[Senate Hearing 117-315]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]


                                                       S. Hrg. 117-315

                          BEIJING'S LONG ARM:
                   THREATS TO U.S. NATIONAL SECURITY

=======================================================================

                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

                    SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE

                                 OF THE

                          UNITED STATES SENATE

                    ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS

                             FIRST SESSION

                               __________

                             AUGUST 4, 2021

                               __________

      Printed for the use of the Select Committee on Intelligence
      
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        Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.govinfo.gov
        
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                    U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE                    
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                    SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE

           [Established by S. Res. 400, 94th Cong., 2d Sess.]

                   MARK R. WARNER, Virginia, Chairman
                  MARCO RUBIO, Florida, Vice Chairman

DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California         RICHARD BURR, North Carolina
RON WYDEN, Oregon                    JAMES E. RISCH, Idaho
MARTIN HEINRICH, New Mexico          SUSAN COLLINS, Maine
ANGUS KING, Maine                    ROY BLUNT, Missouri
MICHAEL F. BENNET, Colorado          TOM COTTON, Arkansas
BOB CASEY, Pennsylvania              JOHN CORNYN, Texas
KIRSTEN E. GILLIBRAND, New York      BEN SASSE, Nebraska

                  CHUCK SCHUMER, New York, Ex Officio
                 MITCH McCONNELL, Kentucky, Ex Officio
                  JACK REED, Rhode Island, Ex Officio
                   JAMES INHOFE, Oklahoma, Ex Officio
                              ----------                              
                     Michael Casey, Staff Director
                  Brian Walsh, Minority Staff Director
                   Kelsey Stroud Bailey, Chief Clerk
                           
                           
                           C O N T E N T S

                              ----------                              

                             AUGUST 4, 2021

                           OPENING STATEMENTS

                                                                   Page

Warner, Hon. Mark R., a U.S. Senator from Virginia...............     1
Rubio, Hon. Marco, a U.S. Senator from Florida...................     4

                               WITNESSES

Evanina, Bill, Founder and CEO, The Evanina Group; Former 
  Director for the National Counterintelligence and Security 
  Center (NCSC)..................................................     6
    Prepared Statement...........................................     8
Puglisi, Anna, Senior Fellow, Center for Security and Emerging 
  Technology (CSET) at Georgetown University.....................    18
    Prepared Statement...........................................    20
Pottinger, Matt, Distinguished Visiting Fellow, The Hoover 
  Institute; Former Deputy National Advisor for the White House..    30
    Prepared Statement...........................................    33

 
                          BEIJING'S LONG ARM:
                   THREATS TO U.S. NATIONAL SECURITY

                              ----------                              


                       WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 4, 2021

                                       U.S. Senate,
                          Select Committee on Intelligence,
                                                    Washington, DC.
    The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:45 p.m., in 
Room SH-216 in the Hart Senate Office Building, Hon. Mark R. 
Warner (Chairman of the Committee) presiding.
    Present: Senators Warner, Rubio, Wyden, Heinrich, King, 
Bennet, Casey, Gillibrand, Burr, and Cornyn.

 OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. MARK R. WARNER, A U.S. SENATOR FROM 
                            VIRGINIA

    Chairman Warner. Good afternoon. I call this hearing to 
order. And welcome to our witnesses, one of them a good, good 
friend of the Committee: The Honorable Bill Evanina, former 
Director of the National Counterintelligence and Security 
Center. He is the founder and CEO of The Evanina Group. And in 
many ways, a lot of what we're going to be talking about today, 
he's worked on with the Members of this Committee for many, 
many years.
    Anna Puglisi, Senior Fellow at the Center for Security and 
Emerging Technology, or CSET, at Georgetown University.
    And on WebEx, Matt Pottinger, the Distinguished Visiting 
Fellow at The Hoover Institution and former Deputy National 
Security Adviser at the White House.
    Today, the Committee will examine the counterintelligence 
threats posed by the People's Republic of China and the Chinese 
Communist Party. We will look at the PRC's activities within 
the United States as it works to acquire critical U.S. 
technologies and intellectual property, hack into the U.S. 
cyber networks, and conduct influence operations to shape 
narratives to be more favorable to the PRC and the CCP. I hope 
the witnesses will also discuss their recommendations for 
better countering the CCP's efforts in the United States.
    Now, the Intelligence Committee, as Senator Burr often 
reminded us, doesn't normally hold open hearings, but Vice 
Chairman Rubio and I believe this story needs to get out to the 
American public.
    Several years ago, the Committee, in a bipartisan way 
thanks in part to Senators Rubio, Burr, Cornyn, and Collins, 
convened a series of classified sessions with leaders from the 
Intelligence Community and leaders from the private sector--
tech, finance, venture capital, academia--to brief them on 
efforts by the CCP to target their industries. I've wanted for 
some time to take those briefings and move them into an open 
hearing so that the U.S. public, including the private sector, 
our academic institutions, our media outlets, and others, can 
better understand these threats and how we as a society can 
counter them. Because the truth is the government cannot 
counter the CCP's actions all by itself.
    One of the most important areas that I hope the witnesses 
will address is how China is focusing on targeting key U.S. 
technologies for both acquisition and development. These 
include aerospace, advanced manufacturing, AI, biotech, data 
analytics, semiconductors, renewables--all in order to ensure 
PRC's future dominance in these areas. We saw this play out in 
many ways. And again, I think this Committee was one of the 
first to notice the CCP's efforts in their pursuit of 5G 
technology, backing Huawei. And I'm proud of this Committee's 
work in sounding the alarm on the threat of what would happen 
if networks all around were reliant on a sole-source Chinese 
provider in 5G. That would threaten both our national security 
and our allies' security. I hope the witnesses will also 
address how the CCP is using a variety of methods to acquire 
these capabilities, including cyber and traditional espionage, 
but also using a lot of the tools of business, joint ventures, 
acquisitions, mergers, and increasingly strategic investments 
by firms that, at the end of the day, are answerable to the 
Communist Party leadership in Beijing.
    They're also creating a series of partnerships with 
universities, in many ways, oftentimes luring some of those 
universities into trips or sinecures that sometime put that 
academic research at risk.
    We also know, increasingly, we're seeing their malign 
influence efforts to affect policy decisions that we in the 
Congress make. Matter-of-fact, the FBI has estimated that 
China's theft of simply American intellectual property, not 
worldwide, just American intellectual property runs from 
between $300 billion to $600 billion a year. According to the 
DOJ, 80 percent of all economic espionage prosecutions brought 
by the DOJ alleged conduct that would benefit the Chinese 
state, and 60 percent of all trade secret theft cases have some 
nexus to China.
    FBI Director Wray told this Committee in April that the 
Bureau has more than 2,000 operations going on, investigations, 
that tie back to the Chinese government. And this is one of the 
most stunning facts he laid out. He opens up a new 
investigation into Chinese espionage every 10 hours. The 
Director also attested that no other country represents more of 
a threat to the United States, to economic security, and to 
democratic ideals than China. And that China's ability to 
influence American institutions is ``deep, wide, and 
persistent.'' Ceding leadership across these technology sectors 
would have major repercussions for U.S. economic and national 
security.
    Let's not forget that, in most ways, since World War II, 
the United States has led in both scientific research and the 
development of transformational technologies. It's this 
leadership that has translated into decades of economic success 
for U.S. companies and our military capabilities. As part of 
our technological leadership, the U.S. or like-minded 
democracies also set the global standards and protocols for new 
technology. Many times, we can implant in those standards, in 
those protocols, our values: democracy, transparency, diversity 
of opinion, and respect for human rights. And that is a long-
term value to our country that I don't think is often factored 
in. I've been frustrated though by the frequency by which U.S. 
companies and their desire for market access in China have 
frankly given up sometimes on those values, and sometimes 
facilitated and enabled the PRC to acquire sensitive U.S. 
technologies. The idea they can't miss the Chinese market means 
they make sacrifices going into that market they would make in 
no other nation in the world. China, in turn, uses these 
technologies to advance its own illiberal vision to surveil and 
control its population, stifle the free flow of information, 
and repress foreign influence campaigns worldwide. These 
technologies enable the PRC to suppress dissidents and restrict 
religious groups. We see that whether it's in Xinjiang or in 
Hong Kong.
    As we think through what the CCP is doing in the United 
States, I want to make crystal clear though, my concerns lie 
squarely with the President of China, Xi Jinping, and the 
Chinese Communist Party leaders, not the people of China, and 
certainly not with Chinese-Americans or other Asian-Americans 
who've contributed so much to our society.
    Our answer to these challenges cannot be to keep talented 
folks out of the United States. In fact, we've seen in my State 
of Virginia, Northern Virginia particularly, a technology 
hotbed, literally, 40 percent of all the startups are started 
by first-generation Americans. So, it is in our national 
interest to welcome these talented Chinese academics, 
entrepreneurs, and technologists and in fact make it more 
attractive for them to use their talent to bolster our economy 
rather than simply going back to China. This is, again, where 
our values come into play. And Americans should also be aware 
that the PRC's pressures and coercion efforts don't stop with 
the diaspora or Chinese nationals living in the United States.
    As Senator Rubio pointed out, increasingly the CCP is 
focused on pressuring U.S. citizens, entities, and businesses 
across industries to, again, shape a narrative that advances 
their goals. Even for this hearing, a number of potential 
witnesses declined to participate in an open format for fear of 
retribution to themselves or their families. From the PRC's 
pursuit of critical and sensitive technology to its repression 
at home and coercion abroad, and its focus on trying to win the 
technology battle in the 21st-century, it's clear that I think 
our country is facing a new Sputnik moment where we must take 
steps to remain competitive, especially in technology, and find 
better ways to strengthen our defenses against the CCP's 
myriad, intelligence, tech acquisition, and foreign influence 
operations. Because we're back into this kind of semi-hybrid 
system today, for today's meeting, we will be asking questions 
by order of seniority, and as Senator King has made clear, with 
the five minute rule applying.
    Thank you. I now turn to the Vice Chairman.

  OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. MARCO RUBIO, A U.S. SENATOR FROM 
                            FLORIDA

    Vice Chairman Rubio. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding 
this hearing.
    I think you started out by talking about how unusual it is 
we have these open hearings, and there's a reason for it. The 
Members of this Committee on a regular basis review some of the 
most sensitive intelligence, both intelligence and the products 
that come from them, that this government has available to it. 
So, I think it should send a powerful message when you see that 
on issue after issue relating to China, issues that some would 
argue are outside the purview of what this Committee has 
traditionally looked at--technology, academia, influence 
operations, global diplomacy, industrial policy--that it is 
Members of this Committee that you see in the lead on so many 
issues relating to China. Because of the role the Members on 
the Committee play, they have a very unique insight into this 
horror show that's playing out before our eyes in the 21st 
century.
    The title of this hearing is ``The Long Arm of China.'' The 
long arm of China is not some futuristic threat. It's already 
here. China stealing between $300 billion and $600 billion a 
year--$300 billion and $600 billion a year--of American 
technology and intellectual property. They hack into networks, 
and they take it. They use venture capital funds to buy 
promising technology startups. They hide their ownership that 
way. They partner with universities on research, and then they 
steal that research, often research whose seed funding came 
from the U.S. taxpayer. They force American companies doing 
business in China to give the technology over to them.
    And I think the other thing most people don't realize is 
China already, already, has tremendous influence and control 
over what Americans are allowed to say or hear about them or 
many of the other issues in the world. Hollywood is so 
desperate, for example, to have their movies shown in China 
that Hollywood won't make a movie that the China communist 
censors don't approve. The U.S. corporations are so desperate 
to have access to the Chinese market that they'll lead costly 
boycotts of a state, an American state, that passes a law that 
they don't like. But they don't dare say a word about the fact 
that as we speak, genocide is taking place against Uyghur 
Muslims. American companies have actually fired Americans who 
live in America for saying or writing something that China 
doesn't like. There are some examples here that are pretty 
stunning.
    In 2019, China suspended business ties with the NBA because 
the general manager of the Houston Rockets expressed support 
for Hong Kong democracy protests.
    In 2019, Apple removed an app that enabled protesters in 
Hong Kong to organize, following CCP pressure.
    In 2019, an American company, Activision Blizzard, 
suspended a gamer and took away his prize money for voicing 
support for Hong Kong protesters.
    In 2018, Marriott fired an employee that ran a social media 
account, because he liked a Twitter post from a Twitter account 
applauding Marriott for listing Tibet as a country rather than 
as part of China, and he was fired after that.
    In 2018, Gap made a shirt with a map of China, and it 
didn't include Taiwan. They apologized for it, and they removed 
the shirt from its stores. Well, maybe you think that shirt 
thing is trivial. I don't think people getting fired is 
trivial, apps getting removed is trivial. These are just one of 
a handful of many. And this is already happening.
    So, in conclusion, I'd say two things. The first is the 
Chairman is absolutely right. This is not about the Chinese 
people or especially not about Chinese-Americans, okay? My 
parents came from Cuba. I live in a community filled with 
Cuban-Americans. It would be unfair to blame Cuban-Americans 
for the atrocities of the Cuban regime, and it would most 
certainly be unfair to blame the Cuban people for the 
horrifying actions of the regime that controls that enslaved 
island. Likewise, the biggest opponents of the Chinese 
Communist Party on the planet happen to be Chinese. Many live 
here, many in other parts of the world, and many under their 
oppressive thumb. So, this is not about the Chinese people. It 
is about a Communist Party, and it is time to wake up.
    Today, China is already carrying out the biggest illegal 
wealth transfer from one nation to another in the history of 
mankind.
    Today, the Chinese Communist Party has more control over 
what Americans can say, what we can hear, what we can read, 
what we can watch than any foreign government has ever had in 
our history.
    And they have weaponized our openness. They have weaponized 
our decency, and they have weaponized our corporate lust for 
profits against us. And if we don't wake up and we don't 
address this now, the America our children are going to inherit 
very soon could very well be one where the sanctimonious 
preachings, as someone once said, the sanctimonious preachings 
of a genocidal communist tyranny will be the only thing that 
Americans will be allowed to hear or say about China.
    So, I'm glad we're having this hearing. And, Mr. Chairman, 
just as a point of privilege here, one of our longtime 
staffers, today is his last hearing with us, Paul Matulic. He's 
been with the Committee for 16 years. Worked with Senators 
Hatch, Chambliss, Burr, and Cornyn, and now, here with us, and 
so he's retiring. And we hope, as all retirees should, he's 
moving to Florida. We don't know. But that's what Americans do. 
We want to thank him for his service to the Committee, and we 
hope our last hearing will be a memorable one. Thank you for 
your service.
    [Applause.]
    Chairman Warner. Well, let me echo that, and this was a 
subject of quite a bit of the focus yesterday in our closed 
hearing where we went into some of Paul's behavior and 
linguistic abilities. Luckily, that will stay classified, but 
we all very much value Paul's work and, again, want to commend 
him, in particular, for him and the whole team with their 
relentless pursuit of the truth in the Russia investigation.
    With that, we turn to our witnesses, and I'm not sure--
Anna, Bill, or Matt on WebEx--who's going to go first but the 
floor is yours.

STATEMENT OF BILL EVANINA, FOUNDER AND CEO, THE EVANINA GROUP; 
   FORMER DIRECTOR FOR THE NATIONAL COUNTERINTELLIGENCE AND 
                     SECURITY CENTER (NCSC)

    Mr. Evanina. Good afternoon, Chairman Warner, Vice Chairman 
Rubio, Members of the Committee. It's an honor to be here 
before you today. I've humbly briefed this Committee on a 
regular basis for more than a decade as the Director of 
National Counterintelligence and Security Center, and as a 
senior executive of the FBI and CIA. I was tremendously honored 
last year to be the first Senate-confirmed director of NCSC, 
leading our Nation's counterintelligence efforts. And I want to 
specifically thank this Committee for your support.
    I'm here today before you as a private citizen.
    Today's topic, the holistic and comprehensive threat to the 
United States posed by the Communist Party of China is an 
existential threat, and it is the most complex, pernicious, 
aggressive, and strategic threat our Nation has ever faced. I 
proffer that the U.S. private sector and academia have become 
the geopolitical battle space for China. Xi Jinping has one 
goal: to be the geopolitical, military, and economic leader in 
the world. Period. He, along with China's Ministry of State 
Security, People's Liberation Army, and United Front Work 
Department, drive a comprehensive and whole-of-country approach 
to their efforts to invest, leverage, infiltrate, influence, 
and steal from every corner of the United States.
    This is a generational battle for Xi and the Communist 
Party. It drives their every decision. So, why does it matter? 
Because economic security is national security. Our economic 
global supremacy, stability, and long-term vitality is at risk 
and squarely in the crosshairs of Xi Jinping and the communist 
regime. It is estimated that 80 percent of American adults have 
had all of their personal data stolen by the Communist Party of 
China. The other 20 percent? Just some of the data.
    As the Chairman and Vice Chairman already referenced, the 
estimated economic loss last year from the country of China 
just from known intellectual property and trade secrets loss is 
between $300 billion and $600 billion a year. It's a big 
number. What that means it's between $4,000 and $6,000 per 
American family of four after taxes.
    Competition is great and necessary, and it is what made 
America the global leader we are today. However, I would 
proffer China's economic growth the past decade via any and all 
means is considerably less than fair competition. My question 
is, are we really competing?
    If we do not alter how we compete with awareness of China's 
malign methodology and one-sided practices, we will not sustain 
our global position as the world leaders from tomorrow's 
emerging technology down to our creative ideations. We must 
create a robust public-private partnership with real 
intelligence sharing while at the same time staying true to the 
values, morals, and rule of law which made America the greatest 
country in the world.
    This will take a whole-of-nation approach with the mutual 
fund-analogous, long-term commitment. Such an approach must 
start with a contextual awareness campaign, reaching a broad 
audience from every level of government to university campuses, 
and from boardrooms to business schools. The ``why'' matters. 
As an example, Huawei is a national security threat to the 
United States. This Committee is aware of that. But we do not 
officially explain to America why. U.S. boards of directors and 
investment leaders must begin to look beyond the next fiscal 
quarterly earnings call and begin to think strategically about 
how their investment decisions and unawareness to the long-term 
threat can impact their businesses and industries, as well as 
America's economic and national security.
    From a cybersecurity perspective, China possesses 
persistent and unending resources to penetrate our systems and 
exfiltrate our data, or sit dormant and wait, or plant malware 
on a critical infrastructure for future hostilities. At the 
same time, the insider threat epidemic originating from the 
Communist Party of China has been nothing short of devastating 
to the United States corporate world.
    Additionally, the Communist Party of China strategically 
conducts malign influence campaigns at the state and local 
level of the United States with precision. These efforts must 
be exposed and mitigated. To effectively defend against China 
and compete effectively, we must put the same effort into this 
threat as we did to combat terrorism the past 20 years. I would 
suggest the threat posed by the Communist Party of China is 
much more dangerous to our economic and military viability as a 
Nation.
    In conclusion, I'd like to say for the record, as the 
Chairman and Vice Chairman mentioned, the significant national 
security threat we face from the Communist Party of China is 
not a threat posed by the Chinese people or as individuals. 
Chinese nationals or any Chinese person or Chinese ethnicity 
here in the United States or around the world are not a threat. 
They should not be racially targeted in any manner whatsoever. 
This is a threat pertaining to a draconian communist country 
with an autocratic dictator who is committed to human rights 
violations and stopping at nothing to achieve its geopolitical 
goals. Thank you for this opportunity to be here with you 
today, and I look forward to dialog with my colleagues. Thank 
you.
    Chairman Warner. Thank you, Bill. Anna?
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Evanina follows:]
    [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
    
 STATEMENT OF ANNA PUGLISI, SENIOR FELLOW, CENTER FOR SECURITY 
    AND EMERGING TECHNOLOGY (CSET) AT GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY

