[House Hearing, 117 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
BALANCING OPEN SCIENCE AND SECURITY
IN THE U.S. RESEARCH ENTERPRISE
=======================================================================
JOINT HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON INVESTIGATIONS
AND OVERSIGHT
SUBCOMMITTEE ON RESEARCH AND TECHNOLOGY
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE,
AND TECHNOLOGY
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
OCTOBER 5, 2021
__________
Serial No. 117-33
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available via the World Wide Web: http://science.house.gov
___________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
45-647PDF WASHINGTON : 2023
COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY
HON. EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas, Chairwoman
ZOE LOFGREN, California FRANK LUCAS, Oklahoma,
SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon Ranking Member
AMI BERA, California MO BROOKS, Alabama
HALEY STEVENS, Michigan, BILL POSEY, Florida
Vice Chair RANDY WEBER, Texas
MIKIE SHERRILL, New Jersey BRIAN BABIN, Texas
JAMAAL BOWMAN, New York ANTHONY GONZALEZ, Ohio
MELANIE A. STANSBURY, New Mexico MICHAEL WALTZ, Florida
BRAD SHERMAN, California JAMES R. BAIRD, Indiana
ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado DANIEL WEBSTER, Florida
JERRY McNERNEY, California MIKE GARCIA, California
PAUL TONKO, New York STEPHANIE I. BICE, Oklahoma
BILL FOSTER, Illinois YOUNG KIM, California
DONALD NORCROSS, New Jersey RANDY FEENSTRA, Iowa
DON BEYER, Virginia JAKE LaTURNER, Kansas
CHARLIE CRIST, Florida CARLOS A. GIMENEZ, Florida
SEAN CASTEN, Illinois JAY OBERNOLTE, California
CONOR LAMB, Pennsylvania PETER MEIJER, Michigan
DEBORAH ROSS, North Carolina JAKE ELLZEY, TEXAS
GWEN MOORE, Wisconsin VACANCY
DAN KILDEE, Michigan
SUSAN WILD, Pennsylvania
LIZZIE FLETCHER, Texas
------
Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight
HON. BILL FOSTER, Illinois, Chairman
ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado JAY OBERNOLTE, California,
AMI BERA, California Ranking Member
GWEN MOORE, Wisconsin VACANCY
SEAN CASTEN, Illinois VACANCY
------
Subcommittee on Research and Technology
HON. HALEY STEVENS, Michigan, Chairwoman
MELANIE A. STANSBURY, New Mexico MICHAEL WALTZ, Florida,
PAUL TONKO, New York Ranking Member
GWEN MOORE, Wisconsin ANTHONY GONZALEZ, Ohio
SUSAN WILD, Pennsylvania JAMES R. BAIRD, Indiana
BILL FOSTER, Illinois JAKE LaTURNER, Kansas
CONOR LAMB, Pennsylvania PETER MEIJER, Michigan
DEBORAH ROSS, North Carolina VACANCY
C O N T E N T S
October 5, 2021
Page
Hearing Charter.................................................. 2
Opening Statements
Statement by Representative Bill Foster, Chairman, Subcommittee
on Investigations and Oversight, Committee on Science, Space,
and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives.................. 10
Written Statement............................................ 12
Statement by Representative Jay Obernolte, Ranking Member,
Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight, Committee on
Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives.. 13
Written Statement............................................ 14
Statement by Representative Haley Stevens, Chairwoman,
Subcommittee on Research and Technology, Committee on Science,
Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives........... 15
Written Statement............................................ 16
Statement by Representative Michael Waltz, Ranking Member,
Subcommittee on Research and Technology, Committee on Science,
Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives........... 17
Written Statement............................................ 18
Written statement by Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson,
Chairwoman, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S.
House of Representatives....................................... 20
Written statement by Representative Frank Lucas, Ranking Member,
Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of
Representatives................................................ 20
Witnesses:
Dr. Maria Zuber, Co-Chair, National Science, Technology, and
Security Roundtable, National Academies of Sciences,
Engineering, and Medicine; Vice President for Research and E.
A. Griswold Professor of Geophysics, Massachusetts Institute of
Technology
Oral Statement............................................... 22
Written Statement............................................ 25
Ms. Allison Lerner, Inspector General, National Science
Foundation
Oral Statement............................................... 36
Written Statement............................................ 38
Ms. Candice N. Wright, Director, Science, Technology Assessment,
and Analytics, U.S. Government Accountability Office
Oral Statement............................................... 48
Written Statement............................................ 50
Dr. Xiaoxing Xi, Laura H. Carnell Professor of Physics, Temple
University
Oral Statement............................................... 68
Written Statement............................................ 70
Discussion....................................................... 73
Appendix I: Answers to Post-Hearing Questions
Dr. Maria Zuber, Co-Chair, National Science, Technology, and
Security Roundtable, National Academies of Sciences,
Engineering, and Medicine; Vice President for Research and E.
A. Griswold Professor of Geophysics, Massachusetts Institute of
Technology..................................................... 94
Ms. Allison Lerner, Inspector General, National Science
Foundation..................................................... 95
Addendum--U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of
Investigation.............................................. 98
Ms. Candice N. Wright, Director, Science, Technology Assessment,
and Analytics, U.S. Government Accountability Office........... 109
Dr. Xiaoxing Xi, Laura H. Carnell Professor of Physics, Temple
University..................................................... 114
Appendix II: Additional Material for the Record
Document submitted by Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson,
Chairwoman, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S.
House of Representatives
``ASBMB statement on balancing open science and security in
the U.S. research enterprise,'' American Society for
Biochemistry and Molecular Biology......................... 116
Document submitted by Representative Bill Foster, Chairman,
Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight, Committee on
Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives
``New Research Shows Significant Racial Disparities Against
Chinese and Asians in Espionage Prosecutions,'' Committee
of 100..................................................... 118
Letter submitted by Representative Deborah Ross, Subcommittee on
Research and Technology, Committee on Science, Space, and
Technology, U.S. House of Representatives...................... 122
Reports submitted by Representative Michael Waltz, Ranking
Member, Subcommittee on Research and Technology, Committee on
Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives
``The Chinese Communist Party's Military-Civil Fusion
Policy,'' U.S. Department of State (weblink)............... 128
``Military-Civil Fusion and the People's Republic of China,''
U.S. Department of State................................... 129
BALANCING OPEN SCIENCE AND SECURITY
IN THE U.S. RESEARCH ENTERPRISE
----------
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2021
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight,
joint with the Subcommittee
on Research and Technology,
Committee on Science, Space, and Technology,
Washington, D.C.
The Subcommittees met, pursuant to notice, at 10:01 a.m.,
via Zoom, Hon. Bill Foster [Chairman of the Subcommittee on
Investigations and Oversight] presiding.
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Foster [continuing]. Come to order. Now, with--
now, a few pro forma statements. Without objection, the Chair
is authorized to declare recess at any time. Before I deliver
my opening remarks, I wanted to note that today the Committee
is meeting virtually, so I wanted to announce a couple of pro
forma reminders to the Members about the conduct of this
hearing. First, Members should keep their video feed on as long
as they are present in the hearing. Members are responsible for
their own microphones. Please also keep your microphones muted
unless you are speaking. And, finally, if Members have
documents that they wish to submit for the record, please e-
mail them to the Committee Clerk, whose e-mail address was
circulated prior to the hearing.
Well, good morning, and welcome to our Members and to our
panelists. Thank you all for joining us today. Collaboration is
the lifeblood of scientific discovery. Scientists build on one
another's work, across time and around the globe. Openness in
science allows reproduction and replication of work, increasing
the reliability of conclusions and building public trust. It
fosters cooperation across disciplines, brings in new
perspectives, and sparks ideas that wouldn't come from any one
solitary lab, or even one country.
The COVID-19 pandemic has driven home the importance of
international collaboration in science. In those early months,
before the virus had been detected on our shores, American
scientists and health authorities around the world were
dependent upon researchers in impacted countries to share what
they knew about the virus, how it spread, and how it killed.
Over a year in, the collaboration with international partners
is still vital to detect emerging variants as early as possible
and to assess vaccine efficacy. International problems require
international solutions, and there are real costs to closing
off your research from the rest of the world.
In the House Science Committee, we recently held a
Subcommittee hearing on the origins of the coronavirus. At the
time, a potentially very significant fact was that the closest
known relative of SARS-COV-2 was a bat virus from southern
China which had been studied at the Wuhan Virology Lab. Since
then, it appears that closer relatives have been identified, by
an open international collaboration, in bats from caves in
Laos. If that discovery had been made by an open collaboration
with access to bat virus samples throughout the world, it would
have been a triumph for international science that would have
strengthened China's claim that their lab's activities were not
the source of the pandemic. However, because of China's
insistence that only a closed and controlled investigation of
the pandemic's origin could take place, and rejecting
participation by even the World Health Organization, then
serious questions will remain, questions that can only be
resolved by a full and open international collaboration.
And beyond just the pandemic, we can thank the openness of
the research enterprise for groundbreaking discoveries in many
areas. At Fermi National Accelerator Lab, where I spent 22
years working as a particle physicist, for most of that time we
held the dominant position because of the technology of
Fermilab's Tevatron, the world's first giant superconducting
particle accelerator. But we did not keep that technology to
ourselves. We shared it with the scientific public, and
welcomed its use to build similar particle accelerators, first
at DESY (Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron) in Germany, and then
the CERN Large Hadron Collider, the current world record
holder. We also benefited from the use of antiproton cooling
technologies that were developed both in CERN and in Russia,
and the experiments were performed with international
collaborators from dozens of countries. Together we improved
our understanding of the universe with the discovery, among
other things, of the most massive elementary particle, the top
quark. This work continues at the CERN particle collider, and
CERN is making significant contributions to Fermilab's world-
leading LBNF (Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility)/Dune neutrino
program.
Fermilab and CERN were created in the depths of the cold
war. Fermilab's founding director, Bob Wilson, was forever
proud of the fact that the first experiment performed at
Fermilab, in the depths of the cold war, included Russian
collaborators. But politicians tend to see everything through
the lens of international competition. When pressed by a
Senator at a hearing to explain exactly what Fermilab's
research into subatomic particles had to do with national
defense, the issue for the cold war, Bob Wilson famously
replied that Fermilab's research has nothing at all to do with
national defense, except, perhaps, to make our Nation more
worth defending. Words we could bear in mind today. But not all
technology is created equal. While the discovery of the top
quark and the Higgs particle do not seem to have any near-term
military or commercial applications, the same is not true of
the latest breakthroughs in artificial intelligence (AI), gene
editing, or quantum cryptography.
As we will hear today from our panelists, openness does
come with risks. Foreign adversaries can take advantage of it,
investing in programs that incentivize researchers to
exfiltrate sensitive information to get a leg up on a
competitive research or commercial environment. While
classified research is protected through existing mechanisms,
we still do not have a comprehensive understanding of what the
risks are to fundamental research, and how to draw that line.
Today's panelists will share their perspectives on the risk
awareness within the scientific community, and how the Federal
Government can do a better job of protecting taxpayer-funded
research from improper exfiltration. It's a crucial discussion
that must bring together the science, law enforcement, and
intelligence communities to come to a common understanding of
the threat and the appropriate response.
And we must not let the solution be worse than the problem.
International collaboration, and welcoming scientists from
around the world, has long been key to the United States'
scientific leadership. The United States attracts the largest
share of international students worldwide, and 3/4 of them stay
in the U.S. a decade after graduation and contribute to our
economy. However, even before the COVID-19 pandemic, enrollment
of international students was on the decline, and creating a
hostile environment for foreign-born researchers will only
exacerbate the problem.
Asian-American advocacy groups, scientific societies, and
universities have raised the alarm that prosecutions related to
academic espionage seem to have disproportionately targeted
researchers of Chinese descent. A recent white paper found that
defendants with Chinese surnames were twice as likely not be
found guilty, or to have all charges dropped, as compared to
those with Western names. I'd like to ask unanimous consent for
a summary of this white paper to be entered into the record.
Hearing none, so ordered.
And now we know China invests money in incentivizing
researchers to hide connections to Chinese institutions, and to
improperly use grant funding to benefit Chinese institutions.
This behavior is wrong, and must be investigated and, where
appropriate, punished. However, we must not create a hostile
environment for scientists who want to relocate to the United
States to work at our world-class institutions and bolster our
national competitiveness.
So I look forward to hearing from our distinguished panel
about the current landscape of threats to research security,
and ideas for responding to it. I believe the Science Committee
is the perfect place for this discussion, since I hope we
understand the value of collaboration in science, and can take
very seriously any threat to our national competitiveness.
And I will now yield to Ranking Member Obernolte for his
opening statement.
[The prepared statement of Chairman Foster follows:]
Good morning, and welcome to our members and our panelists.
Thank you for joining us today.
Collaboration is the lifeblood of scientific discovery.
Scientists build upon one another's work, across time and
around the globe. Openness in science allows reproduction and
replication of work, increasing the reliability of conclusions
and building public trust. It fosters cooperation across
disciplines, brings in new perspectives, and sparks ideas that
wouldn't come from one solitary lab, or even one country.
The COVID-19 pandemic has driven home the importance of
international collaboration in science. In those early months,
before the virus had been detected on our shores, American
scientists and health authorities were dependent upon
researchers in impacted countries to share what they knew about
the virus, how it spread, and how it killed. Over a year in,
collaboration with international partners is still vital to
detect emerging variants as early as possible and assess
vaccine efficacy. International problems require international
solutions. And there are real costs to closing off your
research from the rest of the world.
