Weak point: Feds must stop outsourcing research security to universities

Legendary bank robber Willie Sutton was quoted as saying he robbed banks “because that’s where the money is.” Similar to Sutton, China’s communist regime targets American research universities. This is because many of America’s cutting-edge research results are located there.

America’s research enterprise, developed in universities and funded by federal research grants, remains highly vulnerable to malign foreign influence operations, according to government warning meeting, F.B.I. And that Government Accountability Office.

Taxpayer investments in university research programs are huge. In fiscal year 2022, nearly $55 billion in federal taxpayer funds accounted for 55% of all universities. Research funding Development of new technologies in aerospace, biomedicine, chemistry, mechanical engineering, metallurgical engineering and other sciences.

It overtook its competitors and became one of the world’s leading economic and military powers. 2025, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) engages in secret theft and research exploitation. He recently co-starred with FBI Director Christopher Wray, who is also the head of Britain’s MI5. warned The “scale” [China’s] “The ambition is huge” and he has already “achieved the largest transfer of wealth”. [of intellectual property] in human history. ”

To achieve its objectives, the Chinese Communist Party sometimes engages in research espionage, leveraging research partnerships between highly qualified Chinese and American research faculty, while obtaining the research results it seeks. They sometimes target “flexible” American research faculty.

Recent Chinese Communist PartyHuman resources recruitmentOur success in secretly recruiting research faculty and staff at American universities shows our vulnerability.

In 2020, the US Department of Justice indicted a prominent nanotechnology expert Dr. Charles Lieber, served as dean of Harvard University’s Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology while concealing his vast participation in China’s Thousand Talents Plan. Mr. Lieber was a “strategic scientist” at Wuhan University of Science and Technology, where he was paid $50,000 a month and a generous living stipend, and was given more than $1.5 million to set up a research lab at Wuhan University of Technology.

Despite this major research security flaw and significant disclosure of foreign funding, failureprovided by the taxpayer $676 million Provides federal research funding to Harvard University in FY2023.

Stanford University recently settlement agreement It was discovered that for years the company failed to disclose research contracts funded by China in federal research grant applications from 2015 to 2020. The school, through inaction, participated in this lie despite receiving a large federal research grant from the Department of the Army and Navy. , Air Force, NASA, National Science Foundation. The agreement follows a Department of Education disclosure in 2020 that Stanford University. could not report From 2010 to 2020, at the beginning of a major expansion of its China operations, Chinese donors exceeded $64 million.

Despite shocking research security failures, Stanford University 1 billion dollars Received federal research grant in 2023.

Texas A&M University has proven that universities can do better if they try. An internal investigation in 2020 revealed that more than 100 STEM research faculty were secretly involved as paid participants in a Chinese talent recruitment program. He was one of only five A&M research faculty members to disclose such involvement.

A few months later, the Justice Department Paid The distinguished A&M engineering professor and NASA researcher hides a lucrative relationship with China. These developments occurred after the Ministry of Education opened educational institutions. investigation In 2019, the university became compliant with foreign gift and contract disclosure requirements.

Unlike HbeVard and stanfordA&M resisted the temptation to lament the burden. Legal compliance Or falsely accusing federal agents of “anti-Asian bias.” Instead, universities worked closely with federal agencies to uncover and counter the Chinese Communist Party’s insidious threats to research.

FBI Director Christopher Wray said,Lights flashing everywhere” indicates a growing threat to the United States, but continuing to impose significant research security burdens on universities that are poorly equipped to meet those responsibilities, even if they accept them, is an unacceptable national threat. It’s a security gamble.

As Congress is considering law The executive branch should act quickly to reverse the Chinese Communist Party’s infiltration of university research operations by improving foreign funding disclosure requirements and increasing penalties for noncompliance.

This means that reviews of foreign research collaborations should no longer be delegated to universities by federal agencies.Some agencies are slowly Strengthening screening Research grant recipients and their collaborators are rarely examined for consistency across institutions.

The National Science Foundation or other trusted federal agency works with our nation’s intelligence agencies to ensure that foreign collaborators (individual researchers, foreign companies, foreign universities) are not committing any wrongdoing. Therefore, foreign collaborators must be vetted before research grants are awarded. They were also engaged in espionage against us.

If the proposed foreign collaborator (identified in the University’s federal research grant application) poses an unacceptable risk to our research enterprise, the grant application must be rejected. At the same time, the review program must reveal whether universities and their employees have unacceptably high-risk research partnerships with the Chinese Communist Party or other nefarious governments, groups, or individuals.

With billions of dollars in federal research funding at stake, research universities will be very careful when choosing research collaborations. Misuse, manipulation, or intentional (or negligent) violation of data related to screening programs by federal officials should result in severe criminal penalties.

The federal government’s handing over of foreign research collaborations to accountability scrutiny would provide peace of mind to policymakers, federal research agencies, universities, and the public that national security interests are being protected.

America is in a precarious position, just as it was before Pearl Harbor and 9/11.The threat from the Chinese Communist Party continues identified by Congress, federal agencies, and the bipartisan U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission.

You have been warned, but you must act.

Paul R. Moore, a former assistant U.S. attorney and chief investigative advisor for the U.S. Department of Education, is a senior fellow at the Prague Institute for Security Studies.