A report by Alex Joske entitled 'Hunting the Phoenix' and published by The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) on August 20, 2020, establishes that the CCP has at least 600 stations around the world that identify and recruit scientists and technologists who would be valuable to China’s quest for technological dominance. The ASPI report observes that the overseas talent-recruitment stations have a mandate broader than the Thousand Talents Plan. It notes that the talent-recruitment stations are “[o]verseas organisations or individuals contracted by the CCP to carry out talent-recruitment work,” though often supervised by United Front groups – organizations under the Party’s eponymous department tasked with projecting China’s influence abroad and protecting the CCP’s political interests, often through illegal means. More damningly, the report argues that these stations “[m]ay receive instructions to target individuals with access to particular technologies.” If this sounds a shade too close to economic espionage, that’s because it is. The report notes that “[i]n at least two cases, talent-recruitment stations have been linked to alleged economic espionage.”