China Has Increasing Sway in US Science, JASON Report Says – By Patrick Tucker (Defense One) / Dec 16 2019
Beijing is using better jobs at home, aggressive intelligence agencies, and a greater financial reach to influence American institutions.
Alarmed about how the Chinese government is chilling the political speech of athletes like LeBron James? Wait until Beijing starts influencing U.S. scientists. A new report from the Defense Department’s JASON research group says U.S. scientific research can be threatened when Chinese nationals who come to the United States for post-graduate degrees in science and technology return home and are pressed to cooperate with China’s intelligence and security services.
The report, out this month, looked at research projects funded by the National Science Foundation. It found that “actions from Chinese government and its institutions…are not in accord with U.S. values of science ethics.” Specifically, the report says that the Chinese government just doesn’t get something essential about the way scientific research is done in the United States and in the West: that conflicts of interest have to be spelled out very clearly. In the case of the Chinese students, it’s a legal obligation to cooperate with the Chinese Communist Party’s security and intelligence services, as laid out in the 2017 National Intelligence Law.
It’s the same law that allows Chinese authorities to obtain any and all information Huawei has on customers, as well as data on technical vulnerabilities in Huawei products. The law even warns citizens against telling others that they have helped the government. “Many U.S. citizens would view this law as particularly vexatious and some, perhaps many, would refuse to comply,” the report says.
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