American government labs are facing a “growing threat” of espionage from foreign adversaries, former Energy Department and national security officials told lawmakers Thursday, with some Chinese researchers raising alarms by collaborating on “nuclear weapons work” with US colleagues.
Two former Department of Energy (DOE) undersecretaries for science and an ex-US counterintelligence officer told members of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee that the scientific espionage was ripping off American innovations and using them to develop weapons and other tech.
“China puts tremendous pressure in appropriating this innovation and then manufacturing it,” said Paul Dabbar, the former energy undersecretary for science during President Trump’s first term, of the work that goes on at the 17 national labs overseen by the DOE.
Researchers deputized on behalf of Beijing ended up stealing intellectual property and other technological innovations for batteries, electric vehicles, and semiconductors and are even “trying to steal the future of quantum and fusion,” Dabbar testified
“It’s a lot of the technologies of the future — it’s AI, it’s biotech,” added Anna Puglisi, a fellow at the Hoover Institution who served as national counterintelligence officer for East Asia during the first Trump administration.
“In these 50 years I have seen dramatic changes in how we interact with countries of concern like China,” said Geraldine Richmond, who served as the undersecretary for science directly after Dabbar.
“I have seen them change, I have seen the threats become even stronger and they are as much a concern to me as they were when I was undersecretary,” she added, highlighting that as a member of the National Science Board under both Presidents Trump and Biden she “saw firsthand the growing threats to US leadership in science technology.”
Dabbar also noted an “astounding” revelation about “joint nuclear weapons work” between US and Chinese researchers — despite federal investigations uncovering recruitment efforts in the 2010s to bring scientific innovations and expertise back to Beijing through what was called the Thousand Talents Program.
Other probes exposed research collaborations between the US and Chinese universities that work with the People’s Liberation Army.
“No one wants to believe that their collaborator is stealing their technology, or the student that they’re supporting is doing that,” noted Puglisi, while adding that the issue has been “well-documented.”
Sen. Dave McCormick (R-Pa.) described the effort as the US “essentially paying for the [research and development] that China steals to beat us in the market.”
The foreign researchers — who can also hail from other adversarial nations like Russia or Iran — have been known to get banned from one of the federal labs, only to turn up at another due to loopholes in vetting.
“Make no mistake,” said committee Chairman Mike Lee (R-Utah) in his opening remarks. “Beijing is actively exploiting weak security protocols, academic collaboration loopholes and US grant programs to advance its military capabilities — all on American taxpayers’ dime.”
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), who sits on the energy committee and also chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, coted bipartisan legislation that unanimously passed the intel panel last year — but was never brought up for a full floor vote.
The bill would have halted researchers from China, Russia, Iran and other adversarial nations from entering American laboratories, an opportunity not extended to US researchers.
“There’s zero reciprocity on this issue,” said Cotton, who vowed to bring the measure up for another vote in the 119th Congress.
In the 2024 fiscal year, the Arkansas Republican said, at least 8,000 Chinese and Russian scientists passed through Energy Department labs, making up roughly one-fifth of the total number of foreign visitors to the sites.
“I have never met a person who has set foot in a Chinese lab,” said Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman James Risch (R-Idaho), who also sits on the energy panel.
“An engineer who comes here and goes to one of the labs may have no malign ideas whatsoever, but for a person who lives in a Communist, autocratic country, nothing belongs to them,” he added.
Republicans and Democrats appeared in agreement on the scope of the problem, but not all were convinced that an outright ban on foreign researchers was feasible.
“If there’s a total ban, is that a good policy or would that cost us good scientific breakthroughs?” asked Sen. Angus King (I-Maine).
Richmond, who served at the DOE during Biden’s term, pointed out that foreign-born workers make up at least 19% of the so-called STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) workforce and 60% of researchers at the doctoral level in US universities.
“The US enterprise would not function without foreign-born scientists and engineers,” Richmond said, “but we also cannot afford to have things stolen from us.”
Dabbar noted that one possible compromise could involve foreign researchers from adversarial nations being able to obtain a waiver after a full screening is conducted.
The Department of Energy has its roots in the World War II-era Manhattan Project that created the atomic bomb, meaning its work has always been linked closely with US intelligence priorities.
“Counterintelligence at our labs is a matter that I believe we all should take very seriously,” said Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM), the ranking member on the panel. “We don’t want to give our adversaries a blueprint of any vulnerabilities.”
