[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 120 (Wednesday, July 20, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3529-S3530]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                 MEASURE READ THE FIRST TIME--H.R. 8404

  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I understand that there is a bill at the 
desk, and I ask for its first reading.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will read the bill by title for the 
first time.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       A bill (H.R. 8404) to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act 
     and ensure respect for State regulation of marriage, and for 
     other purposes.

  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I now ask for a second reading, and in 
order to place the bill on the calendar under the provisions of rule 
XIV, I object to my own request.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  The bill will be read for the second time on the next legislative 
day.
  Mr. SCHUMER. I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio.


                               CHIPS Act

  Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I come to the Senate floor today to 
correct the record, really. Some of my colleagues in the Chamber voted 
yesterday to begin consideration of this chips package that we have 
talked about a lot because they believed it included legislation called 
Safeguarding American Innovation Act, or SAIA, the bipartisan, Senate-
passed, White-House supported, essential legislation to protect 
taxpayer-funded research and intellectual property from being taken, 
stolen, by China and other adversaries and then used against us.
  It is understandable people thought that because the SAIA research 
security provisions were in the broader USICA bill that passed the 
Senate last year. In fact, as the coauthors of USICA know, it was the 
reason I was one of the then-original Republican cosponsors of USICA 
and only because of that. At that time, we needed Republican 
cosponsors. And it is understandable because, this week, all Republican 
offices were emailed a list of items by the lead Republican on this 
bill which included chips-plus legislation, including SAIA.
  So Republicans, when they voted yesterday, thought SAIA was part of 
it. Even today, Democrats and Republicans alike have come up to me and 
said they thought SAIA was in this bill.
  By the way, they want it in this bill, but it is not. It was stripped 
out of this USICA. I filed an amendment to get it back into this 
package because it is so crucial to the goal of the overall effort, 
which is, of course, to improve our country's competitiveness, 
especially with regard to China. To do that, we must not only invest in 
more American research and innovation, which I support, but we have to 
protect that taxpayer-funded research and intellectual property from 
being stolen by our adversaries and used against us.
  Given the current realities, without such protections, I believe this 
chips-plus bill, with significantly increased levels of Federal funding 
for research, may well become a giveaway to Beijing.
  China's made no secret of its goal to supplant the United States as 
the global economic leader, and China has been willing to use every 
tool at its disposal to be able to do that. As FBI Director Christopher 
Wray has warned:

       The greatest long-term threat to our nation's information 
     and intellectual property, and to our economic vitality, is 
     the counterintelligence and economic espionage threat from 
     China.


[[Page S3530]]


  Director Wray has characterized China as the largest threat to our 
ideas, our innovation, and our economic security, noting that the FBI 
has opened 2,000 cases focused on China stealing our research, with one 
case being opened approximately every 12 hours.
  A number of us, in a totally bipartisan process, have been working on 
protecting research for the past 4 years. In 2019, an investigative 
report of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Committee 
on Homeland Security, which I chaired with Senator Carper as the 
ranking member, documented, after a yearlong investigation, how China 
uses talent recruitment programs--like the Thousand Talents Plan--to 
target the science and technology sectors. Talent recruitment plans 
recruit high-quality overseas talent--primarily from the United 
States--including academics, scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, even 
finance experts. The plans provide monetary benefits and other 
incentives to lure experts into providing proprietary information or 
research to China. This is in violation of our laws and conflict of 
interest rules. China, in turn, exploits American research, 
intellectual property, and open collaboration--often U.S. taxpayer-
funded--for its own economic and military gain at our expense.
  Really, when you think about it, the rise in China's military and 
economy over the past couple decades is, in part, being fueled by 
American taxpayer-paid research, where they have essentially 
leapfrogged us and commercialized it more quickly than us and used it 
against us.
  In just one of many examples, recently, a researcher in Kansas hid 
his full-time employment with a Chinese research university to obtain 
Federal grant funding for six different Department of Energy and 
National Science Foundation contracts.
  Remember, the funding in this bill primarily goes to the National 
Science Foundation. In fact, the Department of Health and Human 
Services inspector general recently released a report that found that 
two-thirds of the NIH grant recipients--another place a lot of research 
is done, NIH--failed to meet Federal requirements regarding foreign 
financial interests including instances of U.S.-funded researchers 
failing to disclose ties with the Chinese Government.
  In fact, since our investigation and hearing, there have been at 
least 23 different researchers that have been arrested by Federal 
authorities for research theft. In testimony before the Permanent 
Subcommittee on Investigations, John Brown, then-assistant director of 
the FBI's Counterintelligence Division said:

       The Communist government of China has proven that it will 
     use any means necessary to advance its interests at the 
     expense of others, including the United States, and pursue 
     its long-term goal of being the world's superpower by 2049. . 
     . . The Chinese government knows that economic strength and 
     scientific innovation are the keys to global influence and 
     military power. So Beijing aims to acquire our . . . 
     expertise, to erode our competitive advantage and supplant 
     the United States as a global superpower.

  Then-commander, U.S. Cyber Command, General Keith Alexander described 
intellectual property theft and cyber espionage in general as ``the 
greatest transfer of wealth in history.''
  The sentiment was underscored by former national security adviser, 
retired LTG H.R. McMaster. When asked about China's growing and 
intertwined military and economic threat at a March 2021 Armed Services 
Committee hearing, Lieutenant General McMaster stressed the need for 
the United States to defend itself saying:

       It's gut-wrenching to see how much has been stolen right 
     from under our noses. And much of that research [is] funded 
     by Congress. . . . I think the financial dimension of this is 
     something worth a great deal of scrutiny. We are, in large 
     measure, underwriting our own demise.

  That is why Senator Carper and I introduced the Safeguarding American 
Innovation Act and insisted it be included in the Homeland Security and 
Governmental Affairs title of USICA. And, again, it was, and it passed. 
And it is part of the research funding--additional research funding to 
have these protections around it. It would be necessary even if there 
was not additional research funding, but now we are spending tens of 
billions of dollars of more taxpayer money and not providing this 
security.
  Based on feedback from the law enforcement and research community, 
the legislation goes directly to the root of the problem. It makes it 
punishable by law to knowingly fail to disclose foreign funding on 
Federal grant applications.
  The FBI wants that badly. It requires the executive branch to 
streamline and coordinate grant-making between the Federal Agencies so 
there is continuity, accountability, and coordination. It allows the 
State Department to deny visas to foreign researchers coming to the 
United States to exploit the openness of our research enterprise and 
requires research institutions and universities to do more, including 
telling the State Department whether a foreign researcher will have 
access to export-controlled technologies.
  The State Department wants this badly. The career people at the State 
Department helped us write these provisions. They need this authority. 
They don't have it now.
  So a vital component of any competitiveness bill must be this 
commonsense, noncontroversial, extensively negotiated, bipartisan bill. 
It is a matter of our national security. I have described the 
extraordinary theft of taxpayer-paid research under current funding 
levels. Again, it is unthinkable that we would add tens of billions of 
more taxpayer dollars to sensitive research, as we propose, in the 
CHIPS-plus package and not protect that research from China and other 
adversaries.
  I strongly urge my colleagues to support this amendment to ensure 
that it is part again--as it has been in the past; we all voted for 
it--of the underlying package.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.

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