In the House Science Committee, we recently held a
subcommittee hearing on the origins of the Coronavirus. At the
time, a potentially very significant fact was that the closest
known relative of SARS-COV-2 was a bat virus from southern
China which had been studied at the Wuhan Virology Lab. Since
then, it appears that closer relatives have been identified, by
an open international collaboration, in bats from caves in
Laos. If that discovery had been made by an open collaboration
with access to bat virus samples throughout the world, it would
have been a triumph for international science that would have
strengthened China's claim that their lab's activities were not
the source of the Pandemic. However, because of China's
insistence on only a closed and controlled investigation of the
pandemic's origin, rejecting participation by even the World
Health Organization, serious questions will remain, questions
that can only be resolved by a full and open international
collaboration.
And beyond just the pandemic, we can thank the openness of
the research enterprise for groundbreaking discoveries. At
Fermi National Accelerator lab where I spent 22 years working
as a particle physicist, for most of that time we held the
dominant position because of the technology of Fermilab's
Tevatron, the world's first giant superconducting particle
accelerator. But we did not keep that technology to ourselves;
we shared it with the scientific public, and welcomed its use
to build similar particle accelerators first in DESY in Germany
and then the CERN Large Hadron Collider, the current record
holder. We also benefited from the use of Antiproton Cooling
technologies developed in both CERN and Russia. And the
experiments were performed with international collaborators
from dozens of countries.
Together we improved our understanding of the universe with
the discovery, among other things, of the most massive
elementary particle: the top quark. The work continues at the
CERN particle collider, and CERN is making significant
contributions to Fermilab's world-leading LBNF/Dune neutrino
program. Fermilab and CERN were created in the depths of the
Cold War. Fermilab's founding director, Bob Wilson, was forever
proud of the fact that the first experiment performed at
Fermilab, in the depths of the cold war, included Russian
collaborators.
But politicians tend to see everything through the lens of
international competition. When pressed by a Senator at a
hearing to explain what Fermilab's research into subatomic
particles had to do with National Defense, Bob Wilson famously
replied that it had nothing at all to do with National Defense,
except, perhaps, to make our nation more worth defending.
But not all technology is created equal. While the
discovery of the Top Quark or the Higgs particle do not seem to
have any near-term military or commercial applications, the
same is not true of the latest breakthroughs in Artificial
Intelligence, gene editing, or quantum cryptography.
As we will hear today from our panelists, openness does
come with risks. Foreign adversaries can take advantage of it,
investing in programs that incentivize researchers to
exfiltrate sensitive information to get a leg up in a
competitive research environment. While classified research is
protected through existing mechanisms, we still do not have a
comprehensive understanding of what the risks are to
fundamental research.
Today's panelists will share their perspectives on the risk
awareness within the scientific community, and how the federal
government can do a better job of protecting taxpayer-funded
research from improper exfiltration. This is a crucial
discussion that must bring together the science, law
enforcement, and intelligence communities, to come to a common
understanding of the threat and the appropriate response.
We must not let the solution be worse than the problem.
International collaboration and welcoming scientists from
around the world have been key to the United States' scientific
leadership.
The United States attracts the largest share of
international students worldwide, and three-quarters of them
stay in the U.S. a decade after graduation, contributing to our
economy. However, even before the COVID-19 pandemic, enrollment
of international students was on the decline. And creating a
hostile environment for foreign-born researchers will only
exacerbate the problem. Asian-American advocacy groups,
scientific societies, and universities have raised the alarm
that prosecutions related to academic espionage have
disproportionately targeted researchers of Chinese descent.
A recent whitepaper found that defendants with Chinese
surnames were twice as likely to not be found guilty or to have
all charges dropped, as compared to those with Western names.
I'd like to ask unanimous consent for a summary of this
whitepaper to be entered into the record. Now, we know China
invests money in incentivizing researchers to hide connections
to Chinese institutions, and to improperly use grant funding to
benefit Chinese institutions. This behavior is wrong and must
be investigated and punished.
However, we must not create a hostile environment for
scientists who want to relocate to the United States to work at
our world-class institutions and bolster our national
competitiveness.
I look forward to hearing from our distinguished panel
about the current landscape of threats to research security.
And I believe the Science Committee is the perfect place for
this discussion, since we understand the value of collaboration
in science and take seriously any threat to our national
competitiveness.
I now yield to Ranking Member Obernolte for his opening
statement.
Mr. Obernolte. Thank very much, Chairman Foster, and
Chairwoman Stevens, for holding this very important hearing on
research security. It's been a little over 3 years since the
House last held a hearing on this topic, and we've had some
interesting developments in the field since then, and so I
think it's very timely, very appropriate, that we're having
this discussion.
And this is something, I think, that is of fundamental
importance to everyone on this Committee, because we're
overseeing the advancement of the frontiers of human knowledge,
which I think is one of the most important things that
government can catalyze. But at the same time, the culture of
openness and transparency in research that we've built here in
the United States also opens us up to being manipulated by
malign foreign influences, and I think we would not be doing
our duty as stewards of the American taxpayer money, and as
stewards of research integrity, if we were not cognizant of the
fact that that was possible, and the guardians of the standards
that prevent that kind of influence from occurring.
We certainly want to continue to be the kind of atmosphere
that welcomes students from foreign universities here to the
Great American Melting Pot, and I think that the integrity of
the research that's done in the United States is vitally
dependent on this rich tapestry that we've created of
researchers from all over the globe. But also, we need to be
aware, and to be vigilant, about the fact that this
transparency, the transparency of our research system, also
opens us up to the possibility that the research could be
manipulated or used in ways that are contrary to our national
security.
So the question here before the panel today is how do we
balance these two ideas that are in tension? Now, the one idea
that we want to maintain is openness in our research community,
but also this idea that we also need to be stewards of the
nearly $45 billion that we invest every year in research at
academic institutions, and that we need to protect our national
security. And certainly, you know, we want to do that in a way
that's respectful to our research community, that doesn't
unfairly discriminate on the basis of race, and that promotes
the standards of openness and transparency that I think have
made some of our research institutions the best in the world.
So I thank again the Chair, and the--Chairwoman Stevens for
holding this hearing this morning. I am very much looking
forward to listening from our panelists, and participating in
the discussion. I yield back.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Obernolte follows:]
Good morning, Chairman Foster, Chairwoman Stevens, and
Ranking Member Waltz - thank you for convening today's joint
subcommittee hearing to examine the changing landscape of
research security. It has been over three years since this
Committee's first hearing on this topic.
Academic institutions in the U.S. are valued for their
openness, innovation, and collaboration with domestic and
international scientists. Our nation has long been a leader in
science and technology, and consequently, a destination for
foreign scholars and scientists seeking to learn from and
collaborate with the best.
Unfortunately, not every government upholds these values of
openness, transparency, and reciprocal collaboration. Over the
past three years, this Committee has seen numerous examples of
how adversaries have sought to exploit the openness of our
research enterprise to steal American ingenuity and undermine
our system.
China has publicly proven itself to be the most aggressive
country in targeting U.S. research over the past decade,
particularly through talent recruitment programs that encourage
dishonesty and incentivize behaviors that are inconsistent with
scientific values.
Between July 2018 and July 2021, the National Institutes of
Health contacted 93 institutions about 214 scientists who have
failed to be transparent with the agency, including through
non-disclosure of financial support, conflicts of interests,
and violations of peer review integrity rules. Over 90% of
these cases involved activities based in the People's Republic
of China.
While much of the discussion in today's hearing may focus
on the People's Republic of China, I want to be clear that this
Committee is very concerned about all foreign nationals,
American scientists, and agencies that inappropriately attempt
to take advantage of taxpayer-funded research and development.
I would also be remiss if I didn't clearly state that
racial profiling is wrong and should never be utilized to
identify malign foreign influence. Instead, enforcement must be
based purely on a researcher's actions and transparency with
their home institution and sponsoring agencies.
We know the solution is not to shutter the doors of
American universities and colleges to students, researchers,
and professors from foreign nations. The vast majority of
scholars who come to the U.S. do so to work with our citizens
on scientific discoveries and breakthroughs based on an open
exchange of ideas to benefit the world.
But we must also do all we can to protect the investment
that American taxpayers are making in academic research and
development.
The most recent data shows that the federal government
spends nearly $45 billion in research and development at
academic institutions.
Finding an appropriate balance between scientific openness
and security concerns is not new, nor is it easy. But a key to
this is ensuring there is transparency and clear guidance for
our researchers.
I look forward to hearing the insights of our witnesses
today so we may find the balance between open scientific
collaboration and protecting America's research and
development.
Thank you and I yield back the balance of my time.
Chairman Foster. Thank you. And the Chair now recognizes
Ms. Stevens for an opening statement.
Ms. Stevens. Well thank you so much, and thank you to our
Chair of Investigations and Oversight, Congressman Foster, and
Ranking Member Obernolte, not only for your leadership in
helping to host today's hearing, but your dedication to the
topic of discussion. And I also want to thank the Ranking
Member of the Research and Technology Subcommittee Ranking
Member, Michael Waltz, for his continued leadership on the
topic of discussion, which is balancing open science and
security in the U.S. research enterprise. And, of course, a big
thank you to our very distinguished panel for appearing before
the House Science Committee today.
It's very clear that U.S. global leadership in research and
development (R&D) has long been a point of national pride here
in our country, and I'm certainly especially proud of the State
of Michigan's rich history in being a leader in groundbreaking
scientific research, particularly at the university level. As a
country, we have built the world's most successful research
enterprise based on the values of openness and transparency,
closely aligned with our democratic principles. Maintaining our
Nation's competitive edge in research depends on our commitment
to equipping our greatest minds with the resources they need to
continue to lead on the global stage.
Our leadership also depends on our ability to identify,
understand, and address emerging risks to our Nation's research
enterprise. In recent years, certainly, concerns about the
risks to the U.S. research enterprise from undue foreign
influence have grown. Agencies at the Federal level have
reached out to universities and research institutions across
our country to raise awareness about this--about the threat of
foreign misconduct. Federal agencies have sounded the alarm
that some foreign governments, most notably from China, are
carrying out a strategic and systematic campaign to undermine
the integrity and security of U.S. research.
For instance, the Chinese government has sought to boost
its own research capabilities by exploiting America's openness
to advance their own national interests, and the Chinese
government sponsors numerous talent recruitment programs
seemingly designed for the benign purpose of recruiting top
talent. However, these programs often use coercive tactics that
compel or incentivize U.S. researchers to be dishonest, maybe
sometimes even commit grant fraud, or steal intellectual
property for the benefit of a foreign entity. And it's
sometimes even just written into the contract terms. As Chair
of the Research and Technology Subcommittee, I am committed to
ensuring that American taxpayer research is not stolen by
foreign competitors, and I also share concerns raised by my
colleagues about the potential collateral harm to scientists
and students who have acted with integrity, and the harm done
to our ability to continue to recruit talent from around the
world.
As we'll hear today from some of our witnesses, that--the
impacts to the people who are a part of the U.S. scientific
research enterprise are wide-ranging, and we certainly
recognize that we are in a global competition. We feel this
every day here in metro Detroit with our automotive industry,
that we want to make and sell products all over the world, and
I was raised in this climate, of trying to prevent that type of
espionage, certainly in our auto industry with foreign
competitors, and that we are also in a global race for foreign
talent, for global talent, and we want to make sure that we
have the best and brightest minds.
So we don't necessarily have a lot of simple solutions, but
this Committee has worked really closely with House Armed
Services. The 2020 National Defense Authorization Act saw
provisions establish an interagency working group focused on
identifying and raising awareness of research security risks,
and coordinating agency activities to address them. The Joint
Committee on Research Environments, JCORE, has been very
active, and recently released much needed guidance and best
practices, which I hope we will be discussing today, for
universities, and a set of agency policies and requirements.
So we're certainly very proud of this Committee's work in
this space. It is a rapidly evolving issue, and our work is not
done, and we are glad to have the important thought leaders
here today so that we can dig in further. And with that, Mr.
Chairman, I'll yield back.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Stevens follows:]
Good morning and welcome to today's hearing. I want to
thank our distinguished panel for joining us today.
Our global leadership in research and development has long
been a point of national pride for the United States, and I am
especially proud of Michigan's rich history of being a leader
in groundbreaking scientific research.
We have built the world's most successful research
enterprise based on the values of openness and transparency,
which closely aligns with our democratic principles in the
United States. Maintaining our nation's competitive edge in
research depends on our commitment to equipping our greatest
minds with the resources they need to continue to lead on the
global stage. Our leadership also depends on our ability to
identify, understand, and address emerging risks to the
nation's research enterprise.
In recent years, concerns about the risks to the U.S.
research enterprise from undue foreign influence have grown.
Agencies have reached out to universities and research
institutions across the country to raise awareness about this
threat of foreign misconduct. Agencies have sounded the alarm
that some foreign governments, most notably China, are carrying
out a strategic and systematic campaign to undermine the
integrity and security of U.S. research. The Chinese government
has sought to boost its own research capabilities by exploiting
America's openness to advance their own national interests. The
Chinese government sponsors numerous talent recruitment
programs seemingly designed for the benign purpose of
recruiting top science talent. However, these programs often
use coercive tactics that compel or incentivize U.S.
researchers to be dishonest, commit grant fraud, or even steal
intellectual property for the benefit of a foreign entity. It's
written right into the contract terms.
As Chair of the Research and Technology Subcommittee, I am
committed to ensuring that America's taxpayer-funded research
is not stolen by competitors. I also share concerns raised by
my colleagues about the potential collateral harm done to
scientists and students who have acted with integrity, and the
harm done to our ability to continue to recruit talent from
around the world.
These are not simple problems with simple solutions.
Even so, working in close partnership with the House Armed
Services Committee, this Committee has led the development and
enactment of bipartisan legislation to provide agencies,
universities, and researchers with the resources and the
support they need. I commend Chairwoman Johnson, Ranking Member
Lucas, and Ranking Member Waltz for their leadership in
building consensus on measured and targeted responses to the
threat of research security.
