World Affairs Brief, November 22, 2019 Commentary and Insights on a Troubled World.

Copyright Joel Skousen. Partial quotations with attribution permitted. Cite source as Joel Skousen’s World Affairs Brief (http://www.worldaffairsbrief.com).

TECHNOLOGY TRANSFERS TO CHINA

Transfer of sensitive technology to China was rampant during the Clinton administration, but kept going on via the Commerce Department during the various Bush regimes. Even under Trump, China is still enticing thousands of US-based scientists to give their research over to China for big bucks, The Epoch Time reports:

China has paid more than 7,000 U.S. scientists and other experts over the past decade through its Thousand Talents Plan (TTP) to hand over their research, according to a Senate subcommittee report made public on Nov. 18.

The TTP is only one of about 200 such Chinese “talent recruitment” programs. While being paid by China, these scientists have also received U.S. government funding. U.S. taxpayers have thus spent hundreds of billions to fund research and development that has ended up in China, according to the report.

Congressional aides who briefed reporters on the report gave examples of what TTP-linked scientists have done. In one instance, a researcher at the U.S. Department of Energy downloaded more than 30,000 files without authorization and took them to China.

In another example, at the National Institutes of Health, a scientist redirected research from a lab in the United States to have it done instead at a Chinese institution.

Sometimes, the scientists have transferred intellectual property to China, while in other instances, they have set up shadow labs in China to simultaneously replicate their U.S.-based work.