Foreign-Born Researchers At US Agencies Were Secretly Working For China And Recruiting Others, Senate Report Finds

• Foreign-born researchers working for U.S. agencies were secretly on China’s payroll, signing side agreements to send sensitive research to that country as part of a recruitment operation called the Thousand Talents Plan, a Senate report found.
• 10,000 Chinese nationals in 2018 conducted research in the Department of Energy’s National Labs, and one even had colleagues write him letters of recommendation to the Communist Party-run recruitment program, the bipartisan report stated.
• Agencies like NIH do not even track attempted foreign influence, the Department of State denies only 5% of suspicious visas, and the FBI shut down a key program, according to the report.

Foreign-born researchers working at U.S. agencies secretly joined China’s payroll, sending sensitive U.S.-funded research to the country while U.S. government agencies took almost no defensive measures against a major recruitment operation, a Senate investigation found.

Researchers linked to the Chinese government formed a Chinese cell within the Department of Energy, attained access to American genomic data, and recruited other U.S. researchers to join, the bipartisan report stated.

China’s Thousand Talents Plan (TTP) aims to get foreign governments to finance the communist power’s military and economy by buying off researchers who are doing work abroad. The experts apply to the program, and if approved by the Communist Party, they join China’s payroll and sign secret side agreements that the experts will share their research with that country, according to the investigation.

Some of the information captured by TTP had significant military value. For example, in 2016, Dr. Long Yu, a Chinese citizen and U.S. permanent resident working for a U.S. defense contractor, applied for Chinese talent plans and was arrested for attempting to give hundreds of gigabytes to China, including design info on military jet engines, according to the investigation.

“China wins twice. First, the American taxpayer funds China’s research and development. Second, China uses that research to improve its economic and military status,” Sen. Rob Portman, an Ohio Republican who chairs the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, said in a statement.

Sen. Tom Carper, a Delaware Democrat whose staff co-wrote the report, said “there are serious consequences that come from giving a foreign government so much control over the vital research we rely on to...

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