    Ms. Puglisi. Thank you. Chairman Warner, Ranking Member 
Rubio, Members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity 
to testify today. The issues we are going to discuss will make 
us uncomfortable because they touch on the core beliefs and 
assumptions we make as Americans regarding democracy, 
opportunity, capitalism, open markets, and the importance and 
role of immigrants throughout the history of the U.S. My own 
grandparents were immigrants who came here to this country with 
little formal education, worked menial jobs, and made a new 
life for themselves.
    My presence here today is a testament to the American 
dream. I want to start with saying that there's no room for 
xenophobia or ethnic profiling in the U.S. It goes against 
everything we have stood for as a Nation. And precisely because 
of these values, we need to find a principled way forward. The 
issues should not be seen as concerns of one Administration or 
the policies of one political party. But as the challenges 
created by a nation-state that is ever more authoritarian and 
that has a different system, a different regard for human 
rights, and a different view of competition and fairness.
    Since you have my written testimony, I will focus my 
remarks on some of the highlights.
    China is engaged in a strategic rivalry with the U.S. 
centered on economic power. China's management of its 
relationship with the U.S. has been designed to mask key 
aspects of this rivalry. This is why it's so difficult to have 
these conversations. Beijing, in many ways, understands the 
societal tensions, and its statecraft is directed at them--
exploiting identity politics and promoting any changes to U.S. 
policy as ethnic profiling. Extreme positions such as closing 
our eyes or closing the doors only benefits China. So, now, 
let's take a moment and talk about what's at stake.
    United States science and technology dominance since World 
War II has underpinned U.S. national strength and soft power. 
Losing our technological edge and the influence it entails will 
have far-reaching implications beyond scientific disciplines. 
This is not only about military technologies. Future strengths 
will be built on 5G, AI, and biotechnology. And our systems are 
fundamentally not the same. China's central government policies 
and the role of the State create this different system. These 
include talent programs that exploit its diaspora, S&T 
development programs with acquisition strategies built into 
them, and China's policy on civil-military fusion.
    Let me be clear, China says it will use any knowledge or 
technology it acquires for its military. This is not 
conjuncture or profiling or analysis but China's stated 
position--and, I would add, for decades. We should believe 
them. Given the scope and scale of China's activities, a re-
evaluation of our underlying assumptions and how we evaluate 
risk will be essential to counter these efforts.
    Therefore, I have the following recommendations.
    First, we really do need to improve ourselves. The U.S. and 
other liberal democracies must invest in the future. And we 
also have to realize that not all discovery has immediate 
commercial application. We need to focus on things that provide 
the highest value to the Nation instead of just the lowest 
cost. We must build research security into future funding 
programs.
    We also need to face the facts as a society. Beijing 
doesn't play by fair market rules. It does not respect foreign 
intellectual property. It is willing to act directly and 
indirectly to ensure its favored companies win in the market. 
The result of this is that our companies and our researchers 
are not competing on an equal and level playing field, but 
instead are up against the strategy--and, I would add, the 
power and the money--of a nation-state.
    We must increase transparency. Existing policies and laws 
are insufficient to address the level of influence the Chinese 
Communist Party exerts in our society, especially in academia. 
We must increase reporting requirements for foreign money at 
our academic and research institutes, and university government 
labs and research institutions should have clear reporting 
requirements and rules on the participation of foreign talent 
programs. That part really needs to be country agnostic.
    We need to ensure true reciprocity. This is about fairness 
and market access. We can no longer allow China to weaponize 
its market, connecting China's reciprocity and sharing of 
scientific data to its access to U.S. institutions and big 
science facilities as the leverage point. For too long, we have 
looked the other way when China has not followed through on the 
details of its agreements that it has entered into.
    We also need to bolster cooperation and the communication 
of risk with our allies and partners. What also makes these 
conversations difficult, and as my colleague has alluded to, is 
that the reality that China is presenting is inconvenient to 
those that are benefiting in the short-term. This includes 
companies looking for short-term profits, academics that 
benefit personally from funding and cheap labor in the 
laboratories, and former government officials who cash in as 
lobbyists for China state-owned and state-supported companies.
    We need to move beyond tactical solutions and have a 
comprehensive strategy for how we deal with China.
    So, I would like to thank the Committee once again for 
continuing to discuss this issue. These are hard conversations 
that we, as a Nation, must have if we are going to protect and 
promote U.S. competitiveness, future developments, and our 
values. If we do not highlight and address China's policies 
that violate global norms and our values, we give credence to a 
system that undermines fairness, openness, and human rights.
    The Chinese people deserve better, the U.S. people deserve 
better, and I think our future really depends on it. So, thank 
you.
    Chairman Warner. Thank you, Anna.
    And now, I think we're going to hear from Matt Pottinger 
via WebEx.
    [The prepared statement of Ms. Puglisi follows:]
    [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
    
STATEMENT OF MATT POTTINGER, DISTINGUISHED VISITING FELLOW, THE 
HOOVER INSTITUTE; FORMER DEPUTY NATIONAL ADVISOR FOR THE WHITE 
                             HOUSE

    Mr. Pottinger (via WebEx). Chairman Warner and Vice 
Chairman Rubio, thank you and your fellow Committee Members for 
hosting a public hearing on this very important topic.
    Many Americans were slow to realize it, but Beijing's 
enmity for the United States really began decades ago. Ever 
since the Chinese Communist Party, or the CCP, came into power 
in 1949, it's cast the United States as an antagonist. And then 
three decades ago at the end of the cold war, Beijing quietly 
revised its grand strategy to regard Washington as its primary 
external adversary, and it embarked on a quest for regional, 
followed by global, dominance.
    The United States and other free societies have belatedly 
woken up to this contest, and there's a welcome spirit of 
bipartisanship that's emerged on Capitol Hill. But even with 
this new consensus, we failed to adequately appreciate, I 
think, one of the most threatening elements of the Chinese 
strategy, and that's the way that it seeks to influence and 
coerce Americans, including political, business, and scientific 
leaders, in the service of Beijing's ambitions. So, the CCP's 
methods are really a manifestation of political warfare, which 
is the term that George Kennan, the chief architect of our cold 
war strategy of containment, used in a 1948 memo to describe 
the employment of all of the means at a nation's command short 
of war to achieve its national objectives.
    So, that's what China is doing.
    And one of the most crucial elements of Beijing's political 
warfare is its so-called United Front Work. So, United Front 
Work is an immense range of activities with no analog in 
democracies. China's leaders call it a ``magic weapon,'' and 
the CCP's 95 million members are all required to participate in 
the system, which has many different branches. The United Front 
Work Department alone, which is just one branch, has three 
times as many cadres as the U.S. State Department has Foreign 
Service officers. Except instead of practicing diplomacy, the 
United Front gathers intelligence about and works to influence 
private citizens, as well as government officials overseas with 
a focus on foreign elites and the organizations they run, 
including businesses that you and Senator Rubio just mentioned. 
Peter Mattis, who detailed how United Front Work is organized 
during his 2019 testimony before the House Permanent Select 
Committee on Intelligence, said, ``Put simply, United Front 
Work is conducted wherever the party is present.'' And the 
party is quite present here in the United States. Assembling 
dossiers on people has always been a feature of Leninist 
regimes. But Beijing's penetration of digital networks 
worldwide, including using 5G networks that you referenced, 
Chairman Warner, has really taken this to a new level. The 
party now compiles dossiers on millions of foreign citizens 
around the world, using the material that it gathers to 
influence, and target, and intimidate, reward, blackmail, 
flatter, and humiliate, and, ultimately, divide and conquer.
    Bill Evanina's written testimony today makes plain that 
Beijing has stolen sensitive data sufficient to build a dossier 
on every single American adult and on many of our children, 
too, who are fair game under Beijing's rules of political 
warfare.
    Newer to the Communist Party's arsenal is the exploitation 
of U.S. social media platforms. Over the past few years, 
Beijing has flooded U.S. platforms with overt and covert 
propaganda, amplified by proxies and bots. And the propaganda 
is focused not only on promoting whitewashed narratives of 
Beijing's policies, but also increasingly on exacerbating 
social tensions within the United States and other target 
nations. The Chinese government and its online proxies, for 
example, have for months promoted content that questions the 
effectiveness and safety of our Western-made COVID-19 vaccines. 
There's been some recent research by the Soufan Center that 
also found indications that China-based influence operations 
online are now outpacing Russian efforts to amplify some 
conspiracy theories.
    So what are some of the things that Washington can do to 
address Beijing's political warfare?
    First, I think we should stop funding technologies in China 
that are used to advance the surveillance state and the 
military of Beijing. Beijing's turning facial recognition, 5G, 
data mining, machine learning technologies, and others, not 
only against their own citizens but, increasingly, against 
Americans here at home. The executive orders that were issued 
by the Trump and Biden administrations that prohibit the U.S. 
purchase of stocks and bonds in 59 main Chinese companies is a 
good start. But the Treasury Department really needs to expand 
that list by orders of magnitude in order to better encompass 
the galaxy of Chinese companies that are developing these so-
called dual-use technologies.
    Congress should also look at revising the Foreign Agents 
Registration Act, or FARA, to include more robust reporting 
requirements, steeper penalties for noncompliance, and a 
publicly accessible database of FARA registrants and their 
activities that's updated regularly.
    The United States can also do more to expose and confront 
Beijing's information warfare through our social media 
platforms. Remember, these are platforms that are themselves 
banned inside of China's own borders. U.S. social media 
companies have the technological know-how and resources to take 
a leading role in exposing and tamping down shadowy influence 
operations online, and the U.S. Government should partner more 
closely with Silicon Valley companies in this work. Washington 
should also partner with U.S. technology giants to make it 
easier for the Chinese people to safely access and exchange 
news, opinions, history, films, and satire with their fellow 
citizens and other people who are outside of China's Great 
Firewall.
    Finally, we should do more to protect Chinese students and 
other Chinese nationals living here in the United States. Many 
people of Chinese descent, including some U.S. permanent 
residents and even U.S. citizens, live in fear that their 
family members back in China will be detained or otherwise 
punished for what their American relatives say or do here in 
the United States. And this kind of coercion by Beijing, among 
other things, has silenced countless Chinese-language news 
outlets around the world. So much so that there's almost no 
private Chinese-language news outlet left in the United States 
or abroad that doesn't toe to the Communist Party line. The 
U.S. Government can help by offering grants to promising 
private outlets and also reenergizing some of the federally 
funded media such as Radio Free Asia.
    And U.S. universities, maybe with help from the U.S. 
Government, should also hand a second smartphone to every 
Chinese national who comes to study in our schools in the 
United States so that they have a smartphone that is free from 
Chinese apps such as WeChat, which monitor users' activities 
and censor their news feeds.
    Thanks very much.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Pottinger follows:]
    [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
    
