Chinese scientists build world's most powerful spy camera
Chinese scientists have achieved a quantum leap in optical imaging technology with a powerful laser that could redefine global standards for surveillance, potentially allowing Beijing to scrutinise foreign military satellites with unparalleled precision or distinguish details as fine as a human face from low-Earth orbit.
The team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Aerospace Information Research Institute captured images with millimetre-level resolution from distances exceeding 100km (62 miles), a feat previously deemed unattainable.
The breakthrough was described in a study published on Friday in the peer-reviewed Chinese Journal of Lasers.
During a trial conducted across Qinghai Lake – a sprawling alpine body of water in China's remote northwest – the researchers deployed a cutting-edge synthetic aperture lidar system, a type of laser-based imaging system with a wide field of vision.
Positioned on the lake's northern shore, the device targeted arrays of reflective prisms placed 101.8km away under pristine atmospheric conditions with high visibility, minimal cloud cover, and steady wind.
The device was able to quickly spot details measuring as small as 1.7mm across (1/16 inch) and tell the distance to objects with an accuracy of 15.6mm – a level of detail 100 times better than what can be seen with the leading spy cameras and telescopes that use lenses.
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Platforms like WeChat and TikTok are indeed double-edged: they can be used for surveillance, but also for storytelling, mutual aid, and grassroots advocacy. What Yu fails to mention is this: He was once 'the dragon' he now seeks to shut out. To presume otherwise is to vastly underestimate the power of American education — something Yu himself should know firsthand. Yet there's a glaring irony: Yu himself is living proof that American education works — not just as a system of knowledge transmission, but as a transformative force of values, perspective and civic engagement. Yu came to the US in the 1980s as an international student from China. He benefited from the very system he now decries — one that welcomed global talent, nurtured individual potential and allowed a Chinese-born scholar to rise to the highest levels of US policymaking. If America had treated him then the way he now proposes treating others, Miles Yu might still be teaching Maoist doctrine in Anhui, not advising presidents in Washington. If Miles Yu truly believed Chinese students couldn't be trusted, one wonders why he chose to stay and serve in the US government rather than return to China after pursuing his PhD degree. Doesn't his own life prove the power of American education to transform, inspire, and integrate? If we now assume every Chinese student is a CCP foot soldier, does that include him too? Or is he the exception who proves the value — not the danger — of keeping the door open? He chose to stay in the United States not because he was coerced but because the openness and meritocracy of American institutions resonated with him. If we now claim that every Chinese student is a sleeper agent for Beijing, then Yu's own journey becomes an inconvenient contradiction. Isn't he the evidence that America's democratic model can win hearts and minds? That contradiction isn't just ironic. It's emblematic of a dangerous drift in US national security thinking in which suspicion has replaced strategy and identity has replaced evidence. If the US blocks Chinese students while maintaining that it wants to 'compete' with China, Beijing will likely frame the move as hypocritical — claiming it reveals American insecurity rather than confidence in its democratic model. The retaliatory measures may not just hurt bilateral relations but also signal to other countries the risks of aligning too closely with US policy on China. Yu's central claim is that Chinese students and scholars serve as covert extensions of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), sent not to learn but to spy, steal, and subvert. This argument has gained traction in parts of Washington, where fears of intellectual property theft and technological competition are real and justified. 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