In the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act, we enacted
provisions to establish an interagency working group focused on
identifying and raising awareness of research security risks
and coordinating agency activities to address them. This
working group, called the Joint Committee on Research
Environments (JCORE), has been very active and recently
released much needed guidance on best practices for
universities and a new set of agency policies and requirements.
We also authorized a National Science, Technology and
Security Roundtable at the National Academies to increase
communication and collaboration between and among the
government and universities.
In this year's NDAA, we followed-up with amendments to
equip researchers with much needed training, prohibit
participation in problematic foreign talent recruitment
programs, and lay the groundwork for a government-wide risk
assessment center.
I am proud of this Committee's work in this space, but this
is a rapidly evolving issue, and our work is not done. I'm glad
to have important thought leaders on this topic with us here
today. We know that scientific creativity flourishes in a
research ecosystem that encourages innovation and discovery. I
look forward to hearing from our witnesses about how we can
further improve our efforts to balance security with the
openness that allows our research ecosystem to thrive.
Chairman Foster. Thank you. And the Chair will now
recognize Ranking Member Waltz for an opening statement.
Mr. Waltz. OK. Thank you. Good morning, Chairman Foster,
Chairwoman Stevens, Ranking Member Obernolte. You know, I'm
really pleased that we're holding this hearing, and wanted to
thank you for it. You know, we really need to examine the scale
and scope of undue foreign influence on our research
enterprise, and I look forward to a constructive discussion
about how we ensure a balance, the balance that Ms. Stevens
just mentioned, how we maintain the spirit of open and academic
collaboration, but we have to protect our proprietary
technology and scientific discoveries from undue foreign
influence.
Through my service on the House Armed Services Committee,
and on this Committee, I've been highly engaged on this issue.
As Ms. Stevens mentioned, in 2019 we worked to get the Securing
American Science and Technology Act included in that year's
National Defense Authorization Act, and it authorized the
Office of Science and Technology Policy's (OSTP's) Joint
Committee on Research Security, JCORE, as Ms. Stevens just
mentioned, and we gave it the mission of standardizing Federal
agencies' approaches to research security. It also established
the National Academies' National Science, Technology, and
Security Roundtable, which Dr. Zuber, with us today, co-chairs.
In last year's NDAA I was again proud to have a provision
included to ensure all Federal research agencies require
applicants to disclose foreign funding when receiving Federal
research awards, and by requiring grant applicants to disclose
all sources of research support that they receive, this
provision helps address a problem that GAO (Government
Accountability Office) found regarding inconsistent conflict of
interest policies across our agencies. Our agencies hopefully
will now get on the same sheet of music with that provision.
This year we're working to get researchers the tools and
information they need to understand how to identify and address
research security threats.
Working from a provision included in the NSF For the Future
Act, I was able to add language to the NDAA that the House just
passed to develop online security training modules for the
research community focused on international collaboration and
international travel, on foreign interference, and on the rules
for proper use of funds, proper disclosure, conflict of
commitment, and conflict of interest. These training modules
will ensure that individual researchers understand what makes
an appropriate partnership, and the importance of accurate
disclosures, and it sets a baseline for what is acceptable and
unacceptable for future applicants, and, frankly, in my view,
it will help eliminate any excuses of I didn't know, or I
didn't understand.
Working with Representative Feenstra, we also ensured this
year's NDAA included a ban on any federally funded researcher
participating in any malign foreign talent program. We know
that most of these talent programs already violate Federal
grant terms and conditions, but now there will be no question
left for faculty members on whether or not participation is
allowed. We carefully crafted the provision with stakeholders
to ensure that legitimate international exchanges are still
permitted.
The open exchange of scientific ideas has long supported
scientific progress, but some of these countries seek to
exploit America's openness, as we've discussed already. The
CCP, the Chinese Communist Party, has been the most aggressive,
primarily through the use of talent recruitment programs, and
notably of the 214 scientists the National Institutes of Health
(NIH) have contacted between 2018 and 2021 regarding undue
foreign interference cases, 90 percent of those cases involved
activities based on China.
Chinese Communist leadership is targeting American
scientists as a matter of State policy. That is clear. But, of
course, that does not mean that any type of racial profiling
should ever be utilized to address this threat. We are not here
to target researchers based on their race, but based on the
actions that they have taken, and their transparency, or lack
thereof, with their federally funding agencies and sponsoring
institutions. The U.S., I want to be clear, has absolutely
benefited greatly from international scientific collaboration,
and the contributions of foreign-born scientists, and I want
the U.S. to remain a desirable place for brilliant minds to
come and share their ideas, but we cannot continue to allow
this theft, and I fear that historians may look back and say
what we're doing now may be too little and too late.
So I'd like to thank our witnesses for taking the time to
join us today and share their expertise. I look forward to your
testimonies, and I yield back the balance of my time.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Waltz follows:]
Good morning, Chairman Foster, Chairwoman Stevens, and
Ranking Member Obernolte. I am very pleased we are holding this
hearing to examine the scale and scope of undue foreign
influence on America's research enterprise. I look forward to a
constructive discussion about how we ensure a balance of
maintaining the spirit of open, academic collaboration while
also protecting proprietary technology and scientific
discoveries from undue foreign influence and theft.
Through my service on both the House Armed Services
Committee and this Committee, I have been highly engaged on
this issue. In 2019 I worked with my colleagues to get the
Securing American Science and Technology Act included in that
year's National Defense Authorization Act, which authorized the
Office of Science and Technology Policy's Joint Committee on
Research Security (JCORE), giving it the mission of
standardizing federal agencies' approaches to research
security.
It also established the National Academies' National
Science, Technology, and Security Roundtable, which Dr. Zuber
co-chairs.
In last year's NDAA, I was again proud to have a provision
included to ensure all Federal Research Agencies require
applicants to disclose foreign funding when receiving federal
research awards. By requiring grant applicants to disclose all
sources of research support they receive, this provision helps
address a problem the Government Accountability Office (GAO)
found regarding inconsistent conflict of interest policies
across agencies.
This year we are working to get researchers the tools and
information they need to understand how to identify and address
research security threats. Working from a provision included in
the NSF For the Future Act, I was able to add language to the
House-passed NDAA to develop online security training modules
for the research community, focused on international
collaboration and international travel, foreign interference,
and the rules for proper use of funds, disclosure, conflict of
commitment and conflict of interest.
These training modules will ensure that individual
researchers understand what makes an appropriate partnership
and the importance of accurate disclosures, setting a baseline
for what is acceptable and unacceptable for future applicants.
Working with Rep. Feenstra, we also ensured this year's
House-passed NDAA included a ban on any federally-funded
researcher participating in any malign foreign talent program.
We know that most of these talent program contracts already
violate federal grant terms and conditions, but now there will
be no question left for faculty members about whether or not
participation is allowed. We carefully crafted the provision
with stakeholders to ensure that legitimate international
exchanges are still permitted.
The open exchange of scientific ideas has long supported
scientific progress. But some countries seek to exploit
America's openness to advance their national interests. The
People's Republic of China (PRC) has been the most aggressive,
primarily through the use of talent recruitment programs. Of
the 214 scientists the National Institutes of Health (NIH)
contacted between 2018 and 2021 regarding undue foreign
interference cases, 90 percent of those cases involve
activities based in the PRC.
Chinese communist leadership is targeting American
scientists - that is clear. But that does not mean that racial
profiling should ever be utilized to address this threat.
We are not here to target researchers based on their race
but based on the actions they have taken and their transparency
with their federal funding agencies and sponsoring
institutions. The U.S. has benefitted greatly from
international scientific collaboration and the contributions of
foreign-born scientists.
I want the U.S. to remain a desirable place for brilliant
minds to come and share their ideas.
I want to thank the leadership of this Committee,
Chairwoman Johnson and Ranking Member Lucas, for working with
me on a bipartisan basis on these important issues. We must
strike the correct balance between keeping our research
enterprise open, but also protecting it from adversaries who
seek to take advantage of our open system.
I'd like to thank our witnesses for taking the time to join
us today their share their expertise. I look forward to your
testimonies. And I yield back the balance of my time.
Chairman Foster. Thank you. And the opening statements of
Chairwoman Johnson and Ranking Member Lucas will be entered
into the record at this point. If there are other Members who
wish to submit additional opening statements, your statements
will also be added to the record at this point.
[The prepared statement of Chairwoman Johnson follows:]
Good morning.
There is an important conversation going on within the
research enterprise about legitimate risks to U.S. research.
Undue foreign influence compromises the integrity and security
of taxpayer funded research. This Committee, on a bipartisan
basis, has long been focused on how to mitigate these risks
while preserving all that is best about our open research
environment.
One significant risk often cited is to our economic
competitiveness. If another country gets a head start on
commercializing a U.S. research breakthrough, the American
public loses out. In critical technology areas, such as quantum
and biotechnology, economic competitiveness and national
security concerns go hand-in-hand. We have good reason to be
particularly concerned about China, because they do not share
our values when it comes to use of technologies. We must
prevent undue foreign influence in research if we are to keep
our competitive edge and help maintain our national security.
However, in addition to that, I believe that if we are to
maintain our leadership we also need to invest in our own
research enterprise.
While the United States is still in the lead, China has
dramatically increased its investments in research.
China accounts for 32 percent of global growth in R&D since
2000, compared with 20 percent for the United States. We cannot
continue down this path.
I am proud of this Committee's bipartisan work to advance
forward-looking, bold reauthorization bills for our major
science agencies. The House-passed set of innovation
legislation and elements of the Senate's United States
Innovation and Competition Act represent a once in a generation
opportunity to rightsize our investment in R&D. I am committed
to working with our colleagues in the Senate to get those bills
enacted this year.
We must also continue our work to convince our colleagues
outside of this Committee how crucial these investments are, so
that real funding follows enactment of the authorization bills.
Any steps we take to strengthen our research security
ultimately will be irrelevant if we do not also invest in our
nation's own research enterprise.
I also want to raise the issue of unintended consequences
of an overcorrection. We all support efforts to mitigate
research security risks, but not at the expense of the Asian
American and Asian immigrant science community. Our strength is
our diversity, in society and in science. The value of foreign-
born researchers to U.S. preeminence in science is undeniable.
We will only help speed the advancement of China's research
enterprise if we push away talented researchers and students
with Asian heritage. I sincerely hope we do not look back 5 or
10 years from now with regret that we pushed away talent who
wanted to help our country, not hurt it--and by pushing them
away, only amplified the risk to our economic and national
security.
That is why, today, we invited an expert panel to address
how we can achieve the balance that hopefully we all seek.
Thank you and I yield back.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Lucas follows:]
Thank you, Chairman Foster, Ranking Member Obernolte,
Chairwoman Stevens, and Ranking Member Waltz, for holding
today's joint subcommittee hearing on balancing open science
with securing the U.S. research enterprise from foreign
influence and theft.
The foundation of U.S. competitiveness is our thriving
scientific enterprise. The integrity of this system relies on
the core principles and values of science: openness and
transparency, accountability and honesty, impartiality and
objectivity, respect, freedom of inquiry, reciprocity, and
merit-based competition. While international collaboration and
foreign contributions are critical to U.S. competitiveness, we
must take steps to protect the integrity of its research and
uphold these principles.
This hearing continues the House Science Committee's
leadership on this important issue. For more than three years,
the Science Committee has led development of legislation to
address the growing threat from the People's Republic of China
(PRC) and other foreign actors who seek to exploit our open
system of science. We have also worked to ensure that Congress
doesn't take actions that have the unintended consequence of
making the U.S. less competitive in the global marketplace.
In early 2018, Congress was first warned of the growing
threat of academic espionage in testimony by FBI Director
Christopher Wray to the Senate Intelligence Committee. Wray
testified, ``The use of nontraditional collectors, especially
in the academic setting, whether it's professors, scientists,
students, we see in almost every field office that the FBI has
around the country. It's not just in major cities. It's in
small ones as well. It's across basically every discipline. I
think the level of naivete on the part of the academic sector
about this creates its own issues. They're exploiting the very
open research and development environment that we have, which
we all revere, but they're taking advantage of it.''
Following that warning, the Science Committee developed the
Securing American Science and Technology Act, which became law
as part of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal
Year 2020. The legislation established an interagency committee
within the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy
(OSTP) to coordinate research security across the federal
government. The bill also established the National Science,
Technology, and Security Roundtable at the National Academy of
Sciences, to facilitate collaboration between universities,
federal agencies, law enforcement, and other stakeholders.
I'm pleased that in response to this legislation, OSTP
released National Security Presidential Memorandum-33 in
January 2021 to direct a national response to safeguard the
security and integrity of America's R&D enterprise. I
understand that the Biden Administration is currently
undertaking a 90-day review of NSPM-33, and I hope that
Administration will uphold the memorandum, while providing
further refinement and clarify for stakeholders.
Under this committee's bipartisan leadership, we continue
to move legislation that ensures consistent policies for
disclosure, training, and participation in talent programs
across the federal government.
While we are still trying to understand the full scope of
the threat from the PRC, we do have some evidence that it
continues to grow. Last summer, Director Wray disclosed that
the FBI is opening a new PRC-related counterintelligence case
about every 10 hours and that, of the nearly 5,000 active FBI
counterintelligence cases currently underway across the
country, almost half are related to PRC.
While academic cases are only a small fraction of those,
with criminal charges against college and university professors
through the Justice Department making up only 3 percent of all
economic espionage prosecutions, we will hear today from our
witnesses about the growing case-loads at our federal research
agencies and universities as it relates to grant fraud
associated with the PRC. I look forward to hearing more about
the complexities of the relationship between economic
espionage, grant fraud, and foreign influence, and how we
manage and mitigate them.