    Chairman Warner. Again, I want to thank all three of our 
witnesses today. And, again, for late-arriving Members, we're 
going to go by traditional seniority and five minute rounds.
    I also very much appreciate all three of you making the 
point that our beef is with the CCP and its leadership and not 
the Chinese people and surely not the Chinese diaspora--
Chinese-Americans--and that there is no place for racists or 
xenophobic targeting in our country. And that, in many ways, 
would simply play into the hands of the CCP.
    Let me start with a question, a question different than I 
was originally going to start with. I'm going to start with 
something that is currently taking place. As we know, or maybe 
I'm not sure most Americans know, in roughly 2015-2016, China 
changed its, in a sense, corporate legal framework to make 
explicitly clear that any Chinese company's first obligation 
was not to its shareholders or even its employees, but its 
first obligation was to the Communist Party.
    Coincident with that same time, we have seen an emergence, 
oftentimes driven, as Bill pointed out, by intellectual 
property theft--we've seen an emergence of Chinese social 
media, delivery, other companies that have had some of the 
biggest returns of any companies in the world over the last few 
years: the Alibabas, the Baidus, the Tencents. What I'm not 
sure most folks have realized is that those companies and many 
others--the vast majority of their investors are either 
American or Westerners. Something unique has happened, though, 
starting with Jack Ma and Ant when they tried to go public a 
number of months back, and the government intervened and 
stopped that enterprise from going public. A number of other 
Chinese tech companies have now been cracked down upon.
    You know, is this an ability to try to get their large tech 
companies under control the same way we are having that active 
debate in this country?
    Is it, in a sense, a warning shot across the bow for those 
companies that are potentially been trying to go public either 
here in the United States or on the Hong Kong exchange as 
opposed to inside the PRC?
    Or is it even a possibility that this is an effort, since 
these companies are not going away, to wash out those Western 
and American investors? Because we've seen the values of these 
companies in some cases decreased by 50 percent literally over 
the last 60 to 90 days, and then to have them, in a sense, 
refinanced with Chinese funds themselves with more compliant 
tech leadership. And I throw that out to all three of the 
members of the panel for comments.
    Mr. Pottinger. Senator, I thank you very much for that 
question and those points. You know, I think you're exactly 
right that what you're seeing now is a deliberate obliteration 
of the line, certainly, a blurring, but ultimately an 
obliteration of the line between private companies on the one 
hand and state-owned companies on the other in China. An 
obliteration of the line separating civilian companies on the 
one hand and military companies and institutions on the other. 
And even a blurring of the line between foreign-invested 
companies, you know, multinational companies so to speak, and 
domestic Chinese-state champions. Beijing's goal is to re-
concentrate the authority of the party over all of the economic 
life of Beijing. And that's really what this is about, much 
more than just wanting to assert control over data, although 
that's one of the other reasons that Beijing has been taking 
these steps against Alibaba and DiDi, and many, many others to 
come. There are a number of laws that force those functions 
that you referenced. I'd be happy to provide an index of some 
of those laws that require companies in China, including 
foreign joint ventures to, first and foremost, serve the 
national security interests of the party, to serve the party's 
broader interests, and to work at the behest of the security 
apparatus to do that.
    Corporate governance in China is not what is represented in 
public filings to the Securities and Exchange Commission. I've 
been waiting, turning purple, holding my breath, waiting for 
the Securities and Exchange Commission to begin asserting its 
authority to actually recognize that the risk factors are not 
even remotely adequately addressed in the public filings of 
Chinese companies here in the United States.
    Chairman Warner. Matt, could I cut you off there? I'm going 
to try to adhere to my time, and I want to see if Anna or Bill 
have another comment on this topic as well.
    Mr. Evanina. Senator, just two foot stomps from your point 
and maybe amplify what Matt had mentioned, specifically for 
corporate America, the three laws that China initiated, two new 
security laws and one cyber law, I think, are critical for CEOs 
and investment folks in the United States to understand. Most 
importantly is from a technological perspective that every CISO 
and CIO in China for a Chinese company in China or abroad is 
mandated to provide third-party data to the intelligence 
organizations in China. So, if you are a U.S. company and 
you're partnering with a company in China, you have to be aware 
that any and all of your data will be provided to the 
intelligence services in China. That's number one.
    Secondly, to your point, 13 of the 15 largest companies in 
China are state-owned or operated. There are only two left. 
Alibaba is one of the two left, and we see what's happened to 
them now overseas in China with the draconian efforts that Xi 
is employing.
    Ms. Puglisi. I just want to foot stomp on the laws, and 
that's something that we can provide to the Committee. But in 
some ways, to take a lighter attempt, they've actually said the 
quiet part out loud in seeing what's happening to these 
companies, because this actually is a really good demonstration 
of how different the systems are.
    Chairman Warner. I would point out, and before we move to 
the Vice Chairman, we had 13 of what we call our classified 
roadshows. Every industry, virtually every major college and 
university in America, participated in one or more of those--
with the exception of private equity. The very private equity 
that funded some of these Chinese tech companies that are now 
getting absolutely creamed as the Chinese government reasserts 
control. Maybe they would have been better to take advantage of 
our repeated offers to meet with private equity in a classified 
setting, so they understood perhaps better what they were 
getting themselves into. So, I'm not shedding a lot of tears 
for some of their losses, but I do hope, on a going-forward 
basis, they and others will continue to make sure that they go 
in with eyes wide open in terms of dealing with the PRC.
    With that, Senator Rubio.
    Vice Chairman Rubio. Thank you.
    Mr. Pottinger, let me start with you. Did China try to 
manipulate public opinion in the United States and around the 
world during the early days of the COVID pandemic?
    Mr. Pottinger. Senator Rubio, certainly, we saw all sorts 
of activity by Beijing. Overt propaganda as well as what I 
would call more ``shadowy schemes'' to influence and amplify 
messages that in many cases are disguised to appear as though 
they are organic discourse between private citizens, but are 
really core, very carefully, and well-resourced campaigns 
orchestrated by Chinese propaganda officials. Now, you're 
referencing the time early in the COVID epidemic. Some of the 
ones I can just think of off the top of my head were efforts to 
create doubt about the origins of this pandemic, in fact, to 
claim that the pandemic originated from the U.S. military. We 
saw efforts to undermine, as I mentioned earlier, the 
credibility of our vaccines. Certainly, quite a lot of 
propaganda, both overt and covert, designed to create distrust 
and a lack of faith in democracy as a whole, and to amp up and 
elevate the idea of Leninist totalitarianism as a somehow 
superior model in spite of what the record has been over the 
decades that the Chinese Communist Party has been in power. I'm 
thinking of the tens of millions of deaths of its own citizens 
from mismanagement from their government. So, the short answer 
is Yes, sir.
    Vice Chairman Rubio. Thank you. Ms. Puglisi, the National 
Counterintelligence and Security Center warned, I think, in 
February that China is collecting the medical data, the DNA, 
and the genomic data of Americans. Why do they want the DNA and 
genomic information of Americans?
    Ms. Puglisi. China has amassed the largest genomic holdings 
of anywhere in the world. One of the most important questions 
in the next generation of both medicine and also biological 
research is the genotype to phenotype. So, understanding what 
genes do. And so access to that kind of data, both their own 
and from other places in the world, gives them an advantage in 
figuring out some of those problems. We know from their central 
government policies and programs they have emphasized the 
importance of next-generation medicine and that is a huge focus 
for them.
    Vice Chairman Rubio. Meaning the designing of precision 
medicine that allows curing specific conditions in people with 
specific genetic makeups?
    Ms. Puglisi. Yes.
    Vice Chairman Rubio. Mr. Evanina, in your opinion, how 
confident is China in their ability to get American banks, 
American investment firms, and American big business? How 
confident are they in their ability to get these to act as 
their lobbyists here in Washington?
    Mr. Evanina. Senator Rubio, there's no lack of confidence. 
I don't believe that the Communist Party of China has any 
reticence to believe they can't acquire whatever they want to 
acquire. And you see currently now with the new movement of the 
Communist Party of China investing into pension funds, both at 
the state and local level, as well as into our thrift savings 
plan federally. They do it in a sublime manner, sometimes 
shrouded in U.S. business investment and shrouded with third-
party front companies to be able to get and corner the market, 
so to speak, in our investment funds.
    So, they have no lack of confidence in acquiring anything 
they need in our financial services sector.
    Vice Chairman Rubio. And that's for sure. But I think the 
question was how confident are they in their ability to get an 
American company, for example, or a finance sector or what have 
you, to use the lure of access to the Chinese marketplace to 
get them to come back to Washington and lobby policymakers here 
against or for decisions that China favors? In essence, they 
deputize them to come back and say, ``Don't do this,'' or 
``Don't do that.'' Their ability to turn these American 
entities into lobbyists for their preferred policy outcome in 
our policies.
    Mr. Evanina. Again, there's no lack of confidence, and 
we've seen that occur in other parts of Chinese lobbying here 
in D.C., hiring former Members of Congress, former members of 
the Administration, former members of large banks to be able to 
come back and lobby and explain China's methodology and their 
narrative as to why their funding is more important than any 
funding here. And I will reiterate Senator Warner's point that 
some of my activities subsequent to retirement, the private 
equity venture capital folks are saying they're getting 30 
percent ROI from investments in China.
    Vice Chairman Rubio. Yes. And so, just real quick, tied to 
that. Are they forward-thinking enough to look at a state 
legislator, a mayor, a commissioner at a local level and say, 
that person may one day be a member of Congress? Let's start 
working them now, get close to them, and have them adopt our 
favorite narrative of China so that in the future, when they 
wind up in that position, they'll be more favorable to our 
views?
    Mr. Evanina. Absolutely, and it's common practice.
    Chairman Warner. I want to note that Senator Cornyn and 
Senator Feinstein did some very good work that all of us on the 
Committee supported on trying to strengthen some of those 
restrictions on that foreign investment with the CFIUS Act.
    Senator Wyden.
    Senator Wyden. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Thanks to 
all our panelists. I'm of the view that data is one of the most 
underappreciated threats to America's national security, and 
that is especially true when you're talking about Americans' 
data being exported to our adversaries. And it's already the 
case with the Chinese government, or hackers based in China, 
have stolen the personal information of hundreds of millions of 
Americans.
    As a result, I have been pushing hard to enact a law that 
would ensure that Americans' most private data cannot be sold 
off in bulk to countries that would use it against us.
    So, I want to pick up on one of the earlier questions one 
of my colleagues just asked about with respect to genetic data 
and because of the importance of this issue.
    Mr. Evanina, I know you've spent a lot of time on this. How 
does the Chinese government actually obtain the genetic 
information of Americans? And tell us for the record why that's 
so dangerous to national security.
    Mr. Evanina. Thank you, Senator Wyden.
    I think there's a couple of aspects to this question. First 
is to foot stomp your message of China's demand for data. When 
we look at what they've accumulated in the last decade, I'll 
point to Equifax: 150 million Americans, all their financial 
data has been taken by China. I would say that it's unnecessary 
for China to procure or buy our data when they can come in and 
take it for free, because our lack of cybersecurity defenses 
here provide an open door for them to take through spearfishing 
or other vectors to get into our systems and take our data.
    With respect to DNA and genomics, they'll use front 
companies like BGI, which is a company around the world, to set 
up stations to collect COVID samples and do fertility clinics. 
And every single time you do that, you're giving away all your 
data to that node of that company, which as we said before, is 
now beholden to the Communist Party. So, as you provide 
genetics, blood typing, or any kind of COVID test, it's going 
to possibly go to the Chinese Communist Party, which is why we 
must protect what we do here on our soil from companies like 
Quest and other diagnostic companies, which are in every single 
town, from being procured by the Chinese government.
    Senator Wyden. I'm going to also hold the record open 
because I feel so strongly about this. For any additional 
information you can give us on exactly how they obtain the 
genetic information, because that's the threshold question. You 
know, when American companies are being purchased, there's the 
CFIUS process that addresses the purchase of American 
companies. But the purchasing and export of the data itself is 
totally unregulated, which is why I feel so strongly about this 
legislation. And so, if Mr. Evanina, in the next week or so, 
you could give us more information on how they actually go 
about doing it.
    Question for you, Ms. Puglisi.
    It's clear that the American government has been forcing 
the transfer of a number of valuable American innovations 
through legal acquisitions and illicit tactics. Another 
legislative initiative I'm pushing would require companies 
doing business in China to report on technology- and IP-
transfers. In your view, wouldn't this requirement help the 
U.S. Government get a better sense of the problem and allow for 
our government as we try to put together an all-of-government 
response to come up with a better approach?
    Ms. Puglisi. So, I think that really gets at that 
transparency issue and understanding. I think, to step back 
from that as well, what's important is understanding what are 
the market conditions that are being set, because we know that 
China has used its market to force a technology transfer. And 
so, having a better understanding of, and also pushing back on 
that, will help both with that transparency piece and 
understanding the pressures that those U.S. companies are 
under.
    Senator Wyden. I'm over my time. I'm going to give you all 
a written question on hacking, which is sort of the other side 
of the coin.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Warner. Thank you, Senator Wyden. Senator Burr.
    Senator Burr. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Anna, I found your 
opening statement to be very clear and very diplomatic, I would 
say.
    I'm going to read you a statement that I think encompasses 
the threat. You tell me what I've left out of it, if you will:

