A leak of more than 100,000 documents shows that a little-known Chinese company has been quietly selling censorship systems seemingly modeled on the Great Firewall to governments around the world.

Geedge Networks, a company founded in 2018 that counts the “father” of China’s massive censorship infrastructure as one of its investors, styles itself as a network-monitoring provider, offering business-grade cybersecurity tools to “gain comprehensive visibility and minimize security risks” for its customers, the documents show. In fact, researchers found that it has been operating a sophisticated system that allows users to monitor online information, block certain websites and VPN tools, and spy on specific individuals.

Researchers who reviewed the leaked material found that the company is able to package advanced surveillance capabilities into what amounts to a commercialized version of the Great Firewall—a wholesale solution with both hardware that can be installed in any telecom data center and software operated by local government officers. The documents also discuss desired functions that the company is working on, such as cyberattack-for-hire and geofencing certain users.

According to the leaked documents, Geedge has already entered operation in Kazakhstan, Ethiopia, Pakistan, and Myanmar, as well as another unidentified country. A public job posting shows that Geedge is also looking for engineers who can travel to other countries for engineering work, including to several countries not named in the leaked documents, WIRED has found.

The files, including Jira and Confluence entries, source code, and correspondence with a Chinese academic institution, mostly involve internal technical documentation, operation logs, and communications to solve issues and add functionalities. Provided through an anonymous leak, the files were studied by a consortium of human rights and media organizations including Amnesty International, InterSecLab, Justice For Myanmar, Paper Trail Media, The Globe and Mail, the Tor Project, the Austrian newspaper Der Standard, and Follow The Money.

“This is not like lawful interception that every country does, including Western democracies,” says Marla Rivera, a technical researcher at InterSecLab, a global digital forensics research institution. In addition to mass censorship, the system allows governments to target specific individuals based on their website activities, like having visited a certain domain.

The surveillance system that Geedge is selling “gives so much power to the government that really nobody should have,” Rivera says. “This is very frightening.”

Digital Authoritarianism as a Service

At the core of Geedge’s offering is a gateway tool called Tiangou Secure Gateway (TSG), designed to sit inside data centers and could be scaled to process the internet traffic of an entire country, documents reveal. According to researchers, every packet of internet traffic runs through it, where it can be scanned, filtered, or stopped outright. Besides monitoring the entire traffic, documents show that the system also allows setting up additional rules for specific users that it deems suspicious and collecting their network activities.

For unencrypted internet traffic, the system is able to intercept sensitive information such as website content, passwords, and email attachments, according to the leaked documents. If the content is properly encrypted through the Transport Layer Security protocol, the system uses deep packet inspection and machine learning techniques to extract metadata from the encrypted traffic and predict whether it’s going through a censorship circumvention tool like a VPN. If it can’t distinguish the content of the encrypted traffic, the system can also opt to flag it as suspicious and block it for a period of time.

A research team affiliated with UNIST has unveiled a technological advancement that allows body heat to generate electricity sufficient to power electronic devices. This innovation paves the way for the commercialization of battery-free wearable gadgets and Internet of Things (IoT) sensors that operate solely on heat generated by the human body.

Led by Professor Sung-Yeon Jang from the School of Energy and Chemical Engineering at UNIST, the research team developed the world’s first high-performance n-type solid-state thermogalvanic cell capable of powering actual electronic devices. The paper is published in the journal Energy & Environmental Science.

Thermogalvanic cells are compact generators that convert temperature differences—such as the human body temperature (~36°C) versus surrounding air (20–25°C)—into electrical energy. However, due to the minimal temperature gradient, previous systems struggled to produce enough power to operate real-world electronics.

The newly developed solid-state device overcomes this challenge by delivering sufficient voltage and current to power practical devices. While solid-state designs typically offer advantages such as safety from leakage, ion mobility issues within the electrolyte have historically limited their current output. The research team engineered an electrolyte that facilitates efficient ion transport, and further, the thermally driven ion diffusion enhances overall output voltage.

By connecting 100 of these cells in series—similar to building with LEGO blocks—approximately 1.5V can be generated from body heat, comparable to standard AA batteries. Connecting 16 such series-connected modules enables the activation of devices like LED lights, electronic clocks, and temperature/humidity sensors.

Notably, the cell’s Seebeck coefficient (voltage change per temperature difference) is –40.05 mV/K, representing up to a fivefold increase over conventional n-type cells. The device also demonstrated excellent durability, maintaining consistent performance after 50 charge-discharge cycles.

The core of this solid-state cell comprises a conductive polymer, PEDOT:PSS, and a redox couple of Fe(ClO₄)₂/3. Electrostatic interactions between the negatively charged sulfonate groups (–SO₃⁻) of the polymer and the Fe²⁺/Fe³⁺ ions establish a stable structure, while perchlorate ions (ClO₄⁻) are free to move, facilitating ion diffusion and thermodiffusion effects that boost power output.

Professor Jang stated, “This research marks a new milestone in low-temperature waste heat energy harvesting and flexible energy conversion devices. It has the potential to serve as a self-powered system for wearable electronics and autonomous IoT devices driven solely by body heat.”

The National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS), in collaboration with Seikei University, has successfully enhanced the power output of lithium-air batteries, which are attracting attention as next-generation batteries. By developing a highly porous electrode made of carbon nanotubes, the team achieved a tenfold increase in output current. The lithium-air battery developed in this study not only has extremely high energy density compared to lithium-ion batteries but also significantly improved power performance.

As a result, it is now able to supply the power required for hovering small drones, making significant improvements in flight duration feasible. These results were published online in the Journal of Power Sources on February 9, 2025.

Lithium-air batteries (LABs) are rechargeable batteries that operate through discharge and charge reactions using lithium and oxygen. They are attracting attention as an energy storage technology capable of achieving significantly lighter weight and larger capacity than conventional lithium-ion batteries, with a potential energy density 5 to 10 times higher. However, lithium-air batteries have extremely slow reaction kinetics, resulting in only very weak output current. To make use of the large amount of energy stored in lithium-air batteries, a fundamental improvement in their power output has been required.

The research team developed a highly porous carbon nanotube air electrode that significantly improved oxygen accessibility. When combined with a low-viscosity amide-based electrolyte, the new design enabled a tenfold increase in current density. The resulting battery achieved a specific power density sufficient to support hovering in lightweight drones.

Based on these results, the team aims to scale up lithium-air battery cells, with the goal of developing ultra-lightweight and high-capacity batteries that can be used as power sources for small drones and microrobots.