In closing, I want to be clear - the Science Committee's
focus on research security and the Chinese Communist Party
(CCP) is about safeguarding the integrity of the U.S. research
enterprise and ensuring that all scientists follow the U.S.
principles of scientific fairness and integrity, not targeting
researchers of a particular racial or ethnic background.
We must do all we can to protect our innovation system and
taxpayer-funded research from systematic attempts to exploit,
degrade, and misappropriate our open system of science. But we
do not want close off legitimate international collaboration or
discourage students and researchers from coming to the United
States to study or conduct their research here. We must
continue to be a beacon for the freedom of thought and ideas
that has led to some of the greatest scientific discoveries in
the history of the world.
I thank Chairwoman Johnson for being a partner with me on
these issues, and I look forward to hearing from our expert
panel of witness.
Chairman Foster. And at this time I'd like to introduce our
witnesses. Our first witness is Dr. Maria Zuber. Dr. Zuber is
Vice President for Research and the E.A. Griswold Professor of
Geophysics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT),
where she is responsible for research administration and
policy. In this role she's responsible for intellectual
property, research integrity, and compliance, as well as
research relationships with the Federal Government. Dr. Zuber
also serves as the Co-Chair of the National Academies of
Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine's National Science,
Technology, and Security Roundtable.
Our second witness is Ms. Candice Wright. Ms. Wright
directs the Government Accountability Office's (GAO's) Science,
Technology Assessment, and Analytics team. She oversees GAO's
work on the management of federally funded research,
intellectual property protection, and Federal efforts to help
commercialize innovative technologies, and enhance U.S.
economic competitiveness. She has led reviews on a wide variety
of policy issues involving Federal contracting, risks to the
defense supplier base, foreign military sales, and homeland
security.
Our third witness is Ms. Allison Lerner. Ms. Lerner is the
Inspector General (IG) of the National Science Foundation
(NSF), a position she's held since 2009. In this role, she
recommends policies for promoting economy, efficiency, and
effectiveness of NSF programs and operations. She leads efforts
to prevent and detect fraud, waste, and abuse, improve the
integrity of NSF programs and operations, and investigate
allegations of misconduct in science. Ms. Lerner has chaired
the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and
Efficiency since January 2021, and has served as its Vice Chair
from January 2015 through December 2020.
Our final witness is Dr. Xiaoxing Xi. Dr. Xi is the Laura
H. Carnell Professor of Physics at Temple University. Prior to
2009, he was Professor of Physics and Material Science and
Engineering at Pennsylvania State University. Dr. Xi was the
recipient of the American Physical Society 2020 Andrei Sakharov
Prize. Since 2015 he has advocated for open fundamental
research, and warned against the dangers of racial profiling.
As our witnesses should know, you will each have 5 minutes
to--for your spoken testimony. Your written testimony will be
included in the record for the hearing. And when you've all
completed your spoken testimony, we will begin with questions.
Each Member will have 5 minutes to question the panel. And we
will start with Dr. Zuber.
TESTIMONY OF DR. MARIA ZUBER, CO-CHAIR,
NATIONAL SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY,
AND SECURITY ROUNDTABLE,
NATIONAL ACADEMIES OF SCIENCES,
ENGINEERING, AND MEDICINE;
VICE PRESIDENT FOR RESEARCH
AND E. A. GRISWOLD PROFESSOR OF GEOPHYSICS,
MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
Dr. Zuber. OK. Chairman Stevens, Chairman Foster,
Congressman Waltz, Congressman Obernolte, and Members of the
Subcommittees, thanks for inviting me to testify. I should say
at the outset that the views I'll be expressing today are my
own, and in particular I'm not expressing the views of the
National Academies as an institution, or my co-chairs and
participants in the National Science, Technology and Security
Roundtable, unless otherwise noted.
The topic of research security is important because how we
handle our scientific and technological rivalry with China will
determine how prosperous and secure the U.S. will be in the
future. And it's complex because we need to guard against
China's improper activities, without harming the U.S.
scientific enterprise, or cutting off collaborations that
benefit us. Striking that balance requires the Federal
Government and universities to be as clear as possible about
what we're trying to prevent, and what requirements are being
imposed. Beyond outright theft and espionage, there are at
least three kinds of activities that we should be trying to
stop.
First of all, China should not be allowed to pay U.S.
faculty, especially not surreptitiously, to transfer work that
is funded by Federal grants, or to recruit researchers for
China, or to spend time in China that conflicts with
commitments to U.S. institutions. Second, research
collaborations with China should be structured so that they are
transparent and reciprocal, where each party has clear,
legitimate benefits from their work. Third, universities should
not enter into collaborations that would harm U.S. national or
economic security, or threaten human rights.
To ensure that we focus on genuine concerns, Federal
agencies need to clarify reporting requirements, which too
often have been conflicting and inconsistent. Fortunately, the
Administration is preparing guidance for implementing National
Security Presidential Memorandum NSPM-33. I have provided input
to that process, and I am confident that the guidance will be
helpful. The government also needs to be clearer about what
constitutes a foreign talent program. Not an easy task, but the
definition cannot be so broad as to capture legitimate--or to
prevent legitimate scientific work.
What the government should not do is impose restrictions
that will harm the U.S. more than it harms China. The
government should maintain the presumption, enshrined in policy
since the Reagan Administration, that research should generally
be published openly. We should not have policies that broadly
discourage Chinese graduate students from coming to the U.S.
They strengthen our research capacity, and the vast majority
remain after graduating. And policies should not broadly shut
down collaboration with China at a time when they are getting
ahead of us in some key fields, and where there are global
problems, like climate change, that are best tackled
collaboratively. Universities, for our part, need to have
policies that ensure faculty abide by disclosure agreements,
and ensure collaborations with China are reviewed. MIT put in
place a strengthened review process in 2019 that I describe in
my written testimony, and we have rejected proposed projects
because of concerns, as I previously outlined.
Each case has been different. While guidelines need to be
clear, a sensible China policy still requires judgment. It's
not a cookie cutter process. That's why it's so important that
the government and universities communicate regularly about
these competing and evolving issues. That's also why the
National Academies' National Science, Technology, and Security
Roundtable, which this Committee, helped create, is valuable.
The Academies represent a neutral venue to have difficult
discussions. One of the roundtable's priorities now is to get a
better understanding of the scope and nature of the security
problem in academia. The roundtable is working with law
enforcement agencies to get the information needed to evaluate
what percentage of faculty may be engaging in improper
activities, and how big of a threat they represent.
One final point, U.S. competitiveness depends less on
defensive measures than on what we do to strengthen our own
capabilities. Congress should increase research funding, and
channel some of it through initiatives like ARPA-H (Advanced
Research Projects Agency for Health), and the new directorate
at the National Science Foundation. The heart of U.S. strategy
must be to look ahead and invest in our future. We are likely
to trip ourselves up if we devote too much time and attention
instead looking over our shoulders at our competitors. Thank
you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Zuber follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Foster. Thank you. Inspector General Lerner, you
are now recognized for 5 minutes.
TESTIMONY OF MS. ALLISON LERNER,
INSPECTOR GENERAL, NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION
Ms. Lerner. Thank you, Chairman Foster, Chairman--
Chairwoman Stevens, Ranking Member Obernolte, Ranking Member
Waltz, and distinguished Members of the Subcommittee. I
appreciate this opportunity to discuss the National Science
Foundation Office of Inspector General's response to challenges
posed to NSF by foreign government talent recruitment programs.
My testimony today will focus on three points. First, it's
essential for NSF to know when a researcher applying for a
grant is a member of a foreign government talent recruitment
program. Although membership in such programs is not illegal,
NSF needs to know about a researcher's membership because some
programs elicit unethical, and possibly criminal, behaviors. In
exchange for funding, and possibly a lab, the government exerts
control over the researcher through contracts that cover her
intellectual property, the types of research she conducts, and,
in some cases, where she conducts it, and who works in her lab.
Some contracts also contain significant penalties if the
researcher fails to live up to her obligations.
NSF can't address the risk posed by these contracts if it
isn't aware of a researcher's membership. The agency's policies
contain broad disclosure requirements related to a researcher's
current and pending support that clearly cover talent--
affiliations. A researcher's failure to provide all required
information is not a minor matter. It destroys that competitive
process, disadvantages applicants who play by the rules, and
undermines the foundation's ability to make the best decisions
about how to deploy its limited resources.
Second, researchers who fail to disclose their membership
in these foreign talent programs can commit grant fraud. My
office has used its in-depth experience in combatting grant
fraud to address this challenge. The failure to disclose a
researcher's membership is a potential false statement, which,
if it occurs within the statute of limitations, is a basis for
opening an investigation. In the cases we've opened, we've
encountered situations where researchers are using Federal
funds to bring students at the foreign university they're
affiliated with to this country, using Federal funds to travel
abroad to do work required by their talent plan, or receiving
salary from Federal awards while concurrently working for and
being paid by their talent plan.
Situations like these can result in criminal, civil, and/or
administrative actions. We've also found situations where
research have--researchers have actually provided accurate
disclosures to their institutions, in which case we close our
investigation. In deciding whether to open a case, we do not
consider or track a subject's race or ethnicity. We focus on a
researcher's conduct. Was he a member of a talent plan when he
submitted a proposal? Did he disclose that membership during
the proposal process? Was the proposal funded? A researcher's
ethnicity is not relevant to any of these issues. This new line
work has had a profound impact on our office's investigative
portfolio. As of yesterday, such cases make up approximately 63
percent of our case load.
Finally, I'd like to discuss some opportunities and
challenges I see in responding to threats posed by these
programs. I see an opportunity in the application of data
analytics to this challenge. Strategic use of analytics will
help identify the magnitude of this problem, and enable all
parties responding to this challenge to focus their efforts on
cases with the highest risk. Ensuring that NSF has adequate
resources to address this issue is a significant challenge.
NSF's chief of research security strategy and policy has a very
small office, with a very large mission, and the growth of
allegations related to undisclosed foreign affiliations has
overwhelmed my office's small investigative staff. We don't
have the resources we need to investigate all the allegations
we receive.
The greatest challenge I see is the evolving nature of this
threat we are facing. In response to the United States' efforts
to address the risks posed by these programs, government
sponsors are using encrypted apps, and implementing other
changes to avoid detection of the true nature of their
relationships with members. To succeed, our response to this
challenge must be agile and creative. My office will use the
full range of our investigative resources to respond to this
challenge and safeguard the integrity of the foundation's
operations and investments in science. We look forward to
working with NSF management, the National Science Board, and
Congress to achieve this goal. This concludes my statement, and
I'd be happy to answer any questions.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Lerner follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Foster. Thank you. And next is Ms. Wright.
TESTIMONY OF MS. CANDICE N. WRIGHT, DIRECTOR,
SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT, AND ANALYTICS,
U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE
Ms. Wright. Thank you. Chairman Foster, Chairwoman Stevens,
Ranking Member Obernolte and Waltz, and Members of the
Subcommittees, thank you for the opportunity to discuss foreign
influence in federally funded research. University science and
engineering research is vital to the country's national
security and economic interests. Science progresses through
open communication among scientists, and sharing knowledge and
research results. However, law enforcement and intelligence
agencies have warned that the openness of the U.S. academic
research enterprise makes it a prime target for countries
seeking to obtain access to U.S. research for their scientific,
economic, and military gain.
With Federal research funding amounting to over $40
billion, safeguarding U.S. taxpayers' investment is critically
important. While this issue is not new, today there is even
greater international collaboration. At the same time, there
are concerted and sophisticated efforts to access U.S. research
and intellectual property, such as through foreign government
talent recruitment programs. Participating in such programs is
often seen as prestigious, and a way to advance research. Some
countries can create conflicts of interest for researchers,
regardless of their citizenship, by obligating them to divert
information about U.S.-funded research in exchange for
salaries, lab equipment, and other incentives. Agencies and
university grantees face the difficult task of striking a
sustainable balance between fostering collaboration and
ensuring sufficient security. Conflict of interest policies and
disclosure requirements are tools that, used effectively, can
help achieve the balance between open science and safeguarding
U.S. research.
Last year GAO issued a report that examined conflict of
interest policy and disclosure requirements. We looked at the
Department of Defense and Energy, along with NSF, and NASA
(National Aeronautics and Space Administration), and NIH, which
make up the five largest grant-making agencies. Today I will
share three key insights from that work. First, NSF, as well as
NIH and NASA, have agency-wide conflict of interest policies.
These policies emphasize financial interests researchers should
disclose to the university receiving the grant, however,
agencies' policies do not fully address or define non-financial
conflicts, sometimes referred to as conflicts of commitment.
Such conflicts may include foreign academic appointments, or
access to lab space provided by foreign entities. In light of
this, we recommended the three agencies define and address non-
financial conflicts of interest in their policies, as this is a
key stop to identifying and mitigating potential foreign
influence. Agencies concurred with our recommendation, and
since our report, they're taking various steps to address, but
have not yet fully implemented the recommendations.
Second, we looked at monitoring and enforcement. Here we
found that the five agencies heavily rely on universities to
monitor and mitigate financial conflicts. Agencies collect
information, such as foreign collaborations, that could be used
to identify potential non-financial conflicts. The five
agencies noted instances where researchers failed to disclose
financial or non-financial information. We identified that each
agency had at least one instance of a conflict of interest case
involving foreign influence. At the time, NSF estimated that it
had taken administrative action against nearly 20 grant
recipients who had failed to disclose foreign ties. NIH said it
had identified over 400--concern, and referred some cases for
criminal investigation.