        The People's Republic of China is actively conducting multi-
        disciplined espionage operations against the United States. 
        Further, the Chinese Communist Party is engaged in influence 
        and intelligence operations inside the United States at an 
        unprecedented scale, targeting numerous sectors of society, 
        including the academic community, private sector, media 
        platforms, and policymakers in order to advance its security 
        and economic objectives and strengthen the CCP's hold on power. 
        The CCP aims to acquire technology, conduct espionage, and 
        shape narratives to align the CCP's ideology and objectives.

    Is there anything you disagree with in that statement? Is 
there anything I've left out?
    Ms. Puglisi. The one thing I would like to highlight is 
that one of the challenges in dealing with how China targets 
our technology is they use a very different methodology. So, if 
we focus only on intelligence officers, things that have a 
direct military application, and things that are illegal, I 
believe we will fail. And so, it's looking at those gray areas 
and looking at how what started off as legitimate co-operations 
or collaborations or even business deals get moved into that 
gray area.
    Senator Burr. Well, I think we would agree with you. Bill, 
the Department of Justice has used the name and shame program, 
the model of highlighting cases of Chinese espionage in the 
United States. And it currently makes the public more aware of 
CCP's nefarious activities within the U.S.
    In your opinion, how effective is ``name and shame,'' and 
what, if anything else, can be done to deter the Chinese?
    Mr. Evanina. Sir, I'm a big believer in the efficacy of 
name and shame. I think that when you look at Xi Jinping and 
his regime, what hurts him the most is any kind of negative 
consequence. And as we get the word out, not only around the 
globe--and as you know, in my previous role, I was head of 
counterintelligence for NATO. When I would speak to our NATO 
partners, they would be excited because of the naming and 
shaming, and the exploitation of criminal behavior by the 
Chinese communist regime. You have big cases--whether it be 
Huawei or any other kind of espionage investigation insiders of 
cyber--that get known around Europe and around South Asia and 
South America. So, it allows the U.S. Government, policymakers, 
intelligence services to garner support and build coalitions 
against China, whether it be Belt and Road or the economic 
proclivity in Europe. And I would proffer that the work the 
U.S. Government has done on Huawei, in calling out their 
nefarious behaviors, has done a whirlwind of efforts in Europe 
with the EU and NATO.
    Senator Burr. Good.
    Matt Pottinger, what technologies do you believe we must do 
a better job at protecting? And what's after 5G?
    Mr. Pottinger. Thank you, Senator. I think that we know 
from China's own strategy and from the actions in implementing 
that strategy that they've used semiconductor mastery--that is, 
all of the elements including the fabrication of 
semiconductors--as the foundational technology upon which 
everything else that we're competing against China for in this 
century is resting on. So, whether we're talking about 
synthetic biology or 6G, 7G, advanced materials, and machine 
learning--all of this is built on advanced semiconductors; and 
Beijing is quite determined to make itself wholly independent 
of any other market for those semiconductors. And in ways that 
would also make us increasingly dependent on China so that they 
would have enormous coercive leverage over us.
    So, I'm a free-market guy, but there's the one exception 
that I'm really making is that I believe that we do need to 
provide subsidies to bring back a certain amount of the 
manufacturing of semiconductors to the United States to remove 
that piece of leverage from China. So, semiconductors is number 
one.
    In the area of 5G and the other generations of wireless and 
communications technology that are going to follow, we need to 
use our export controls more sharply than I think we've been 
using to date. We did some very important things in 2020: 
expanding the foreign direct-product rule, making it impossible 
essentially for heavily state-owned and state-subsidized 
companies like Huawei to obtain high-end semiconductors. We 
need to use those tools even more sharply now before we lose 
them. Again, we've got some companies in the United States that 
make great equipment for making semiconductors and they want to 
access the China market. In the long run, that's going to be 
very bad for us if we're giving China the means to create a 
coercive and wholly independent manufacturing capability. We 
want to bring some of that home, forgo some of those short-
term, smaller profits now in order to grow a much larger pie 
after that.
    Chairman Warner. Thank you. And I just want to clear up one 
item, Bill. I think in your response to Senator Wyden, I 
believe your point was that we have to be careful about the 
Chinese, for example, acquiring certain American labs or other 
items. It's not the fact that if you get a COVID test right 
now, that data goes to China. So, just to be clear for the 
record.
    Senator Heinrich.
    Senator Heinrich. Thank you, Chairman. I want to yield a 
little time to Senator King who has a pressing engagement.
    Senator King. I have a meeting that I have to go to, but 
I'll be submitting four questions for the record, and I hope 
you all will provide some of your good thinking on it. These 
are sort of thought questions based upon today's testimony.
    Thank you all very much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank 
you.
    Senator Heinrich. You bet. You co-authored a recent report 
titled, ``China's Foreign Technology Wish List,'' which looks 
at how China's science and tech diplomats working out of 
embassies and consulates across the world, act as brokers to 
acquire foreign technology. And the report notes that 
artificial intelligence, machine learning are sort of near the 
top of that wish list.
    Can you discuss the role that these science and tech 
diplomats play in acquiring foreign technology? And what else 
are you seeing in the areas of AI and machine learning, in 
particular?
    Ms. Puglisi. Of course. So, I think the role of S&T 
diplomats, what it really highlights is the depth and breadth 
of China's tech acquisition bureaucracy, as we laid out in this 
report. And this is based on Chinese-language documents that we 
have mined and acquired--these are all open-source material--
that there's a demand signal. And so, the entity in China 
requests or highlights that they have a gap either in 
technology or knowledge that goes to a central database, and 
then it's actually farmed out across the world. And what's 
interesting about this is it really shows a nuanced 
understanding of where that technology is located and where to 
find that. And as you mentioned, the two things, the highest 
that showed up the most in our research, was both AI and 
machine learning and actually biotechnology. And one of the 
hubs of activity for that in the United States was the Houston 
consulate.
    Senator Heinrich. Very interesting. The CCP has leveraged 
individuals outside of government to pursue technology 
transfer, targeting foreign researchers and business leaders in 
order to transfer that technology back to the PRC. Can you walk 
us through any examples that are particularly illustrative, 
either in academia or in the private sector, just to give folks 
a sense for like how this tactic really plays out in real life?
    Ms. Puglisi. So, what I'll speak to is a specific 
methodology that we see and then--.
    [Audio interruption.]
    Is that better? Okay. Sorry about that. So, what is 
interesting in both as in my previous iteration working for--, 
we always get questions about, okay, what is the list, right? 
What are the technologies that are being sought? And we do have 
that in a very general sense. But what makes that so 
challenging is what we call the Chinese use of nontraditional 
collectors. And so, these are actually the experts that are 
working on a particular area, working on a particular project, 
that are the ones that are targeting the technologies.
    What makes it so hard to counter a lot of times is 
initially, some of these relationships begin as legitimate, 
whether they be collaborations or individuals that either join 
universities or join companies. But China has a number of 
policies, and one of the ones that I think pertains to this 
particular type of targeting of technology is one called 
``serve in place.'' And it's something that we've seen 
reflected in Chinese policy documents since the early `90s. It 
articulates that they seek to leverage individuals who are not 
living in China, who don't have any intention to go back, and 
they reach out to those people to fill strategic gaps.
    And increasingly even more so is the technological know-
how. And so the how do you do things? How do you do quality 
control? How do you move technology out of the lab?
    Senator Heinrich. Wow.
    Mr. Pottinger, could you talk a little bit more about 
semiconductor manufacturing and fabrication? And how would you 
rate our efforts so far at trying to start the process of 
bringing that back to domestic production? And what additional 
efforts would you recommend?
    Mr. Pottinger. Thanks, Senator.
    So, the majority of the world's highest-end chips are 
actually made in Taiwan, by Taiwan's Semiconductor 
Manufacturing Corporation. China has put well over $100 billion 
in subsidies into trying to replicate what Taiwan is able to 
do, and with very mixed results. In fact, they've not been able 
to replicate what Taiwan does. But what they are now trying to 
do, having recognized the fact they can't make chips at the 
bleeding, cutting edge the way that Taiwan makes them, China is 
trying to make chips that are a couple of generations older 
than the chips that Taiwan makes.
    Now, older does not mean worse. Because, in fact, the 
device I'm talking to you on right now, or a personal 
smartphone is made up of ten chips, maybe only one of which is 
the really cutting-edge chip. The others, which control 
graphics and voice, and cameras, and things of that nature are 
older-technology chips, which make up a massive segment of the 
market. They're still extremely important and they can be 
leveraged in ways to make them greater than the sum of their 
parts, depending on how creatively you tie these things 
together. So, what we do in the United States--we don't make 
that many chips anymore. We have a couple of exceptions. 
There's a company called GlobalFoundries in upstate New York 
that makes chips that are a couple of generations older, but it 
turns out that our military, most of our equipment runs on 
chips that are a couple of generations or more older because 
those systems stayed in place for so long. So, it's been 
critical that we have a certain amount of manufacturing here at 
home.
    Where we really lead is in the design of chips and also in 
equipment that's used in the fabrication of the chips. So, 
those are areas where we want to do a better job, more 
strategic job, of looking holistically at how we can deny China 
its very deliberate and clear objective of making itself 
completely independent and making us increasingly dependent on 
their supply for semiconductors, which until we have another 
technology, are absolutely essential to every area where we 
want to compete in the innovative economy.
    Chairman Warner. Thank you, Senator Heinrich. Senator 
Blunt.
    Senator Blunt. Thank you, Chairman. Ms. Puglisi, let's talk 
about campuses for a minute. Nothing creates more friends for 
the United States of America than time in the United States of 
America. And this research discussion is one discussion. 
Another discussion is there are lots of Chinese students on 
campuses that have fine business schools, that have good health 
programs of various kinds, and other programs that don't do a 
lot of research.
    What are the dangers of us closing the door to smart, 
young, Chinese people who want to come here and spend a couple 
of years and how do we thread that needle?
    Ms. Puglisi. Senator, that's a really important point, and 
it's really important to distinguish between undergraduates, 
graduate students, graduate students that are studying things 
that we are concerned with. And I think it circles back to the 
