Hackers believed to be working for the Chinese government impersonated an employee of the American AI company Anthropic and former U.S. officials in a spying campaign aimed at experts who shape American artificial intelligence policy, a U.S. cybersecurity firm reported on Thursday. The campaign, uncovered by the Silicon Valley-based firm Proofpoint, targeted the email accounts of people who work on AI export controls and the military applications of AI at American universities, think tanks, and law firms. Proofpoint said the attempts took place in February and July of this year. The operatives posed as Lynne Parker, a technology official who served in the White House under both President Donald Trump and former President Joe Biden. In the fabricated messages, the impersonated Parker invited an employee of a U.S. law firm to join a bogus "AI policy advisory committee," then followed up with a document carrying malware that was presented as more information about the committee. The real Parker learned what was happening when colleagues began contacting her about suspicious messages sent in her name. "My first concern was for the colleagues who might receive the impersonated email," she told CNN. "I wanted to warn them but realized that's very difficult to do when I don't know who is being targeted." Parker, who is now associate vice chancellor emerita at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, added: "On a personal level, I felt sadness that relationships I've built over my career were being exploited by bad actors to deceive others." The hackers also impersonated a senior employee at Anthropic, the U.S. artificial intelligence company. On February 26, they sent an email under that employee's name to an AI policy analyst at an American think tank with the subject line "Request for Feedback on Military Integration of Claude," referring to one of Anthropic's AI models. During the exchange, the hackers attempted to steal the analyst's email credentials, according to Proofpoint. The next day, the Trump administration ordered federal agencies and military contractors to stop doing business with Anthropic after the company refused to let the Pentagon use its artificial intelligence technology without restrictions. Proofpoint said it found no evidence that the hackers successfully broke into any of the targeted organizations, but cautioned that it may have uncovered only part of the activity, noting that Beijing-linked groups are known to keep trying against a target until they succeed. Mark Kelly, a researcher at Proofpoint, told CNN the firm is "confident that [the hacking group] is a Chinese government-aligned threat actor based on targeting consistently in line with Chinese government interests, observed infrastructure and technical artifacts, and corroboration from industry partners." CNN said it had asked the Chinese Embassy in Washington for comment. Beijing routinely denies American hacking allegations. The report lands at a moment when artificial intelligence has become one of the central pressure points in the U.S.-China relationship. Trump discussed AI with Chinese leader Xi Jinping at the White House last week, but the meeting produced no substantive agreement on the technology. The president has resisted calls for guardrails on advanced AI models out of concern that the United States could fall behind China in the race for supremacy in the field. Last month, the Trump administration accused Chinese AI firms of "industrial-scale" theft of their American counterparts' trade secrets, saying the firms were copying protected technology to save money and reach the market faster. China denied those accusations. Washington's allies have raised similar alarms. Britain's MI5 intelligence service said Wednesday that British academics had contributed research on AI and cybersecurity to a Chinese institute with close ties to Chinese intelligence — in some cases, the advisory said, the academics may not have known about the connection. Experts who track Chinese cyber operations say they are now targeting nearly every layer of the AI ecosystem, from the semiconductors that power the technology to the researchers and policy specialists who dedicate their careers to it. How well the United States protects that ecosystem from infiltration could shape its competitive standing in AI, according to those experts. "Getting AI policy right is essential to our national security and economic competitiveness," Parker said. "That includes protecting the people and institutions whose expertise helps inform those decisions."