Third, we heard inputs from the research community on
improving the response to foreign influence. Principal
investigators emphasized the need for clear communications
about the specific threats. A number of principal investigators
said they were unaware of foreign talent recruitment programs,
and wouldn't know how to identify such programs. While agencies
like NSF have issued reports, provided guidance, and conducted
webinars and training on foreign influence, university
administrators called for better information sharing and
actionable guidance about the specific threats and risks,
especially for those working on high-target research involving
5G, AI, and quantum computing.
In closing, maintaining an open research environment that
promotes collaboration and transparency will need to be
balanced with considerations of foreign influence and countries
seeking to undermine U.S. investment in leadership and R&D.
Protecting U.S. research must begin with having a common
understanding about the threat. An important first step is to
start with clearly defining and communicating the types and
conflicts--types of conflicts that may pose a risk. If agencies
want, or expect, universities to be part of the solution to
address risks of foreign influence, agencies must provide the
necessary information and tools in a way that resonates with
how the research community operates. Leaving researchers to
guess the nature and extent of the threat, and how to identify
and mitigate such threats, is simply not prudent, especially
given the national security and economic implications. This
concludes my statement. I'd be pleased to respond to questions
you may have.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Wright follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Foster. Thank you. And next is Dr. Xi.
TESTIMONY OF DR. XIAOXING XI,
LAURA H. CARNELL PROFESSOR OF PHYSICS,
TEMPLE UNIVERSITY
Dr. Xi. Chairman Foster, Ranking Member Obernolte,
Chairwoman Stevens, Ranking Member Waltz, and Members of the
Subcommittees, thank you for the opportunity to appear before
you today. My name is Xiaoxing Xi. I'm a Professor of Physics
at Temple University. I--like many first-generation immigrants,
I hail from a foreign country. I was born in China, and got my
Ph.D. degree there. In 1989 my wife and I came to this country
because America offered a vast opportunity to do science, and
it was the most welcoming place in the world to foreigners. In
the United States our career flourished, our family grew
larger, and we became American citizens. We are as proud as any
other citizens to call America our home.
I remember vividly a fine spring day 6 years ago. I was
busy with my teaching, research, and my duties as Chair of the
Physics Department. At dinnertime I gave a public lecture for a
science festival at an Irish pub, and then went to the airport
to pick up my wife, who was returning from an overseas trip. My
elder daughter was home from college for a few days, and my 12-
years-old daughter was anxious about her dental surgery the
next morning. By the time we made a plan to visit a famous
Korean fried chicken restaurant, it was way past midnight.
Little did we know that a few hours later armed FBI (Federal
Bureau of Investigation) agents would raid our house and take
me away in handcuffs.
Based on e-mails I had sent from my Temple University
address, the Federal Government charged me for passing
sensitive U.S. company technology, a device called pocket
heater, to China. The charges were totally false. I had never
shared the pocket heater information with anyone in China.
Almost 4 months later, after leading experts in my research
field provided affidavits saying that the e-mails I had sent
were not about the pocket heater at all, but my own widely
published research, the government dropped the case. But our
life has been wrecked.
On that fateful morning, when I answered the loud knocks on
my door and the FBI agents put handcuffs on me, when the agents
pointed their guns at my wife and two daughters, and ordered
them to walk out of their bedrooms with their hands raised, I
thought, why are they doing this to me? I haven't done anything
that warrants this. This operation must cost taxpayers tons of
money. Unfortunately, the exact same early morning raid scene
was repeated for the University of Tennessee, Knoxville
professor Anming Hu, who was acquitted by a Federal judge
several weeks ago, and it was played out again for the
Cleveland Clinic researcher Qing Wang, whose case was dropped
by the DOJ (Department of Justice) in July. When the DOJ uses
this much resource going after innocent Chinese scientists, we
must ask, are they catching the real spies? Are they spending
our tax money responsibly to protect our country?
The problem is that law enforcement officials consider
Chinese professors, scientists, and students non-traditional
collectors, or spies, for China. We are presumed guilty until
proven innocent. It is only a matter of time and chance that
any scientist of Chinese descent may get the knocks at his or
her door by FBI agents and be snatched away. Profiling Chinese
scientists based on where they come from ruins people's lives.
I know that personally. I am sure Professor Anming Hu knows it
as well. I have no doubt Professor Qing Wang knows it too.
All Chinese professors, scientists, and students are not
spies for China. They are contributors to America's economic
security and national security. Most professors do fundamental
research. As the NIH director has said, most of what we do in
science, we publish it. Without any evidence that they have
stolen for China, academics are being charged for failure to
disclose their activities in China. Academic collaborations
with China was once encouraged by the U.S. Government and the
universities. Selections into the Chinese government talent
programs were celebrated just as selections into similar
prestigious talent programs in other countries. Now academics
face the possibility of criminal prosecution for having
responded to these encouragements. This is not fair. It has not
always been clear what professors are required to disclose.
When the policy toward academic collaboration with China has
changed so abruptly, it is only fair to communicate the new
policy clearly to everyone before throwing people in jail.
So let me be clear, a policy that targets Chinese
scientists and cracks down on openness in fundamental research
does not protect America's research security. It makes the U.S.
less competitive in innovation, and less attractive to talents
around the world. It threatens the U.S. leadership in science
and technology. It must stop. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Xi follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Foster. Thank you, Professor Xi. And at this point
we'll now begin our first round of questions, and the Chair
will recognize himself for 5 minutes.
As we consider this rapidly evolving and complex issue, I
think it's important to get a basic understanding of the many
layers of accountability that we already have in the federally
funded research ecosystems. The researchers themselves are
expected to disclose all of their commitments to universities.
We have the grant receiving institutions who must ensure their
faculty are following all the disclosure requirements. We have
the funding agencies themselves, who are reviewing grant
applications, receiving tips on potential infractions, and
making referrals to the inspector general. The inspector
general handles case of waste, fraud, and abuse, and can
recommend administrative remedies, disbarment or suspension,
and can refer the case, if necessary, to the Department of
Justice, and the Department of Justice can choose to move
forward or not with criminal prosecutions.
So there is a machine in place to do this job, and the
question we're addressing is how well is it working, and
whether it needs a tune-up. I imagine that there may be a lot
of overlap in these responsibilities, and it's important for
all parties to have a clear understanding of their roles in the
avenues for communication between them, as well as sufficient
technical knowledge and advice to do their very difficult jobs
well.
Dr. Zuber, now wearing your hat as the MIT Vice President
for Research, how do universities, by and large, understand
their responsibilities when it comes to ensuring the compliance
of their faculty and researchers to Federal disclosure
requirements? You know, do they see their roles primarily as
shielding researchers from time consuming and annoying
government meddling, or do they over-amplifying government
reporting requirements out of fear of getting into hot water?
Dr. Zuber. Yes, so--Chairman Foster, thank you for that
question. So, speaking for MIT, and, you know, since I'm in
communication with so many of my colleagues at other
institutions, you know, we take this very seriously, and we
want our faculty to comply, and I think faculty do want to
comply. There has been, as you noted, a fair amount of, I'll
say confusion, about what actually needs to be disclosed, and
how it needs to be disclosed. So agencies have had different--
required the same--different information in different places.
Some require disclosures on their CV. Some require disclosures
in their current and pending support, and so there have been
inadvertent errors in disclosures, and I think that's very,
very separate, and we need to separate that from real intents
to deceive.
So we have been in a--we have added staff, and have really
intensified our outreach to our faculty so that they can
understand what the requirements are, and we have encouraged,
and certainly within the National Academies Security
Roundtable, have really encouraged trying to get the
disclosures uniform to the extent possible across Federal
agencies so that everybody can understand what their
responsibilities are.
Chairman Foster. Thank you. And, Inspector General Lerner,
what type of issues might stay within the NSF for education, or
what type of behavior might trigger an IG investigation? Is
there enough clarity there as to where we should escalate?
Ms. Lerner. I think NSF's disclosure requirements are very
clear, including the need to disclose, you know, compensation,
like labs, or other supplies that are non-monetary. We have a
great partnership with the Chief of Research, Security,
Strategy, and Policy. When situations are properly disclosed,
the issue is there for NSF to manage the risks associated with
a researcher's membership in a foreign talent plan to ensure
that they can address any conflicts of interest, conflicts of
commitment, or intellectual property considerations that arise
out of that. When those matters have not been disclosed, then
it becomes a discussion of possible fraud, and it is sent to my
office for assessment. So we have a pretty clear vision of the
two lanes of our offices, and we communicate well together to
ensure that the--that she--that the--that Chris gets the
information that is appropriate for her response, and my office
receives the matters that we should be addressing.
Chairman Foster. Thank you. And my time has expired, and I
will now recognize Mr. Obernolte for 5 minutes.
Mr. Obernolte. Thank you, Chairman Foster, and thank you to
our witnesses. It's been very interesting testimony. I have a
question for Dr. Zuber. I was interested in the framework that
you set out of the three activities that any kind of disclosure
should be required to stop, but I'm concerned that the nature--
you know, insidious nature of foreign influence over our
domestic research might be a little bit more subtle and more
difficult to stop, and let me give you kind of a hypothetical.
And this is not based on anything in reality, but--I mean, say
we're talking about, you know, some primary research into a
physical phenomenon like superconducting magnetism. And say
that, you know, there's a body of research that's in the public
domain, there is a body of research that's been conducted
outside of the public domain in a foreign country, and then
there's a body of research that's being proposed to be done
here in the United States.
If you're that foreign country, I mean, you have a vested
interest in finishing the picture, if you will. You know, that
third piece of research that hasn't been done is of
disproportionate benefit to you because you have this
additional information that is not in the public domain. So
that would seemingly violate the second of your requirements,
where you say research activities should be structured to be
transparent and reciprocal. Obviously that's not transparent
and reciprocal, but we have no way of knowing that a foreign
country what--you know, has access to that extra information
because they've done private researched. So how do you go about
policing something like that?
Dr. Zuber. That's incredibly difficult to police, and this
is--you know, there's a lot of nuance in this situation that we
don't understand. You know, of course, you know, in the U.S.,
on the corporate side, there's research that goes on within
industry that isn't known to the outside, but, you know,
unless--you know, we should be looking for organizations that
have sort of a history of publication. So unless, you know,
unless an organization is publishing results, you know, that's
the first way to do it. But if somebody isn't coming clean,
then we just don't have a way to know that.
Mr. Obernolte. Sure. Yes, I think it's an incredibly hard
problem. I mean, maybe--because you're talking about intent,
right? So maybe goes to the intent of these grant applications,
and, you know, trying to assess whether or not there is a
disproportionate benefit to someone outside the United States
when this--when the taxpayers' money is spent on that kind of
research.
Dr. Zuber. No, it's incredibly difficult to tell, so--you
know, and in a university, you know, the intention is openness,
so it's--the--you know, everybody is going to take what they
have, and the--they're going to put it in the public domain,
and they're going to put it out there, you know, while, you
know, trying to protect their intellectual property. So of
course, you know, that's going to be taken care of. But if you
have an entity on the other side that has things that it isn't
releasing, that's just incredibly difficult to get a handle on.
Mr. Obernolte. Um-hum. So let me ask about the science and
technology risk matrix that's been developed by the Department
of Energy. Do you think that that is a good model that might be
able to be utilized more broadly by the research community to
assess the risk level of the research that they're doing?
Dr. Zuber. Yes. So I actually am a--I'm a big fan of that
risk matrix. So in the Department of Energy, the way that
they've gone about it is they got the chief technology officers
of their national labs together to try to define narrow--as
narrowly as possible, OK, so not saying everything in AI, OK,
but to actually define technologies that have progressed far
enough, or on the way of progressing to the point where they
could raise concerns about either national or economic
security, and to try to define them as being problematic. So I
actually think that's a really good model, because it's--the
people doing it are the people who understand the levels of
technology that are problematic, and that's a good place to
focus.
Mr. Obernolte. Sure. Thank you. And let me go to Dr.
Lerner. I was interested in your testimony that--when you said
the NSF doesn't have the resources needed to effectively police
this situation. So, in your opinion, what resources would the
NSF need to police this?
Ms. Lerner. I can only speak to--my statement was focused
on the resources available to my office, and at this point--and
I'll confine my answer to that. At this point I think even if
we doubled the number of people in our investigative office, we
would still be hard pressed to keep up with the number of
allegations that are coming in. These cases tend to be complex,
and time consuming, and we have--in responding to them, we have
sorely tried our staff, who are doing their level best, but
working beyond their capacity. So even doubling, I think, would
be difficult for us to do this, and certainly would not enable
us to get to a point where we could do proactive assessments.
Mr. Obernolte. Sure. And I see I'm out of time. How many
people on your staff, just quickly?
Ms. Lerner. We have slightly over 20 total in our Office of
Investigations, but some of those are investigative scientists
who focus on research misconduct, so even fewer than that.
Mr. Obernolte. OK, so 20 more bodies. All right. Thank you
very much.
Ms. Lerner. It's a start.
Mr. Obernolte. I yield back.
Ms. Lerner. Thank you.
Chairman Foster. Thank you. And Chair will now recognize
Chair Stevens for 5 minutes.
Ms. Stevens. Great. And, as we've heard today, it's not
certainly just the Chinese government being unique in its
efforts to undermine the U.S. scientific research enterprise,
however, it does appear that the Chinese are the most active,
and best organized, and a major source of concern are the
talent recruitment problems--or programs, rather, the talent
recruitment programs sponsored by the Chinese government.
And, Ms. Candice Wright, in your submitted testimony, you
shared that government agencies rely on universities to monitor
conflicts of interest, and then six of the eight universities
that the GAO interviewed did not know what these talent
recruitment programs are, or even how to identify them. And
while a governmentwide prohibition for federally funded
researchers participating in such programs was passed in the
House NDAA for the next fiscal year, could you share just a bit
more about what is being done to increase the understanding of
these programs in the research community, and what impact you
think this might have?