remarks that I made about acknowledging how different our 
systems are. Because we can't possibly understand, I think my 
colleagues also spoke to this, the amount of pressure that some 
of those students can be under if their families are still in 
China. The most recent Global Human Rights Watch report that 
came out talks about surveillance happening on U.S. campuses of 
these Chinese students.
    Senator Blunt. Well, I think we have to be careful there, 
because just like we can't understand the pressure they're 
under, they can't understand what the United States is like in 
the same way as if they were here. And, Chinese students, 
particularly undergraduate students in a non-research setting 
on campus, I think that's a different thing than people--
technical research, calling back the results to the mock lab in 
China somewhere. I think we need to be really careful about 
this.
    I'm going to go to Mr. Pottinger next.
    It seems to me that there is a likely change in a mindset 
here. You know, we all know that China has a huge demographics 
problem, and I don't want to go down the demographics trail. 
The trail I want to go down is there are millions of young 
Chinese adults who in their whole life, they've had two parents 
who were totally focused on them. And four grandparents who had 
one grandchild also totally focused on them in a country that 
had more things to share, more ways to buy things for that one 
grandchild.
    Are they going to have the same response to the 
increasingly repressive Chinese Communist Party the generation 
before have had? Are we seeing some likely pushback from young 
Chinese adults who've had basically all the attention you could 
possibly ask for their entire life and almost everything they 
wanted to have from parents and grandparents?
    Mr. Pottinger. Senator, there's been recent reporting, some 
interesting reports have been written about sort of this ennui 
that is afflicting the younger generation of Chinese young men 
and women. I think that the Communist Party systematically 
removed from Chinese culture so many of the elements that could 
enrich people's lives, including faith, including what had been 
in the late `90s into the early 2000s, a growing amount of free 
exchange and discourse. Those things are now going in reverse. 
You're seeing the systematic stamping out of civic life, 
whether it's secular or religious. The most extreme example is 
the genocide taking place against traditionally ethnic Muslim 
minorities in Northwest China, but also against Christians and 
others. And access to outside information is getting more 
restricted.
    Senator Blunt. Thank you. Let me see if I can add one quick 
question.
    So, Bill Evanina, what of this more restricted society, in 
all ways you've looked at that, how is that coming generation 
going to react to that in a different way than their parents 
and grandparents have?
    Mr. Evanina. Senator, thanks for the question. I think your 
premise is correct. We are seeing that kind of slow change, but 
I would proffer that Xi Jinping is seeing that same change as 
well and he's becoming more draconian. They've become the most 
impressive surveillance state in the history of the world, not 
only domestically in China, but as well, as we heard, here in 
the U.S. Those 320,000 students who come to the U.S. are forced 
to have Chinese phones with WeChat so the Chinese can monitor 
them here.
    So, when you are here, whether you're a student or 
researcher, and you get a call from the Ministry of Security 
asking you to do something for them and your grandmother is 
sick or your father needs a job, you are going to do whatever 
they ask you to do. So as much as we see a change in the want 
of the Chinese young people to get Internet, the quicker we see 
that the quicker the Chinese Communist Party disallows them to 
have the Internet.
    Senator Blunt. Thank you. Thank you, Chairman.
    Chairman Warner. Thank you. Senator Bennet.
    Senator Bennet. Mr. Chairman, I want to first start by 
thanking you for not just holding this hearing, but for the 
focus of the Intelligence Committee's attention on this subject 
for quite a while. I've been on the Committee now for three 
years and what I'm about to say, I didn't know before I had the 
benefit of the hearings that we have had, and that is that the 
Chinese Communist Party, the Chinese government, will use any 
means licit or illicit to pursue their China First policy. The 
question for us is whether we're willing or whether we're going 
to be collateral damage in all that.
    And this isn't just a fight or a competition, let's use 
that language--a competition between two economies--it's a 
competition between democracy on the one hand and 
totalitarianism on the other. It doesn't have anything to do 
with, as you said, with the decision the Chinese people are 
making, but they are the decisions that the Chinese government 
has made, and increasingly, in the last decade, exported around 
the world. So we're facing the consequences of that all over 
the world. That creates a huge and heavy burden for us and for 
our democracy, I think. It calls into question some of the 
idiotic battles we've had around this place instead of our 
attention being focused where it ought to be focused.
    It calls into question whether or not we've done enough to 
work with our allies and other democracies around the world and 
other economies around the world who share similar equities to 
ours with respect to China, which the good news is almost every 
other economy and every other democracy in the world. Not 
everyone, but almost everyone shares those equities. And that's 
why in the end, I'm optimistic. I think we can compete because 
I think we've got a much better system than they have--when 
it's working, properly when it's working well.
    So, I actually, in all of that, have a question. Maybe I'll 
start with Mr. Pottinger just because he's not here and anybody 
else who would want to answer it. If you disagree with anything 
I said, please feel free to do that. This is America, you can 
do that and be happy to have it. But if you don't, I'd be 
curious what message you would like to send, to go back to the 
Chairman's initial question, to private equity firms in the 
United States, to their leadership, the leadership of venture 
capital firms, and other investment firms that are investing in 
Chinese technology. Imagining that somehow, it's not dual-use 
technology, imagining that somehow the Communist Party isn't 
going to be the beneficiary of this, and telling themselves 
that that ROI that Bill talked about, somehow, is worth 
whatever the risks are.
    So why don't we start, Mr. Pottinger, with you?
    Mr. Pottinger. Thanks, Senator. I think that the argument 
on returns on investment is rapidly evaporating. We saw the 
obliteration of close to a trillion dollars in shareholder 
value just in the last several weeks as Chinese stocks were 
systematically rectified by regulators in Beijing. So that 
argument, I think, over time, is going to atrophy.
    But what I would tell private equity investors, including 
venture capital investors, is that ultimately, many of the 
technologies that they're investing in, in fact, arguably 
almost every successful Chinese tech company that exists today, 
was seeded with Silicon Valley or other foreign venture capital 
money, as well as with Silicon Valley know-how. And we know 
that some of those companies have now applied their technology 
to some of the most nefarious human rights atrocities since the 
mid-20th century. So that is going to come back to haunt 
companies reputationally, in ways that I think a lot of 
companies aren't yet prepared for.
    Senator Bennet. I have got 40 seconds left. I don't know if 
either of you would like to comment on that.
    Mr. Evanina. I would just like to amplify Matt's message. I 
would say, the most painful salt in the wound is when American 
investors invest in tech companies in China where that 
technology was stolen from the U.S. in the first place. And 
then we are forced to buy that technology as consumers at the 
end of the day. So, the fruits of our thoughts and our 
ideations in technology were stolen, and then they were forced 
to purchase them back from the Communist Party of China, is the 
painful salt in the wound.
    Senator Bennet. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Warner. Senator Cornyn.
    Senator Cornyn. Well, in typical Washington fashion, let me 
start out with some acronyms: CFIUS, FIRRMA, ECRA, and FARA. I 
want to ask two questions about those topics.
    One is in 2018, we did export control reforms. We reformed 
the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States and 
gave the Treasury Department, which convenes the CFIUS, a lot 
more resources. And I'd like to get your analysis of what's 
changed and what needs to change, what hasn't changed.
    And then, on FARA, we've done a lot of work, I know 
particularly in the Judiciary Committee, Senator Feinstein and 
Senator Grassley and me trying to get reforms of the Foreign 
Agents Registration Act. The Lobbying Disclosure Act, I think 
it's called, provides an out for foreign agents to register as 
lobbyists but not as foreign agents, and basically impeding the 
benefit of our knowing who's a foreign agent and who's not.
    I think this is one of the biggest untold problems that we 
have dealing with foreign countries, including China, is we 
know other countries hire lobbyists and other agents. But if we 
don't know who they are and what their agenda is, it's pretty 
hard for us to put that in the proper context to protect 
ourselves. We're supposed to represent our constituents and 
Americans, not the interests of foreign countries, but if we 
don't know who's who, it's a real problem.
    So I might ask the three of you, if you have something you 
could tell us about CFIUS and FIRRMA and export controls, and 
if you feel like we are where we need to be if there's more we 
need to do. And then, I think I heard Mr. Pottinger talk about 
FARA as I was walking in, but I would invite any one of the 
three of you to talk about that issue as well.
    So maybe, Mr. Evanina, can we start with you?
    Mr. Evanina. Thank you, Senator.
    Great question. And all three, CFIUS, FARA, and FIRRMA, are 
very important aspects of how the government deals with this 
epidemic. I do think that subsequent to legislation a few years 
ago, I think we still need to appropriate more resources to it. 
I think, yes, it was housed in Treasury, but there are multiple 
other agencies who can add value to that who did not increase 
resources to that effort. So, I do think it's the right 
vehicle. There are just not enough people in that vehicle to do 
that work. So, caution with that.
    Secondarily, I think the premise of some of these is a 
little skewed because, as Anna talked about the nontraditional 
collectors who come here either wittingly or unwittingly 
working for the Communist Party of China, don't know their 
lobbyists and don't know they're here registering as a foreign 
agent. Most likely, they're not. And oftentimes, they can 
conduct high-level research at a ceramics lab or an institute 
and then get a phone call one day from someone back home. They 
don't know that they're an agent of a foreign power and they 
don't know that they're a lobbyist. So, I think, sometimes, the 
nomenclature and lexicon need to be shaped and formatted more 
toward the nontraditional collector.
    Senator Cornyn. Ms. Puglisi, would you care to comment?
    Ms. Puglisi. So, it's encouraging, all of the hard work 
that everyone on the Committee has done, especially in these 
different areas. I think going forward, going back to my 
remarks, I think it's important to remember the multifaceted 
ways that China targets our technology and how different the 
systems are. I think one of the challenges, as we break this 
problem down into specific slices, we as a country, because we 
are a law-based society, because we are a rules-based society, 
try to get things narrow to a specific point. But when we're 
dealing with a non-rules-based adversary or entity, it makes 
those policies much more difficult to not only enforce but to 
have the desired outcome. And so I think as we move forward, we 
need to think about what is the desired outcome of the efforts 
across the board with technology acquisition and how do we 
mitigate some of these activities. And design policies and 
programs in addition to the ones that we already have that get 
