She doesn’t believe it’s her place to comment on, say, China’s checkered human-rights record. For example, the U.S. government has accused China of abuses against its majority-Muslim Uighur population. “I’m not an expert on this,” she says. “I haven’t done the research. I don’t think it’s my business. I’m not going to make big claims on my social media.” But as a Stanford international-relations major, she could surely do her homework on this issue, no? “I’m just more of a skeptic when it comes to data in general,” says Gu. “So it’s not like I can read an article and be like, ‘Oh, well, this must be the truth.’ I need to have a ton of evidence. I need to maybe go to the place, maybe talk to 10 primary-source people who are in a location and have experienced life there. Then I need to go see images. I need to listen to recordings. I need to think about how history affects it. Then I need to read books on how politics affects it. This is a lifelong search.”