US Justice Department Pushes Ahead With Counter China Plan – The Diplomat

Trans-Pacific View | Security

Two current instances illustrate that the United States authorities’s push towards alleged cases of illicit tech switch to China continues unabated. On January 14, the U.S. lawyer’s workplace in Massachusetts introduced {that a} mechanical engineering professor on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) was arrested and charged with wire fraud, failing to file a overseas checking account report, and making a false assertion in a tax return, in relation to his alleged relationships with Chinese entities. The day earlier than, on January 13, a chief scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center plead responsible to 1 depend of constructing false statements about his relationship with the Chinese authorities within the Manhattan federal courtroom in New York.

According to the Justice Department assertion asserting MIT professor Gang Chen’s arrest, he “has allegedly held various appointments with the PRC designed to promote the PRC’s technological and scientific development by providing advice and expertise – sometimes directly to PRC government officials – and often in exchange for financial compensation.” The assertion specified that Chen had acted as an “overseas expert” for China’s authorities “at the request of the PRC Consulate Office in New York” and served “as a member of at least two PRC Talent Programs,” receiving virtually $29 million in analysis funding.

The Justice Department alleges that Chen — a nanotechnology specialist, Carl Richard Soderberg Professor of Power Engineering and the director of the MIT Pappalardo Micro/Nano Engineering Laboratory — didn’t disclose this info as a part of his (profitable) grant utility to the U.S. Department of Energy. It has additionally charged Chen with failing to reveal that he held a checking account in China with greater than $10,000 in it in his 2018 revenue tax return.

In a January 14 letter to the group, MIT President L. Rafael Reif famous that “For all of us who know Gang, this news is surprising, deeply distressing and hard to understand,” going to additionally observe that “for our community, any charge of this kind is a matter of great seriousness and concern.”

Separately, on January 13 the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of New York, introduced that Meyya Meyyappan, chief scientist in exploration know-how on the Center for Nanotechnology, NASA’s Ames Research Center, pleaded responsible to creating false statements to the NASA Office of Inspector General, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office about his affiliation with China’s Thousand Talents Program in addition to a professorship at a Chinese college supported by means of Chinese authorities funding.

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The Justice Department’s assertion on the case quoted FBI Assistant Director William F. Sweeney Jr. as saying:

Members of U.S. authorities companies are strictly prohibited from sustaining undisclosed affiliations with overseas entities, particularly these which are actively in search of our mental property and technological advances. Meyyappan violated this sacred rule, after which lied to FBI brokers about it.  Actions like these carried about by Meyyappan can have safety implications, and his prices ought to function a warning to others fascinated with participating in the identical kind of exercise.

Meyyappan has labored at NASA since 1996. In August final 12 months, the Justice Department additionally charged a Texas A&M University professor, Zhengdong Cheng, who was engaged on a NASA undertaking, for concealing his affiliation with Chinese entities, together with the Guangdong University of Technology.

Almost precisely a 12 months in the past, in January 2020, the pinnacle of Harvard University’s chemistry division, Charles M. Lieber, was arrested on prices of constructing false statements about his affiliation with China’s Thousand Talents program and monetary relationship with the Chinese authorities. Along with Lieber, federal authorities additionally charged Harvard-affiliated most cancers specialist Zaosong Zheng, and a scientist related to Boston University until 2019, Yanqing Ye, with associated and extra crimes.

In 2018, the Justice Department launched its “China Initiative” to counter tech espionage by, and illicit switch of know-how to, China. Since then, it has aggressively pursued such instances, typically zeroing on researchers concerned in delicate scientific and tech work. Critics keep that the initiative unfairly targets researchers based mostly on their ethnicity, feeds rising Sinophobia within the U.S., and stands to curb regular China-U.S. scientific exchanges.