at how do you deal with a non-rules-based entity.
    Senator Cornyn. Mr. Pottinger, would you care to comment?
    Mr. Pottinger. Senator, thanks for your leadership on 
FIRRMA a few years back, which was a real improvement on CFIUS. 
I would say that where there's still a loophole is in the area 
of venture capital and private equity. Beijing benefits 
enormously just from having a seat on those funds. It gives it 
a sort of a panopticon to see all of the newly emerging 
companies and technologies that they want to then target for 
more in-depth scrutiny and investment and theft. On the FARA 
front, making it a searchable public database that's frequently 
updated so that it becomes much more public and much more 
comprehensive. All of that activity that you referring to, some 
of which is not currently captured but which needs to be. Thank 
you.
    Chairman Warner. Senator Casey.
    Senator Casey. Mr. Chairman, thanks for having this hearing 
and focusing our attention on these issues in this open 
setting.
    I wanted to start by making reference to Mr. Evanina's 
background. He's a Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania native; a 
Valley View High School graduate; also a degree from Wilkes 
University. So, I just hope after your career is over that you, 
at least, retire in Lackawanna County.
    But we're grateful for your public service and for the work 
you continue to do, I will probably direct what I hope there 
would be two questions to Ms. Puglisi and Mr. Pottinger, but 
Bill, feel free to weigh in as well.
    I wanted to start with an issue that Senator Cornyn and I 
worked on, especially in the lead-up to the most recent 
competition legislation. We introduced a bill called the 
National Critical Capabilities Defense Act. It would establish 
an interagency committee to review outbound transactions, not 
inbound, but outbound, by U.S. firms to nonmarket economies 
like China that would, in my judgment, the judgment that a lot 
of people result in the outsourcing of critical supply chains 
and create further U.S. dependence upon a nonmarket economy 
like China.
    I guess my first question is to what extent is that kind of 
outbound investment by U.S. companies to nonmarket economies 
like China compromising our supply chain security and then 
subsequently our national security?
    Ms. Puglisi. Thank you, Senator. I am not familiar with the 
legislation that you put forward, but I will comment on the 
supply chain question, the latter part. I think it's very 
important. And we see just most recently with PPE and how 
unreliable some of those supplies were. A colleague of mine is 
doing a lot of research on medical supply chains, and 
especially as we discuss how do we have pandemic responsiveness 
when our supply chain, especially for APIs, especially for some 
basic drugs, are not located here. And so, I think, that gets 
back to the comment that I made in my prepared remarks about as 
we're examining the supply chains, we really need to look at 
what is the best value for the Nation as opposed to the lowest 
cost.
    But that also gets at some of the market access issues as 
well, because we have seen cases--and I actually put in my 
written testimony--about cases where because of that market 
access, we have pharmaceutical companies that are sending or 
closing down those API, or can view more basic drugs 
manufacturing here, and actually manufacturing those in China. 
So, with the draw, then they'll be able to sell some of their 
more lucrative materials there.
    Senator Casey. Thank you. Mr. Pottinger, any thoughts you 
have?
    Mr. Pottinger. Thank you, Senator. I laud the goal that 
you're pursuing here with this legislation, which I haven't yet 
read. But look, the Department of Commerce has already declared 
six nations that are ``adversaries'' of the United States. 
China is at the top of the list, together with others that you 
might imagine--Russia and Iran and a few others. One of the 
reasons that Beijing may have felt so confident--and it really 
didn't bat an eye before destroying almost a trillion dollars 
in shareholder value in its publicly listed firms in the United 
States--was because it's getting tens of billions of dollars 
through other means from more passive sources in the United 
States. These are institutional investors who are passively 
tying their money in the form of bond purchases and stock 
purchases to indexes. These index providers are weighing 
Chinese companies much more heavily than they used to, even as 
China becomes less and less transparent of an ecosystem to 
invest in. Almost every American reporter is now being kicked 
out of China. We've no idea what's going on with Chinese 
companies. Yet, these index providers keep putting more 
prominent weighting on Chinese companies so that more and more 
passive investment, ultimately hundreds of billions of dollars, 
is going into Chinese stocks and bonds. That's a big problem. 
So, I think if we were to have sort of an outbound CFIUS 
mechanism, that's definitely worth exploring. The others look 
at Hong Kong as well. Hong Kong has now, unfortunately, been 
turned into a typical Chinese city, and we should be treating 
them the way that we treat mainland China when it comes to 
inbound and outbound investment.
    Senator Casey. Thanks very much. Mr. Chairman, I'll submit 
a question for the record on intellectual property--but we'll 
do that for the record.
    Chairman Warner. I think you're pursuing an interesting 
line of questioning, and I think what Mr. Pottinger just said 
there, it wasn't just the folks who went directly into some of 
these companies who lost all this value but, oftentimes, the 
passive investors. And the thing is these companies are not 
going to disappear. They may simply be replaced with more 
Chinese investors and a more compliant leadership in those 
firms.
    Senator Gillibrand.
    Senator Gillibrand. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Mr. Evanina, you were the head of the National 
Counterintelligence and Security Center. In 2018, DOJ required 
state-sponsored media outlets like Xinhua News and China Global 
Television Network to register as foreign agents. Yet, when 
Americans visit those websites, when Americans read or listen 
to watch those stories, there isn't even the most basic 
labeling information for the consumer that they're visiting a 
foreign agent registered news site.
    This is true for Russia, too. Russian media outlets like 
Sputnik that run influence operations through radio shows in 
the U.S. are forced to register as foreign agents by DOJ, but 
no one notifies the Americans who are listening to the shows or 
who are reading their stories. And I think that's really 
irresponsible.
    Why is the burden on the U.S. consumer to go to the DOJ 
website to hunt down FARA filing forms to know where they're 
getting their information?
    Mr. Evanina. Senator, thanks for the question. And I think 
you were getting at the heart of what I believe to be the new 
frontier, which is malign foreign influence. And I think we 
look at how countries like China and Russia facilitate their 
influence here. It starts with media, and it plagues social 
media, TV stations, newspaper print, and we are unable to see 
it. And I will proffer that the U.S. government's inability to 
look at media due to constitutional issues provides a vast, 
gaping hole for who should do that, right?
    I think it's unfair, as you said, for constituents to 
understand--and they're not going to go to the DOJ website--but 
we don't have a reference. State Department has a Global 
Engagement Center. We don't have a domestic engagement center 
to help, advise, and inform Americans as to how to identify 
where that influence is and what might be true or what might 
not be true from that website. So, I do think we have a hole to 
fill with respect to understanding malign foreign influence and 
to help Americans everyday living technology but also with 
elections in the future.
    Senator Gillibrand. Where would you place that domestic 
engagement center, under what agency?
    Mr. Evanina. Well, I would have to think more on that, 
Senator, but off the top of my head, I would say it would have 
to be partly in the Intelligence Community where can garner the 
most real-time actionable intelligence from our collection. At 
the same time, it has to have a vehicle that could produce that 
intelligence unclassified to the consumers around America.
    Senator Gillibrand. Right. Because shouldn't this basic 
foreign agent information be affirmatively provided to American 
consumers, so they can make informed decisions about where the 
foreign state-sponsored news is actually coming from?
    Mr. Evanina. Yes, and to that point, I think if you look at 
things from an agency perspective of the goals, 
responsibilities, and the agency's names, I would say 
Department of Homeland Security would be the right nomenclature 
for that kind of role.
    Senator Gillibrand. So do you think that FARA needs to be 
strengthened or clarified in some of those loopholes that allow 
China and others to push their misinformation without any 
consumer protection notice?
    Mr. Evanina. Yes. I do think that any of these issues, 
whether it be FARA or FIRRMA or CFIUS, should be relooked at 
every year, because the technology moves and how we see it, our 
adversaries change their tactics based upon legislation we 
employ and our policies. We have to update year-by-year basis 
to understand how China or Russia or Iran has revectored their 
influence so we can act accordingly.
    Senator Gillibrand. I think that also should apply in some 
respects to our platforms, our social media platforms, because 
especially in a current example like the debate about 
vaccinations, a lot of Chinese and Russians are actively trying 
to mislead Americans. And I think there has to be some 
responsibility to the purveyors of this information to have a 
way to know if they are foreign agents. Do you agree?
    Mr. Evanina. I completely agree. And I look back the last 
year or so, as Mr. Pottinger had referenced and as I went 
through the election, the ability to siphon through maligned 
foreign influence and messages that are factually not correct, 
is a very difficult venue. And we look at the abilities of our 
adversaries, Russia and China, to no longer cede information 
here, but to use our own information to amplify for other 
Americans takes on its own new weight of a really difficult 
obstacle to be able to do that.
    Senator Gillibrand. Ms. Puglisi, obviously, foreign 
adversaries have tried to influence our country for a very long 
time. This is nothing new. Russia has attempted to steal our 
technology through investments, through exchange students, 
through cyber operations, attempted to recruit, tried to 
intimidate, stifle dissent, unflattering narratives, as does 
China. So, obviously, this is problematic and serious, but the 
question is what aspects of this threat are new, and is it 
simply a question of the scale and breadth of China's 
operations and theft of trade secrets that differentiate it? 
And how should these distinctions shape our strategy and 
counter their efforts?
    Ms. Puglisi. Thank you, Senator, for that question. I would 
say the aspects that are new is that it's more and more in the 
civilian space. And I think if you raise the issue of the 
Soviet Union, we look back and that was very heavily military-
focused. And some of my earlier comments about how our 
traditional structure of CI is focused on intelligence 
officers, on things that were completely illegal, things that 
have a direct military application. And the way China targets 
our technologies and the way it leverages its own diaspora, I 
think, is something that's very new. It's also the scale and 
scope, and the fact that these are central government programs 
that have been in place for decades, that focus on the 
influence piece, the civil technology piece, and really target 
the gray areas of our civil society. And you pair that with the 
largest crackdown on civil society that we're seeing in China 
under Xi, and it's a really toxic mix.
    Senator Gillibrand. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Warner. Thank you, Senator Gillibrand.
    I just have one more question, and I know we have a series 
of six votes started, and that's why some of my colleagues 
have, I think, gone back to the floor. One, I want to thank all 
three of you. I liked one of Matt's ideas a lot--about all 
these 360,000 down to 320,000 Chinese students--give every one 
