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Alarm in US over China’s recruitment of scientists

Inkstone

發布於 2019年11月21日00:11

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has deployed counter-intelligence agents in all 56 US field offices and centralized efforts to thwart China's aggressive theft of strategic secrets and its recruitment of American scientists, according to Senate testimony on Tuesday.

Field offices are command posts spread across American cities that are used to carry out local and regional operations.

"Technology is the key to military and economic power," John Brown, assistant director of the FBI's counter-intelligence division, told the US Senate's Homeland Security and Government Affairs Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

"Time and again the Communist Party has shown that it will do whatever is necessary" to supplant the US as a global superpower, he added.

Tuesday's hearing highlighted a fundamental debate echoing across Washington and beyond as the US weighs the relative benefits of open scientific exchange.

Officials are balancing the need to defend its intellectual property from a rapidly rising China while not racially profiling Chinese scholars and scientists as the US works to safeguard American secrets amidst a deep distrust of China's state-led economic model.

China has over 200 programs set up to recruit and co-opt US scientists and divert technology, said members of the subcommittee led by Rob Portman, its Republican chairman from Ohio.

Beijing's hallmark "Thousand Talents Program," launched in 2008, has so far recruited at least 7,000 top international scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs, they said.

Beijing's 'Thousand Talents Program' enables Beijing to set up 'shadow labs' that help give China strategic control of advances in science and technology.
Beijing's 'Thousand Talents Program' enables Beijing to set up 'shadow labs' that help give China strategic control of advances in science and technology.

The programs enable Beijing to set up "shadow labs" in China. The labs use and patent US scientific advances before they are made public, giving the Chinese government a strategic advantage and control over technology, subcommittee members said.

After 2017, Beijing stopped releasing details of its recruitment activities. Still, it continued to sign binding contracts with US-based scientists requiring them to lie or otherwise deny any Chinese links to their American employers and financial backers, the subcommittee members said.

"US taxpayers are funding this research, not China," Portman said, adding that the openness and collaborative nature of US research is being abused by China, Russia, Iran and North Korea.

"The most aggressive is China," he added.

In a probe into the Thousand Talents Programme released this week, the subcommittee said the US government also shares the blame. It said the US has failed to stop China from stealing intellectual property from American universities and is lacking a comprehensive strategy to deal with the threat.

The Chinese embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.

The Chinese-American and scientific communities have felt compelled to push back against increasingly aggressive tactics by the FBI and the Department of Justice.

Even as the groups acknowledge some of the US security establishment's concerns about increased espionage risks, the scientific and Chinese communities argue that Washington is overreacting to the situation.

A Cardozo Law Review study in December appeared to point to evidence of overreach.

Chinese-Americans and the scientific communities are pushing back against what they call increasingly aggressive tactics from the department of justice.
Chinese-Americans and the scientific communities are pushing back against what they call increasingly aggressive tactics from the department of justice.

The study found that the number of Americans of Chinese descent accused of espionage tripled from 2009 to 2015.

But suspects of Chinese descent were nearly twice as likely as people with Western names to see espionage cases dropped, suggesting that more defendants were innocent.

And, if convicted, they received average sentences twice as long as their Western-named counterparts, the study found.

Brown, Portman and other officials said ethnic Chinese were not being singled out in the crackdown on China's recruitment of American scientists.

China recruited among varied nationalities, they said, adding that collaboration and scientific exchange among countries remains vital.

But the tone of the hearing and much of its substance centered on the rising threat from Beijing.

Increasing tensions between China and America have resulted in a heightened focus on security concerns posed by Beijing.
Increasing tensions between China and America have resulted in a heightened focus on security concerns posed by Beijing.

A few witnesses pushed back " albeit rather gently " against the subcommittee's overriding narrative.

Top officials at the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation and Department of Energy " major funding sources for American science " underscored the outsize benefits derived from global collaboration.

These include efforts to fight disease and crack the secrets of physics.

"It is important to reaffirm our commitment to global research," said Rebecca Keiser, head of the National Science Foundation's office of international science and engineering. "International cooperation is essential."

Still, scientists were quick to highlight their ramped-up security efforts given the growing suspicion towards China in Washington these days. These include stricter vetting of scientists, potential conflicts of interest and ties to China.

"This threat is developing so quickly," said Keiser. "We thank the security agencies for bringing them to our attention."

Copyright (c) 2019. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.

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