Ms. Wright. Certainly. Thank you for the question, Chair
Stevens. So I would say, for our work, we certainly heard from
the research community, the researchers, that they didn't have
an understanding of these foreign talent recruitment programs.
Some of these programs have actually been around in other
countries, you know, several countries around the world. And
while some of them were not aware of it, they started to become
aware when we started asking questions in our meetings with
them, but then also through some of the outreach that agencies
are conducting to build awareness around this broader issue of
research security.
There's certainly folks with whom we spoke with who noted
that these programs sometimes can really be seen as
prestigious. They're a way to advance research, advance
careers, you know, similar to serving on a board, for example.
So there are lots of, you know, professional benefits that come
with it. And so what's really required now is to enlighten the
community's awareness about the maligned behaviors that may
exist, and using these programs as a way to get access to U.S.
research. And so I think the continued training that is
happening by the agencies sharing information, you know, with
the--with universities is certainly a step in the right
direction, again, to enhance awareness and put some sunlight on
it.
Ms. Stevens. Right, thanks. And would anyone else like to
care--comment on this topic as well?
Dr. Zuber. Yes. So----
Ms. Stevens. Go ahead. Yes.
Dr. Zuber. Chair Stevens, can I just add to that? Yes. So
it used to be that these foreign talent programs were
considered prestigious, you know, in the same way that some
U.S. fellowships are, and now, you know, we're starting to find
out that there's requirements associated with them. So, as we
get information on these talent programs, we--you know, we have
a website where we post all that information for our community,
and we tell our students, you know, anything that requires, you
know, providing information on what you're doing to somebody
else, anything that requires signing a contract, you know, you
have to be extremely wary of. And--but these--you know,
there's--we now list them, the ones that are problematic, but
new ones keep appearing, and they have to be vetted. So it's a
matter of constant vigilance to really keep after these things,
yes.
Ms. Stevens. Yes. And Dr. Zuber, while I have you, could
you give just an update on the status of the work--just to
backtrack, in January the White House issued a National
Security Policy Memorandum directing agencies to action to
address research security risks. In August Dr. Eric Lander,
President Biden's science advisor, and Director of the Office
of Science and Technology Policy released a statement that
additional guidance on implementation of the National Security
Policy Memorandum would be available in 90 days. And, just in
your role as Co-Chair of the President's Council of Advisors on
Science and Technology, you have provided input to and reviewed
the forthcoming guidance. Do you happen to have any update on
this?
Dr. Zuber. Yes, sure. So they were open to--so the NSPM-33
memo came out right at the very--the last waning days of the
previous Administration, and there was--actually, there was a
lot--there were a lot of really positive aspects for it, such
as harmonizing disclosure requirements across agencies, and
various things. And--but there was--you know, if I'd say there
was a shortcoming, there was a lack of specificity. You know,
universities were being asked to comply to certain things, and
they weren't being told what they need to comply with in
sufficient detail that they could actually tell that they were
compliant.
So I provided input, but many university associations
provided input as well, in terms of what could help clarify
that, and I reviewed the draft, let's see, shortly after Dr.
Lander published his blog. And it's still a work in progress,
but I think that the issues that I raised, and the
recommendations that I raised, as well as those of the society,
as far as I can tell, they were taken to heart, and I think----
Ms. Stevens. Yes.
Dr. Zuber [continuing]. That what you're going to see----
Ms. Stevens. We're a little over time, but--yes, we can get
back to you on that. But----
Dr. Zuber. Absolutely.
Ms. Stevens [continuing]. Thank you to the Chair for
obliging the overage, and we can yield back----
Chairman Foster. Thank you.
Ms. Stevens [continuing]. The time at----
Chairman Foster. Yes.
Ms. Stevens [continuing]. This point. Thank you.
Chairman Foster. Thank you. I will now recognize Ranking
Member Waltz for 5 minutes.
Mr. Waltz. Yes, thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I just want to
say at the start, to Professor Xiaoxing, I am--want you to hear
from me, certainly, I am deeply sorry for what has happened to
your family, what happened to you, what happened to your
reputation. It's just--it's absolutely unacceptable, you know,
regardless of what mistakes were made, to have your family at
gunpoint for--you know, for that type of even alleged
infraction is just jaw-droppingly unacceptable. And I think I
speak for a lot of my colleagues, and want you to hear from us
how unacceptable that is.
Mr. Chairman, I just want to read very quickly, and then
submit for the record, from the State Department's website, the
military--China's Military/Civil Fusion Program, which, ``is an
aggressive national strategy of the CCP, a key part of which is
to eliminate barriers between China's civil research, and its
commercial research, and its military, by acquiring the world's
cutting-edge research through theft in order to achieve
military dominance.'' I'd like to submit that for the record,
Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Foster. Yes. Without objection, so ordered.
Mr. Waltz. Thank you. Ms. Lerner, you mentioned to Mr.
Obernolte your office is approximately 20, but not even every
one of those 20 is dedicated to the type of grant theft and
research fraud that we're talking about. I believe, correct me
if I'm wrong, the security office is right now an army of one,
one woman, God bless her. So, you know, while we may describe,
you know, the needs here as kind of a tune-up, I think we need
a massive overhaul, because--could you just elaborate on how
the National Science Foundation IG caseload has changed over
the last 4 years? Because I think there's a--there's--you know,
I think we need to wrap our minds around the shifting gears
that's happened under Xi, and under Xi-led CCP, particularly
with some of the laws that he's put in place that, while these
researchers may be fantastic individuals, great people, they
are violating their law, and they are put in a no-win
situation. And whenever the government taps them on the
shoulder to give what they want, they have to do it. But just--
if you could talk to me about how your caseload has shifted in
the last 4 years, and why or why not are you able to
proactively pursue cases?
Ms. Lerner. Thank you, I'd be happy to do that. We first
became aware of the issues posed by foreign government talent
recruitment programs very late in 2017. So, prior to that, we
didn't have any cases that we knew had any relevance to that
particular issue. It turns out that there was a very small
number of cases that we had prior to late 2017 that turned out
to have talent plan ramifications. That wasn't the basis that
we worked them on. You know, it was just straight grant fraud,
and we--the talent plan issue was not the source of the grant
fraud there.
But since becoming aware of the issues with talent plan
memberships, our case load has increased to the point where, as
of yesterday, it's 63 percent of our investigative portfolio,
and that's a huge growth in a very short period of time. And as
I noted, these are not easy cases, they're complicated, and we
want to make sure we gather the information that we--that's
necessary to prove or disprove an allegation----
Mr. Waltz. Well, I appreciate the Committee's work in
helping get the security office more resources. I think we
need----
Ms. Lerner. Um-hum.
Mr. Waltz [continuing]. To get you more resources. But I
believe in a previous conversation you said you had about 1,000
percent increase in referrals from the FBI. Is that correct?
Ms. Lerner. We did. I--we did, in fact, yes, and at this
point, just keeping up with the referrals for--the requests for
assistance from the FBI, which we, you know, we routinely
receive, but never at this magnitude, you know, requires a
full-time staff person.
Mr. Waltz. Sorry, just for the--don't mean to interrupt
you, for the sake of time, you've had 1,000 percent increase
with things as they stand now. Now the Committee's looking at
doubling, or if the Senate has their way, you know, tenfold
increase in moneys and grants, which I certainly support, but
are you looking at an increase in resources from that
thousandfold increase, and then, on top of that, from the
magnitude of what we're talking about? I mean, I just think
this is a massive problem of scale that we're not fully dealing
with here.
Ms. Lerner. There--if--the legislation that would increase
the size of the agency by about $11 billion that's in the House
would offer--over 10 years would offer my office $50 million to
focus on our work. So we are being considered, and we're very
grateful for that.
Mr. Waltz. That's fantastic. Mr. Chairman, I yield my time.
Chairman Foster. Thank you. And we will now recognize the
Chair of the Full Science Committee, Representative Johnson,
for 5 minutes.
Chairwoman Johnson. Well, thank you very much, and good
morning to everyone. This is a very, very important hearing,
and I thank the leadership for getting right to it. The U.S.
research enterprise has benefited enormously from a culture of
openness and collaboration. The U.S. has also had a--been a
highly sought after destination for talented researchers and
students around the world. What steps have agencies and
universities taken to raise awareness and mitigate these risks?
What does success look like, and what are the goals agencies
and universities are working toward? And I guess I will start
with Dr. Zuber.
Dr. Zuber. OK. Thank you, Chairwoman Johnson, for that
question. So we have--at my university, and peer institutions,
we have done active outreach to faculty. We have held town
halls and forums, we have gone to departments, we have had
individual meetings, and in particular we have offered
individual conversations and consultations with our Asian
faculty, Asian and Asian-American faculty, who feel targeted,
I'll be clear about that. So we have--so training has been a
big part of it. We have also proactively been working with the
Federal agencies, and providing them with our perspectives on
how they could structure disclosures in a way that would make
it easiest for our faculty to disclose.
And so I just want to say here, though, universities aren't
set up to be investigative. We don't--we're not investigative
organizations. And so, while we have staffed up, you know, we
don't have the sort of capacity that, say, Allison does. But
those are the steps that we have--and what does success look
like? It--we would understand well how to comply, and we would
eliminate all these inadvertent non-compliances because we
don't understand, and that--we would be able to focus on the
cases, and we would understand what the real espionage threats
are, and go after them, and let law enforcement prosecute
those, but we wouldn't be making mistakes of confusing
disclosures with actual intent to do harm.
Chairwoman Johnson. Well, thank you very much. Ms. Lerner,
can you comment?
Ms. Lerner. Thank you. I think, you know, if we're going to
succeed in fighting this challenge, a critical piece of
information to all parties involved is having access to the
contract a researcher signs with a foreign talent agency. It's
the terms of those contracts that pose the real risks to an
organization, and I think for--it--it's essential for
universities, and for funding agencies, to have access to them,
to be able then to determine, you know, which--what risks they
pose, and whether they are insurmountable or capable of being
managed.
Chairwoman Johnson. Thank you very much. I have one more
minute. Can anyone else comment?
Ms. Wright. Sure. I'd like to jump in here, Chair Johnson.
So I would say, for GAO's part, you know, we think what--
another key thing that really needs to be addressed is to
strengthen these conflict of interest policies that agencies
have so that the university community has a clear understanding
about what the definitions are with regard to financial, as
well as non-financial, conflicts, and what activities
constitute those kinds of things, and how they may pose a risk.
We've made recommendations to the agencies to take action to
clearly define those conflict of interest terms. We've seen
some guidance come out from OSTP that includes that
information, however, it's not required for the agencies to
adopt it, and I think that that's really something that's
really important.
It's actually an issue that, when GAO first started looking
at this issue of foreign participation in U.S. research back in
1992, we were talking about conflict of interest policies then,
and the need to strengthen it, and here we are today in 2021,
still having that same conversation, and making those kinds of
recommendations.
Chairwoman Johnson. I yield back, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.
Chairman Foster. Thank you. And we will now recognize
Congress's other Ph.D. scientist, Representative Baird of
Indiana, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Baird. Thank you, Chairman Foster, and Ranking Member
Obernolte, and Chairwoman Stevens, and Ranking Member Waltz. I
appreciate this opportunity, and I appreciate the witnesses
being here today. I guess I'm going to start off with the
relationship with law enforcement and academia, and in that
vein I'd like to start with Dr. Xi, and ask him, given your
traumatic experience, do you have thoughts on how law
enforcement and the Department of Justice can work with
academia in order to gain a greater technical expertise, and
then hopefully avoid unnecessary situations like yours? So Dr.
Xi?
Dr. Xi. Thank you, Representative Baird. And--so I think
what the law enforcement can do first is to abandon the
assumption that all Chinese professors, scientists, and
students are spies for China. And so--they're not. And so I
think a lot of the problem, like failure to disclose, that has
been discussed, you know, if you abandon the assumption that
these people are spies, then the--you know, if they make
mistakes in filling their disclosure forms, and that's--then,
you know, they can correct it. And if--anything that is out
of--you know, not in line with the principles of open research,
of what, you know, Chinese government is doing, you can point
it out, and then they can correct it. So, you know, this, I
think, is the No. 1 thing they should be doing.
And in terms of how to balance openness and security, I
think that the JASON report, right, which is the--was
commissioned and endorsed by the NSF, has presented a fact-
based solution that's very well balanced in openness and
security. And, you know, it's recommended that these kind of
problems should be dealt with within the framework of research
integrity, and I think if a failure to disclose occurs,
university and offending agencies should investigate, and deal
with it, and--only when it's really--the case when law may be
broken, then they should refer to the FBI. And so I think that
would be, in my opinion, the right way to do it.
Mr. Baird. Well, thank you for that. And I'm going to
switch to all the witnesses on this question. The FBI has kind
of shifted the way they collaborate with the universities to
combat--in order to combat this foreign intelligence gathering.
I speak--specifically they set up the Office of Private Sector,
which is a contact point for universities and corporations. All
56 of the FBI's field offices have at least one private sector
coordinator. So, in your opinion, is this an effective means to
handle the problem, and what else could be done? And I think
we'll start with Ms. Lerner.
Ms. Lerner. Thank you, Representative Baird, and I think
any efforts on the part of the FBI and law enforcement to
increase understanding of these challenges, and education about
the risks, and build communication capabilities with the--with
academic institutions is to be praised, and of value.
Mr. Baird. Super. Thank you. Dr. Zuber?