of those students an American phone when they got here, so they 
are not surveilled constantly. But my sense of the Chinese 
economy, one of the challenges we have, frankly, for any 
American or for that matter, Western-based company--and I would 
point out that while this Committee, I think, got ahead of the 
game a little bit on spotting 5G, the first signs of warning 
about Huawei didn't actually come as much from the Intelligence 
Community. It came from places like Japan and South Korea and 
elsewhere. But it seems to me that the Chinese economy has 
allowed--I don't know if that's changing dramatically now as we 
see the leadership and some of the value taken out of some of 
the most successful tech companies in these last few months. 
But for the last five to ten years, China would allow a 
ferocious level of competition at least within the tax base. 
But that competition would be allowed until a national champion 
emerges, a la Huawei or ZTE. And in that space, no Western, no 
American, for that matter, any Western company could actually 
be on the competitive edge; they would never be allowed a 
Western American company to kind of win in one of these new 
technology areas. Matter of fact, as we know, with Facebook 
being excluded or Google trying for a while and then leaving on 
their own accord, and others. And the idea that that Chinese 
technology winner then suddenly, even if they're independent 
gets the full backing of the state--Huawei, we talked about a 
hundred billion dollars plus--is really an economic model, kind 
of an authoritarian capitalism model that I don't like, but 
it's had a pretty successful record recently. Because if you 
then combine that not only with the financial support but also 
with the Belt and Road Initiative, the Digital Silk Road, 
China's increasing power around the world, you suddenly had a 
series of maybe not satellite countries in the traditional 
mindset, at least countries that were dependent on China's 
forbearance, because China happened to be also building a 
bridge or building a road in many of those countries. You know, 
I think that model is hard to compete against.
    I think we've seen it as well, and I think this Committee 
spent a lot of time looking around this issue which I raised in 
my opening comments, around standards and rules of the game. 
Again, within technology, because I would argue that--I'll use 
the Sputnik as an example--but post-Sputnik, virtually every 
major technology innovation over the last 60 years, if it 
wasn't invented in America, we still got to set the rules and 
the standards and the protocols. And those rules, whether it 
was about transparency and respect for human rights, even in 
technology standards, you can embed some of your standards. It 
kind of crept up on us in 5G, and I say this is an old telecom 
guy, where suddenly China was flooding the zone on these 
international standards-setting bodies with engineers with 
power.
    And they are I would argue in many ways on the 5G issue, 
they won the standard-setting component. And, unfortunately, 
we're seeing whether it's in AI or facial recognition or a host 
of areas where they have now had the audacity to lay out with a 
great deal of specificity where they hope to dominate, they are 
being fairly successful.
    So, the question I have for all three of you, my last 
question is, I don't believe we can do this alone. I think some 
of our greatest strength has been our alliances--that there is 
a moment in time where not just Five Eyes or not just NATO, but 
democracies around the world. I would even argue that we may be 
entering in an era of post-World War II, that was an era of 
military alliances, NATO, SEATO, a series of other--. The 1960s 
and 1970s or last century sort of European Union being a 
classic example of economic alliances.
    I think in 2021 and going forward we need to think about 
technology-based alliances, and those alliances ought to be 
based upon democracies who share those same sets of values and 
goals of democracy. And that needs to start in areas like 
standard setting. It is as where we have actually finally put 
our money where our mouth is in terms of recent legislation 
that virtually everybody on this Committee supported around 
support for semiconductors. And we did get a smaller slug in 
for 5G and O-RAN.
    But I'd ask all three of you, and I'll start, Anna, with 
you, then go to Bill, and then let Matt close out. How should 
we think about this effort to get our allies better engaged 
with us as partners, not into this bifurcation choice, either 
going to be on our side or China's side, but do this in some 
level of collaboration around technology development, around 
standard-setting, around, again, promoting a very alternative 
model to the authoritarian communism model or authoritarian 
capitalism model that China has, frankly, practiced fairly 
well?
    Ms. Puglisi. Thank you, Senator.
    You raised some really important points. I want to 
highlight the model that you described as one that China has 
laid out for its strategic emerging industries. It's winning 
the China market first, creating that national champion, and 
then having that go out and compete on the world stage. And 
talking about Huawei, I think, is a great example of that. What 
it highlights are those areas and what are those 
characteristics of these different industries where profit 
margins, national security, in some ways, go in opposite 
directions, and how do we actually compete with that. Because 
those industrial policies of our like-minded are very, very 
different in scale, scope, and flavor than what we're seeing 
with China. Forming those tech alliances will be, in my 
opinion, very, very important.
    We can't out-China China, let's face it. But we don't want 
to. We want to double down on the advantages of our own system. 
And that is working with our partners and allies in building 
those innovation hubs, finding those niche areas. Some 
countries will be set for tech alliances in certain areas, some 
in different technologies. But it's also, I think, it's part of 
that information sharing and risk calculation sharing that we 
should have those dialogs about what's at stake, and how we can 
use technology that are in line with our values and the values 
of our allies and partners.
    Chairman Warner. Thank you. Bill?
    Mr. Evanina. Senator, first, thanks for having this 
hearing. I think it's really important for the American public 
to understand the issues that you and the vice chair brought to 
the openness since we hadn't had any closed hearings for a few 
years. I think your premise is right on our need to cooperate 
and collaborate with our allies. However, I will proffer that 
we need to lead in that collaboration. I think, with respect to 
my colleague Anna's point, China is not going to change. And I 
think it was one thing in D.C. that we have bipartisan support 
on, is that China is going to be China and they're going to 
double down.
    We have to make a decision in America. Do we want to change 
the way we operate? We're clearly bifurcated for the right 
reasons between the government and the private sector. I will 
proffer that it's time to change the way we look at that and 
really look at how we are willing to change the construct for 
partnering with private sector industry and technology to be 
able to build coalitions between our government first in the 
industry and then show that leadership to our allies in Europe 
and other places, so they can use that as a framework.
    We won that argument with Huawei for the same reason. I 
think the next step with technology is to do the same 
methodology: find champions in the U.S. and have the government 
partner with so that we look at China as a competitor, not just 
as an enemy, and we can compete, because we can compete because 
we're America. And we will win if we may put our mind to it. 
Secondarily, as we deal with Huawei, other countries and allies 
will watch and learn and do the same methodology in their own 
country to do the same diplomatic and technological solutions. 
So, I do think we have an opportunity here with allies if we 
change the way we do business here in the U.S.
    Chairman Warner. Very good. Matt? And I recognize I've got 
to go run vote in a moment.
    Mr. Pottinger. You bet. Thanks, Senator. Very quickly, you 
know, I agree with you. I think your vision for these sorts of 
coalitions are around certain technologies--coalitions of the 
willing, if you like--is the way that we need to go, and 
there's precedent for that. During the Cold War, we had what 
was called the coordinating committee where industry in Japan 
and the United States and other allied countries made sure that 
the Soviet Union didn't gain access to our most cutting-edge 
semiconductor technology.
    Here we are again. It's the same technology: 
semiconductors. We've got to win that race. Commerce needs to 
be brought firmly into the fold. The Bureau of Industry and 
Security has to be really treated and think like a national 
security arm of the U.S. Government, not a trade promotion arm. 
If we're going to win on semiconductors, we've got to make 
peace with the Europeans on these privacy issues and these 
things that we're tied up with. Right now, the Europeans are 
very inconsistent in how they're viewing privacy. They're 
targeting American technology giants but they're not applying 
the same standards to Chinese companies, which are going to be 
truly harmful to the interests of Europeans and disrespectful 
of people's privacy, of their data, and so forth.
    So that's an area where we need to break through. But, I 
think, I agree with you. With those kinds of coalitions, even 
if it's not one neat global approach, but one of different 
coalitions, I think we're unbeatable.
    Chairman Warner. Well, thank you all. Just two quick last 
comments.
    One, to not just American industry, but all of the Western 
industry that is invested in China, I don't know if we can 
have--no problem with that as long as it's not at the price of 
your values. As long as you do not surrender to, as Senator 
Rubio pointed out, that you turn a blind eye to human rights 
abuses or you are willing to be co-opted into taking policies 
that you would not take, not only in the United States but, for 
that matter, any other country in the world. That we have to be 
constantly consistent on. And I think the business community 
needs to continue to hear these messages in these open settings 
and as appropriate in close settings as well so even further 
information can be shared.
    And then last point, and again, very much appreciate all 
three of the witnesses that in your opening statements, you all 
hit on this point. And that is that this beef, our concern, our 
challenge, is with the Communist Party of China and its 
leadership. And any forces in this country that instead play 
into broad-based racist or xenophobic statements about the 
Chinese people, the Chinese diaspora, Chinese-Americans, Asian-
Americans, frankly, do a disservice to our country and our 
values, but also play right into the CCP's agenda that the only 
place you will ever have a firm and permanent home is back in 
China. And I think we, and I say this here for speaking on 
behalf of all the Senators on this dais who are here today, 
need to redouble our efforts to make that distinction and to 
make sure that, particularly law enforcement--and I've spent a 
lot of time with Director Wray on this issue, with the FBI and 
others--reaching out on a very regular basis to the Chinese-
American diaspora in this country. They are under, Bill, as 
you've made comments, under a level of pressure sometimes. That 
is extraordinary and they are great Americans that they've 
contributed enormously to our country, but we need them in this 
challenge against the Communist Party's ideology. And any 
observant person doesn't need, I think, further proof because 
you see the very nature of the treatment of the Uyghurs or the 
treatment of the people of Hong Kong. And we need to keep that 
lesson and continue to make that point. I thank all of you for 
your contribution. There is much, much more to be discussed. We 
could have had a whole separate hearing just looking at the 
individual technologies that China is investing in and trying 
to outcompete us. We will have that opportunity.
    But with that, the hearing is adjourned.
    Thank you all.
    [Whereupon at 4:36 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.]
  

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