed labs in Mexico, which then make and ship illegal fentanyl and similar drugs to the US. Chinese authorities have since controlled a number of these precursor chemicals. But experts and US officials say more could be done – as Beijing remains the largest source for products used to make illegal fentanyl and other synthetic drugs in Mexico and other countries. Chinese officials haven't explicitly linked their recent efforts at controlling two more of these substances to relations with the US, instead calling them another example of the 'goodwill China has shown,' and continuing to reject the premise of the US tariffs. But Beijing is likely expecting it will get credit for the latest moves in trade negotiations with the US. The question, however, is whether the steps will move the needle for Washington – and whether the two sides will be able to cooperate on the issue if their overall relations remain rocky. 'If Washington does not publicly recognize Chinese steps and show responsiveness to Beijing's own concerns, then bilateral law enforcement cooperation likely will falter going forward,' said Ryan Hass, director of the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution. As US-China ties have chafed on everything from technology to China's militarization of the South China Sea, few issues have appeared more personal to American leaders than China's role as a producer of the drugs and chemicals fueling an opioid crisis in the US. During his first term, Trump hailed Chinese leader Xi Jinping's 'wonderful humanitarian gesture' of designating fentanyl a controlled substance in China. Some six years later, however, Trump began his second term accusing China of 'actively sustaining and expanding the business of poisoning our citizens' – an accusation vehemently denied by China. That message also contrasts with assessments from the US Drug Enforcement Agency which, in an annual report released in May, said fentanyl purity declined throughout 2024, consistent with indications that fentanyl cooks in Mexico were having trouble obtaining key precursor chemicals. That was as some China-based suppliers were 'wary of supplying controlled precursors … demonstrating an awareness on their part that the Chinese government is controlling more fentanyl precursors,' it said. Beijing's latest moves to control the two additional fentanyl precursors and nitazenes are positive actions that could have an impact on illicit drug supply chains, experts say. But they are also 'clever maneuvering' from China, according to Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow at the Strobe Talbott Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology at the Brookings Institution. A UN convention on illicit drugs added the two fentanyl precursors to its list of controlled substances last year, meaning signatory countries such as China must follow suit. China controlled a number of nitazenes in 2024 and the latest step, which expands those controls, was already in the works last fall, Felbab-Brown said. 'The Trump administration just reset the clock, did not recognize what China had already done and had committed to do, did not give China any credit for that. As a result, it also now is in a position where China can be promising to do exactly the same actions that it had promised to the Biden administration and use that as part of the bargaining,' Felbab-Brown said. A 'more effective posture' would have been to embrace China's efforts in 2024 and then ask it to fill in the 'substantial and impactful' holes in its drug control program, she added. Beijing has fiercely defended its record when it comes to controlling fentanyl and other synthetic drugs, releasing a 7,000-word white paper outlining its efforts in March, days after Trump imposed his second raft of fentanyl-linked tariffs. It has also balked at a Congressional report released last year accusing the ruling Chinese Communist Party of directly subsidizing the manufacture and export of illicit fentanyl materials and other synthetic narcotics through tax rebates. In China, where the Communist Party keeps a tight grip on all aspects of society, there's comparatively limited opioid abuse, according to official data – a situation Beijing uses to suggest the problem is about American appetite for the drug, not Chinese supply. That also means Chinese officials feel they've gone out of their way to work with Washington on a US domestic issue – efforts they see as being greeted first by a lack of American appreciation, and then by tariffs. Scientists in China on the front lines of identifying new precursors being used by criminal groups also point to reducing demand in the US as a key factor, given the challenges of controlling chemicals involved in synthesizing opioids. 'You really can't solve the fentanyl problem through control alone… the most fundamental issue is still reducing demand,' Hua Zhendong, deputy director of a drug analysis division at a counternarcotics laboratory under China's Ministry of Public Security, told CNN in an interview last September. He pointed to how some chemicals have widespread use in legitimate products, making them impractical to control, while chemicals used to make fentanyl can be easily adjusted to evade rules but still produce the product. 'It's always been like a cat-and-mouse game, because there could be thousands of potential substances for synthesizing fentanyl, we can't proactively control them all – we can only passively follow behind,' said Hua, whose lab was working regularly with US counterparts at the time of the interview to share information on emerging chemicals. Outside observers agree that US efforts to curb demand are critical for mitigating the opioid crisis. They note too that even if no chemicals came from China, fentanyl makers would look to other countries with large pharmaceuticals and chemicals industries, such as India. Despite the challenges of enforcement in a vast sector where goods are often shipped in covert ways by busy air and sea routes, observers also say that more can be done in China. That includes tightening regulations to enable tougher punishments for people who sell controlled precursors to criminal groups or their middlemen unknowingly. Experts also say more could also be done to enforce existing regulations, especially in terms of how central government edicts are enforced by local authorities across China. 'Scheduling drugs and precursors that lead to the production of illegal drugs is one step of many needed in China,' said David Luckey, a senior international and defense researcher at RAND, a US-based think tank. 'I would suggest better still would be actually preventing Chinese companies from selling and distributing these harmful chemicals and drugs to criminal organizations in Mexico.' In addition to China, Trump placed tariffs on Mexico and Canada earlier this year, accusing them of not doing enough to curb migration and fentanyl trafficking, but carved out significant exemptions to those tariff rates. The US earlier this year designated Mexican cartels it alleges are involved in fentanyl trafficking as foreign terrorist organizations. 'China is a command economy with extreme control of its population – I think if the Chinese Communist Party didn't want Chinese companies doing this, the CCP could do more to stop it, and be more effective in stopping it,' Luckey said. An annual US State Department report on narcotics controls released in March described China's 'significant steps' working with the US last year to reduce precursor exports, which it said included cracking down on online platforms and companies selling them, making arrests, and adding 55 synthetic drugs and precursor chemicals to control lists. China's Ministry of Public Security last month said it had seized more than 1,400 tons of various precursor chemicals, and 151 related criminal cases were resolved in 2024. But authorities in China also acknowledge the scope of the problem, with a recent report noting that channels and means for smuggling chemicals out of the country 'were increasing' and 'constantly being updated,' creating 'greater challenges.' Beijing – which seeks to present itself as a responsible global player – has its own reasons for not wanting to be seen as an international purveyor of illicit drugs. But Chinese officials have long linked cooperation with the US on the issue to the health of the broader relationship. China cut off drug control cooperation completely in August 2022 in retaliation for then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan. It then took a friendly summit between Xi and former US President Joe Biden in late 2023 to get collaboration back on track. This time around, China has bristled at the Trump administration's off-the-bat imposition of tariffs, saying it 'undermines' cooperation. The White House did not respond to a CNN request for comment on China's latest control steps. 'If the US truly wants to cooperate with China, it should face up to the objective facts, correct its wrongdoing, and seek dialogue with China,' a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said last month when asked whether those measures were done in cooperation with the US or at its behest. But Beijing is also keenly aware that the current tariffs are hitting at a time when China's economy has already been struggling with domestic challenges – and there's no certainty those duties couldn't rise again under Trump's capricious trade policy. 'Since the 20% tariff is specifically linked to cooperation on fentanyl, the Chinese might be hoping for a package deal that includes trade, counternarcotics, among other things,' said Yun Sun, director of the China program at the Stimson Center think tank in Washington. 'The Chinese hope to remove the 20% tariff … (and are) eager to get President Trump to visit China this year, so they need to work out good progress,' she said.