Dr. Zuber. Yes. So I agree with Allison, that this is a
positive step. It's a work in progress. You know, there--what
would really benefit is greater mutual understanding of how
academia works versus how law enforcement works. They're
different culturally, and--so in academia, it's a very data-
driven community, and they want to see evidence, whereas in law
enforcement they tend to hold things tightly until there's an
actual prosecution done or not. And--so there's a disconnect
there, and, you know, we've certainly been--try to work with
the FBI, and--making progress toward what kind of information
can we actually provide the academic community with so that we
can better understand the risks that are there? And as we
continue these conversations, I think this continues to
improve.
Ms. Lerner. Representative Baird, if there's one more point
I could make?
Mr. Baird. Yes.
Ms. Lerner. Thank you very much. I would just note that the
inspector general community, especially IGs at research funding
agencies, are a great kind of intermediary between the
professionals at the FBI and the academic institutions, because
we are embedded within agencies that have a research-focused
mission, and we understand law enforcement. I think we have a
vital role to play in, you know, in ensuring that those
communications are at their--are as strong as they can be.
Mr. Baird. Thank you. Ms. Wright?
Ms. Wright. So I would just underscore what's been said in
terms of making sure that law enforcement is providing
information in a concrete way for the university community to
understand, and presenting that information in a way that
resonates and reflects the environment in which they operate.
One of the things that we heard in the course of our work is
that oftentimes law enforcement comes in, and they speak in
generalities, which makes it really difficult for the
universities to fully understand the scope and magnitude of the
issue, but also, more importantly, to have enough information
to share with their community, with their community of
researchers, principal investigators, and such.
And so I think that that's something that's--really needs
to be--for them to be mindful of, is how to present information
such that people can really understand what the scope of the
issue is, and the nature of how these threats unfold, and what
their role can be to help in combatting the issue.
Mr. Baird. Thank you. I--you know, I can appreciate that,
in many cases, the research being conducted by the researcher
is so specific that it would be difficult and--to eliminate all
of that to law enforcement, so I see the challenge, and I
appreciate the work that's being done. And, Mr. Chairman, I
yield back.
Chairman Foster. Thank you. And we will now recognize
Representative Stansbury for 5 minutes.
Ms. Stansbury. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to
all of our Chairpersons today for convening this very important
hearing. I want to start by saying that it's critical, as we
move forward and continue the work of this community, to ensure
that the programs and funds that we're creating rise to the
challenges of our times, and continue to foster the kinds of
international collaboration and research that really advance
our science enterprise. Open data, international collaboration,
multi-cultural exchange, and diversity in STEM (science,
technology, engineering, and mathematics) are all essential
ingredients to innovation in our science and technology
enterprise, and the social and economic well-being of our
country and of our planet.
In fostering these exchanges, it's paramount that we do not
open our institutions to foreign influences and malign forces,
and continue to protect the safety and security of our
communities, but we must also ensure that these security
measures do not lead to unintended consequences that
unnecessarily hamper international collaborations, and lead to
racial profiling and discrimination.
My home State of New Mexico is a science and technology
powerhouse, and home to numerous federally funded research
institutions, including two National Laboratories, several Air
Force research laboratories, and two public R-1 research
universities. These institutions, and the researchers who make
them up, come from across the country and across the planet,
and are the cornerstones of our communities. The University of
New Mexico and New Mexico State educate a diverse and talented
student body, and attract researchers from across the planet
who produce critical research that enriches our Nation and our
competitiveness. And, in fact, just this last month, our
President recognized New Mexico's research leadership by naming
NMSU's (New Mexico State University's) Dr. Dan Arvizu, who's a
friend to this Committee, to the President's Council of
Advisors on Science and Technology.
Both of our universities are strengthened by their
diversity, not just as Hispanic-serving institutions, but also
by the international students and researchers who bring their
talents, their perspectives, and their ideas to our State and
our country. The majority of these students, and many of these
researchers, stay in the U.S. after completing their time, and
continue to contribute to research advances, and, of course, to
the cultural fabric of our communities.
Our National Labs and Air Force research labs also attract
researchers from across the planet, and international exchanges
are part and parcel of the work that they do every day. These
labs, and the work that they do in our communities and for our
Nation, are helping to tackle our biggest challenges, from
national security to global climate change, and so continuing
to foster those international exchanges is not only paramount
to the security of our Nation, but also to our planet. So I
look forward to continuing to supporting the Committee's work
to ensure that we implement safeguards that allow us to work
with the international community in developing new research and
technologies, and continue to attract and welcome international
students and researchers to come to our country, and work in
our country, and to contribute to the scientific enterprise
that will serve our national security, and our global well-
being.
So, with all of that in mind, and especially because our
universities are oftentimes strapped by having challenges to
access resources, I want to ask Dr. Zuber a question about
university security. You know, for smaller universities, or
those with less resources, in your opinion, what are--what does
the risk landscape look like, and are universities equipped to
defend themselves, and how is the Federal Government helping to
strengthen collaboration between universities to address these
threats?
Dr. Zuber. Yes. So, Congresswoman, thank you very much for
that question. I was waiting for the opportunity to make this
point. You know, making the most of research in the U.S. means
getting everybody involved, and there are many, many, many
institutions that are capable of participating in the research
enterprise, and we need them all fully locked in. But it--all
of the things that we've talked about, in terms of disclosures
and cybersecurity, you know, all these safeguards, they require
a level of sophistication, they require a lot of staffing, and
they require a lot of resources. And so, by putting these in
place, it's actually an impediment to all universities, but
particularly the universities, such as in New Mexico, from
participating in this.
So the--you know, what--you heard a little bit about what
the Federal Government is doing. By harmonizing among agencies
what they require for disclosures, and by providing guidance
and best practices for--so that universities have a clear idea
of what they need to do to comply, that can be extremely
helpful. And by setting up working groups that allow
universities to share best practices, is another thing that's
important.
Ms. Stansbury. Thank you very much, and we look forward to
continuing to work with you, and with that, Mr. Chair, I yield
back. Thank you for the time.
Chairman Foster. Thank you. And we will now recognize our
new colleague from Texas, Representative Jake Ellzey, for 5
minutes.
Mr. Ellzey. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I won't need that
long. As a new Member, I appreciate you holding this hearing.
I'd like to thank the guests that we have, and their testimony,
as well as the other Ranking Members. And, Chairman, this is an
important topic to be looking at, and it's very timely, and I
appreciate all your input today. I have no questions, and I've
learned a lot from this, and I appreciate the opportunity to be
recognized, and I yield back.
Chairman Foster. Thank you. And we will now recognize
Representative Tonko for 5 minutes.
Mr. Tonko. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I thank both
Subcommittee Chairs and Ranking Members for holding this very
important hearing, and thanks to the witnesses for being with
us today. The U.S. Government relies on a robust federally
funded research enterprise to inform our most important
decisions, from how to combat climate change to overcoming a
global pandemic, so international students are fundamental, I
believe, to the success of that research, conducted at many of
our Nation's esteemed colleges and universities. Universities
such as RPI, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, in my district,
where international students make up 20 percent of undergrads,
and almost 50 percent of graduate students. These students and
scholars come to America to study, and work, obviously, but
also hopefully stay to become Nobel laureates, and founders of
startup tech companies, contributing billions to the national
economy, supporting hundreds of thousands of jobs, and deeply
enriching the quality of scientific research.
Just this morning a Japanese-born American physicist at
Princeton University was awarded a Nobel Prize for modeling
Earth's climate and reliably predicting global warming.
However, it is increasingly difficult for international
students to get their education here, and there has been a
decline in enrollment over the last several years. If we cannot
attract that kind of talent, or if students and scientists
don't feel comfortable engaging with their international
colleagues, the U.S. leadership in science and innovation will
indeed suffer. So while much of the discussion today is on
maintaining the integrity and security of the U.S. research
enterprise, we want to ensure we are not scaring away
international scholars, or causing a brain drain of
catastrophic proportions.
So Dr. Xi's written testimony included preliminary data
showing that 43 percent of international students and early
career scientists in physics perceived the United States as
unwelcoming. I am worried about the impact that has on the
mental health of international students and scholars working
and studying here in the U.S. Dr. Xi, have you gotten the sense
that scientists and students of Asian descent feel under
attack, or under increased scrutiny?
Dr. Xi. Yes, that--thank you for the question. Absolutely.
The policy to target Chinese scientists, and crack down on open
fundamental research has created an atmosphere of fear in the
scientific community. You know--the DOJ charged a Chinese
scientist when she--he or she has done nothing wrong, or has
made an error in disclosure forms, people are terrified, and
they're afraid that they may be the next. And many are so
terrified that they are afraid to talk about their fear, right?
This is not just for Chinese scientists, but scientists from
many other countries.
So let me give you an example. We are now signing an open
letter identical to the open letter that 177 professors from
Stanford had sent to Attorney General Garland about the China
Initiative, and some told me that they fully support the
letter, but out of concerns of the possible consequences, they
will not sign it. Right? So I--you know, as you mentioned,
this--it--American Physical Society survey, you know, 40
percent, that's a large percentage of--see America as an
unwelcome country, and the--40 percent say they are less likely
to stay in the U.S. long term. I mean, this is huge. This will
cause the U.S. to lose its leadership in science and technology
faster than anything Chinese government can do.
Mr. Tonko. Thank you. And, given your experience, how would
you advise Asian-American or Asian immigrant students
considering going into the sciences in the United States?
Dr. Xi. Well, you know, we came to this country 30 years
ago because this country, as I said, is the best place for
science, and the most welcome country in the world. And now we
know that there are people in this country who want to change
that. So, I mean, the freedom of movement is a fundamental
human right, so people should decide where they want to live
and work based on their best interest. However, if they decide
or consider to come to the United States, they should realize
the risks that Chinese scientists do face in this country.
Mr. Tonko. Thank you.
Dr. Xi. But on the other hand, you know, America is a
democratic society, right? We have the opportunity to speak up,
and to help, to make this country a more perfect union. So, you
know, I have the opportunity to come here and speak to you, and
tell you that, you know, the policy to crack down Chinese
scientists, and to open science, is bad for this country, and
an injustice. I mean, so, if they decide to come to this
country, they should not just come here and do science, and
nothing else. They should be prepared to participate in the
democratic process, and, you know, participate in the civil--
you know, like voting and things like that, and try to help to
make this country a better place, and change the policies that
hurt this country.
Mr. Tonko. And, Dr. Zuber, you discussed the importance of
encouraging and enabling Chinese students to stay in the U.S.
after graduating. Are you concerned that this unwelcoming
perception of the U.S. might reduce our ability to retain these
students, or fail to attract them to come in the first place?
Dr. Zuber. Yes, I am, Congressman, and there is evidence
that there have been decreases in Chinese students wanting to
come to the U.S.
Mr. Tonko. Thank you. I believe my time is up, Mr. Chair--
--
Chairman Foster. Expired.
Mr. Tonko. Thank you.
Chairman Foster. Thank you. And we will now recognize
Representative Meijer for 5 minutes.
Mr. Meijer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this
hearing. I think the title is very appropriate. Balancing an
open society and security, it's about striking that right
balance, and I appreciate all of our witnesses here today. I
want to second Ranking Member Waltz's, you know, expression of
apology to Dr. Xi for that treatment. I mean, obviously that is
what happens when that balance is not being struck, when we err
on the side of security, without appreciating that we need to
be balancing those--that imperative to make sure that we're
providing for our national security with recognizing that
scientific collaboration and research cannot be done in
isolation, it needs to be done in a collaborative fashion. We
need to have appropriate guardrails, and I also appreciate,
Director Wright, the GAO report along those lines.
Here in West Michigan, in Grand Rapids, just about a half
mile from where I'm standing, we have the Van Andel Research
Institute, which is a fantastic medical, and specifically
cancer, research institute. This has been a concern that was
raised to me very early on in my time in Congress, how we can
ensure that, while ensuring that we are protecting for American
security, and ensuring that research being done here is not
supporting, you know, international actors, but is being done
to benefit the medical and research community writ large, how,
in that balance, we don't ultimately cutoff supply of talented
academics, of talented researchers, who may be able to
contribute to that ultimate goal. So I think it's critical that
we strike that right balance.
And on that note, you know, Dr. Zuber, you know, this was a
bit covered in the GAO report, but when it's left up to the
universities, you know, the universities are not experts in
counterintelligence. They may not be experts in the Thousand
Talents Plan. This is not a capacity that they have on an
individual basis. So, you know, what are your recommendations
to universities or research institutions on how to best conduct
due diligence on potential Chinese or other foreign partners?
Dr. Zuber. So universities themselves are not in a position
to do this due diligence. You know, we depend--you know,
whereas--we assume that if a student gets a visa, or a
researcher gets a visa, that they have been vetted by
authorities who have experience in doing that. It's our
responsibility, as universities, to inform our faculty and our
students about what the rules are for disclosure, and the
issues associated with foreign talent programs, that we explain
to them, and train them, but ultimately, you know, we're going
to assume and require--people need to tell the truth. You know,
if--you know, we don't go in and--we do--you know, we do do
spot checks on people, but mostly we're there to educate, to
have individual discussions, and go through people's background
and CV, and grant applications to make sure that they're doing
things the right way, but we depend on honesty.
Mr. Meijer. Thank you. And, Dr. Zuber, I guess, on that
same point, when it comes to collaboration with law enforcement
or with the FBI, I think of that old expression, if all you
have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. If we're coming
from the lens of solely focusing on the counterintelligence
angle, then, you know, what could be a simple clerical error,
or a lack of understanding of what required disclosure--and, to
your point, that's why the education component's important, but
how do we have that right balance where something can get
elevated, but doesn't automatically fall into pure
intelligence, counterintelligence, you know, that elevated
level of concern and attention, but can be mitigated at a more
appropriate level to what's been demonstrated?
Dr. Zuber. Well, I just want to agree with what Dr. Xi said
before.
Mr. Meijer. Um-hum.
Dr. Zuber. The law enforcement should be called in when a
law is broken, not for filling out a form wrong, OK? Our
researchers are desperately afraid that if they fill out a form
wrong, that the FBI's going to show up at their doorstep, and
that's not a winning strategy for us.
Mr. Meijer. All right. Thank you, Dr. Zuber. And then, Ms.
Lerner, you know, obviously China's been the focus of much of
this, but could you speak to any other threat actors that
you've seen in your experience that we have concerns about them
utilizing our research apparatus for their own, you know,
foreign policy goals?
Ms. Lerner. I'm aware that there are other nations of
concern that have foreign government talent recruitment
programs. Again, our focus has been strictly on the contracts,
the nature of the contractual relationships, and I think that's
why failure to disclose a relationship like that is not just a
paperwork error. It--when a university is not aware of that
relationship, and when a funding agency is, it doesn't have the
opportunity to assess, and be aware of, and grapple with the
risks posed by that, and that undermines the competitive
process, and that puts funds at risk. So I--with all due
respect, I want to counter the idea that failure to disclose is
simply a paperwork error.
Mr. Meijer. Thank you, Ms. Lerner. With that, my time's
expired. Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Dr. Xi. Can I add a word?
Chairman Foster. Yes, yes, briefly.
Dr. Xi. Yes. No, I think it's definitely important to have
a clear rule about disclosure, however, overemphasize on
disclosure send a message that--don't collaborate with foreign
scientists, right? Foreign scientists, they will say, well, why
do I want to risk legal problem by collaborating? So according
to the same American Physical Society survey, one in five
physicists have either chosen, or been directed, to withdraw
from international engagement, and that is bad for this
country.
Chairman Foster. Thank you. And we will now recognize
Representative Ross for 5 minutes.
Ms. Ross. Thank you very much, Chairman Foster and
Chairwoman Stevens, for holding this hearing, and for all the
panelists for joining. I represent a district in North Carolina
that includes much of the Research Triangle Park, which is the
largest research park in the United States, and a premiere
global innovation center that has been dependent on people from
other countries, and companies from other countries, coming to
North Carolina, and finding a welcoming environment. Wake
County, where I represent, is also the home to several world
class research institutions, like NC State, doing
groundbreaking research into clean energy technology, more
flexible and adaptive 5G network, and much more. And these
research institutions benefit from the ingenuity and creativity
of foreign-born individuals.
At the same time, I know that the government has an
obligation to ensure that our research enterprise is free from
undue influence, but striking the balance is not an easy one,
and it is important that we work together, and include the
private sector in how to implement guidelines to promote open
science that do not discriminate against foreign
collaborations. In July, I, along with 90 of my colleagues in
the House and Senate, sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick
Garland requesting an investigation into repeated wrongful
targeting of individuals of Asian descent, and we asked the
Attorney General to specifically review the China Initiative,
and see if it unfairly targets individuals based on their race
and ethnicity, and I ask unanimous consent to enter the letter
into the record.
Chairman Foster. Without objection, so ordered.
Ms. Ross. Thank you. Dr. Xi, I'd like to hear just a little
bit more about your career path. You shared quite a lot with
Congressman Tonko that was very helpful, but I'd like to know,
why did you want to come to the United States, and become a
citizen, and raise your family here? What made this country
attractive to you? You're on mute.
Dr. Xi. Yes, thank you for the question. And, as I said, we
came to this country because America is indeed the best place
to do science, and it's welcoming to foreigners. And so--of
course, as I said, in this country, we all have the right to
speak up for our own interests. And, of course, we also have
the duty to be--participate in the democratic process. And I'm
happy I made the decision, because, you know, as I said, our
career really flourished, and I personally--I reached the level
in my profession that I would never have imagined when I was,
you know, young in China.
And so that's why, you know, after my case, I really felt
that we need to do something, because, you know, the three
lessons that I learned from my case, one, when DOJ charge
somebody for crime, it's not necessarily true. What they said
in my case was totally wrong. And two, Chinese scientists are
being unfairly targeted, and, No. 3, the routine academic
activities are being criminalized. So when I saw--actually,
even today, most scientists are not aware of these problems.
Now, of course, these facts were unimaginable to me before my
case, and now I understand it, and I saw people are still not
aware, and it's a big concern to me. So I--you know, I was
thinking, if I can help people to realize this problem, bring
people to action, then my contribution to science will be much
bigger than if I publish some more high-impact journal papers.
So that's really my hope, is that scientists, scientific
community, can speak up, and tell the public, and tell the
policymakers, about the fact, right? Because we have a lot of
untruths flying around, like, you know, Chinese--China sent
400,000 students to the U.S. to steal American technology.
That's simply not true.
Ms. Ross. Well, Dr. Xi, thank you so, so much. I want to
just ask a very quick question of Dr. Zuber about the China
Initiative. And I don't want to minimize the fact that there
are bad actors out there who do want to steal our research, but
I want to ask, with such a particular focus on one country, do
you think we might be keeping our eye off the ball, and not
looking into some other countries that might be using the fact
that we're focusing on China to engage in nefarious
enterprises?
Dr. Zuber. Yes, I think looking more broadly would be--
would have some benefit, certainly in the cyber area. Without
question there are other serious, serious players on that front
that are--that present a real risk.
Ms. Ross. Many thanks, and, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Chairman Foster. Thank you, and we will now recognize
Representative Casten for 5 minutes.
Mr. Casten. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you to our
witnesses. I really appreciate having this hearing, you know,
and I'm--if you'll forgive me for a little bit of
philosophizing, we have always had a challenge in our country,
maybe in every country, between, you know, people who embrace
change and people who are afraid of change. And that's been
manifest in our immigration policy through the years, you know,
the--you know, from Japanese internment camps to the Chinese
Exclusion Act, we've certainly seen plenty of anti-Asian bias
when Asians represented a form of change in the status quo.
And, of course, that's still ongoing. Last year I had to
organize a town hall after an Asian-American constituent of
mine was attacked and beaten on the run by people who felt
empowered by the fact that the President of the United States
was using racist terms to describe COVID. We are still dealing
with that. So I'm glad we're having this hearing.
That said, I want to focus on a different issue raised in
this report that I feel has gotten too little of--attention,
which is that academic institutions that are pushing the limits
of knowledge, overturning existing paradigms, are also
frightening to those who see their job as to stand athwart
history yelling stop, as the saying goes. And so, as long as
academic research and academic institutions are being
politicized, there's also a risk of overfocus there. And in the
specific report that was shared, of the 186 cases of theft or
attempted theft that were identified in the Economic Espionage
Act, only 3 percent of those were at academic or government
research institutions, and the overwhelming majority of our
conversation today has been about academia. And so, Dr. Zuber,
I'd like to turn over to you, what are we missing in that other
97 percent? And let me just start with that, and then followup.
Dr. Zuber. Yes. So it's puzzling to many of us why so much
of the focus is on academia, when most of the cases, especially
as it relates to economic security, are not there. I think
because the focus has been on non-traditional collectors, and
the spirit of openness in U.S. universities, but what are we
missing? Well, the 97 percent, you know, industry doesn't have
the same openness as universities do, and cybertheft is quite a
big deal, and intellectual property theft as well in industry
are also a big deal, so I would say that those are the two
areas where we're obviously losing.
Mr. Casten. So if we focus on this solely in the--sort of
the more public ends of our research institutions, what does
that do to academia? What does that do to the type of research
that gets done, the people who do it, the quality of research?
Dr. Zuber. Well, it's--you know, I mean, academia has to do
its part to follow the rules, but ultimately, in academia,
academics want to be publishing things, and getting information
out to the world. So what--you know, another effect of this is,
if we put a chill on academia, you know, that's a loss of
talent that's going to go out to these industries, so it's
ultimately negatively affecting U.S. industry as well.
Mr. Casten. Well, I mean, clearly we want to protect U.S.
intellectual property. I just have a concern that, if we're
ignoring 97 percent of the problem, we may be overburdening our
resources in the wrong area. Would--did any of the other
witnesses have any comments on that?
Dr. Xi. No, if I can, I can add a word, and--you know, you
are absolutely right. University is where all research is
published, and there is no need for people to steal anything.
They can just read journal publications. And--for example,
the--you know, when asked about the reported Russian stealing
of COVID research, the NIH Director said, I'm not exactly sure
what serious risk is involved here. Mischief? Yes. Serious
risk? I'm not sure. You know, the former CIA (Central
Intelligence Agency) Director John Deutch has said the risk of
losing of technology to China is minor compared to the losses
that will be incurred by restricting inquiry on university
campuses. So that's why I was asking the question, are they
catching the real spies?
Mr. Casten. That's an excellent question, and I'm out of
time, so I'll yield back, but really appreciate your thoughtful
responses.
Chairman Foster. Thank you. And, finally, we will recognize
Representative Beyer for 5 minutes.
Mr. Beyer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, very much. Question for
Inspector General Lerner, you suggest in the testimony that one
of your responsibilities is to work closely with the FBI on
cases that may prevent conflict. When we listen to Professor
Xi's concerns, not only his arrest, but a number of the other
FBI cases that resulted in arrests that turned out not to be
true, how confident are you that the FBI's going at the in the
right way? That--why are we continuing to get arrests of people
who later turn out to have done nothing wrong?
Ms. Lerner. I can't, unfortunately, speak to the specifics
of those cases because our office wasn't engaged in them. I
know we have done our--and made many offers to work with the
FBI to help them have a better understanding of the academic
research environment, and how to engage with that community,
and we're happy to show them the approaches that we use that
do--are--wherein we do our best to protect the privacy of the
people that we're investigating during the course of those
investigations, especially if ultimately it turns out that
allegations are not, you know, substantiated.
Mr. Beyer. Thank you. Dr. Zuber, I very much appreciated
your testimony about finding the right balance, that--well, my
youngest graduated from Rice a few years ago, and I think most
of her closest friends in her dorm were children born in China
who'd come to--there to get their undergraduates, and then
their Ph.D.'s, and stay, and were getting wonderful job offers
in the United States, with no intention of going back. You
know, this wonderful reverse brain drain from China that is--
serves the American public very well, and probably is not that
helpful for China. How do we make sure that we keep our science
open, and what percentage of all the research and work that
they're doing really represents a national security threat to
us, if somehow it's--were it got into the hands of, say, the
Communist Party in China?
Dr. Zuber. So let me answer the question of what can we do
to encourage international individuals to stay in the U.S.
after they've gotten their degree. So the first thing that we
really need to do is that--on our campuses, and we do open
research, that we can't restrict university grants to
participation only by U.S. citizens, and there's a move to do
more and more of that. So you--imagine you have a situation
where you've got a research group, but only the U.S. citizens
can work on parts of it, and then--you know, it makes the non-
U.S. citizens feel like second class, OK? So if something is
problematic, it shouldn't come to a university for research,
OK, with minor, minor exceptions.
The other thing that we can do is accelerate the green card
for anybody who gets a Ph.D. in a STEM field. So you get your
diploma, you get a green card stapled to it, or coming by,
certainly, so that we make it clear that we want these
individuals to stay in the United States because--for all the
reasons that you've mentioned, and that others have mentioned
here.
Mr. Beyer. Great. Thank you.
Dr. Zuber. And the fraction that presents a national
security concern, actually, I wouldn't begin to know the answer
to that, so I think I'd better steer clear of that one.
Mr. Beyer. Well, I'm saving my hardest question for Ms.
Wright, because she is a GAO specialist, right, so you know
everything about how government works. I've been hearing about
the STAPLE Act for at least 25 years. Every Democrat and every
Republican talks about--willing to keep these great new Ph.D.'s
in our physical sciences here. How come we can't pass the
equivalent of the STAPLE Act in the U.S. Congress?
Ms. Wright. Representative Beyer, I would have to say that
that's something that I'm not familiar with, and not--haven't
looked at that in our work. But certainly, with regard to some
of the work force issues, you know, that GAO covers, there
continues to be a growing need, and an ever-increasing need, to
make sure that we have the right STEM work force in place to
meet the challenges of our time. That might include, you know,
looking at not just talent here domestically, but certainly
also taking into account, you know, foreign talent that comes
to our universities.
Mr. Beyer. You might have to ask our Chairman for a GAO
report on why we can't get the STAPLE Act passed. Mr. Chairman,
I yield back.
Chairman Foster. Thank you, Representative Beyer, and I
have to--I can't avoid this opportunity to give a shoutout to
an act that we've been introducing for the last several
Congresses, I believe, the Keep STEM Talent Act, to basically
staple a green card to Ph.D. diplomas.
And, before we bring this hearing to a close, I want to
thank our witnesses for testifying before the Committee today,
and to thank our Committee Members on both sides of the aisle
for their thoughtful questions on this complex issue. I'd also
like to echo our special gratitude to Dr. Xi for--despite his
experiences, and those of his family, for his continuing
commitment to making our scientific enterprise, and our
country, a better, more secure, more just, transparent, and a
more welcoming place for researchers from around the world. And
as someone whose wife is a first generation Korean-American,
and a Ph.D. physicist, I personally appreciate your integrity
and courage.
The record will remain open for 2 weeks for additional
statements from Members, and for any additional questions the
Committee may ask of the witnesses. The witnesses are excused,
and the hearing is now adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:57 a.m., the Subcommittees were
adjourned.]
Appendix I
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Answers to Post-Hearing Questions
Answers to Post-Hearing Questions
Responses by Dr. Maria Zuber
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Responses by Ms. Allison Lerner
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Responses by Ms. Candice N. Wright
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Responses by Dr. Xiaoxing Xi
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Appendix II
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Additional Material for the Record
Document submitted by Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Document submitted by Representative Bill Foster
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Letter submitted by Representative Deborah Ross
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Reports submitted by Representative Michael Waltz
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
[all]