Intellectual Espionage : China

"It is every university and institution's responsibility to safeguard its information. The Chinese government [poses] a particular threat to U.S. academia for a variety of reasons."
"Foreign adversaries [could elicit information by] using flattery, assuming knowledge, asking leading questions ... or feigning ignorance."
"They can spend years targeting an individual and developing a relationship that leads the student, professor or researcher -- either wittingly or unwittingly -- to provide information to the foreign adversary."
"[Warning signs might be someone who insists on working in private, volunteers for classified projects] rummages through offices or desks of others [has mysterious absences or displays] unexplained affluence."
"Foreign adversaries sometimes add individuals at the last minute in an attempt to steal your information."
FBI manual, China: The Risk to Academia

"[Unidentified foreign powers are using] a range of traditional and non-traditional intelligence collection trade-craft [to try to acquire Canadian technology and expertise, which could result in lost jobs and competitiveness]."
"CSIS routinely engages with a variety of stakeholders, including in the private sector and universities, to advise them of potential threats."
Tahera Mufti, spokesperson, Canadian Security Intelligence Service

Chinese police officers stand guard outside the Canadian embassy in Beijing on December 10, 2018. GREG BAKER/AFP/Getty Images

The FBI has released a manual meant to alert American universities and research facilities in the United States to the threat of economic and scientific espionage carried out by the Peoples Republic of China. The manual goes beyond alerting authorities and others involved in academia, adding recommendations and tips geared to detecting and avoiding unwanted incursions with the potential to wreak damage by advantaging a foreign nation to the detriment of the one from whom military, trade and scientific ideas have been purloined.

Canada is currently in the grip of attempting to manage Beijing's efforts at justice and trade destabilization. China is actively engaged in pressuring Canadian political authorities by slander, threats and most egregiously, taking vulnerable Canadian citizens into custody on questionable charges that, while ostensibly engaging in business in China, they have somehow conspired to breach China's security. A classic case of a country engaged in nefarious practices externally accusing others of destabilization efforts internally.

Traditionally academic institutions value their academic freedom and don't take lightly to government interference. Such institutions are moreover, always fund-raising for infrastructure upgrades and widening their academic standing, attracting greater numbers of students, including those from abroad who pay hefty fees to attend North American institutions of higher learning. In that sense alone both the U.S. and Canada have been well infiltrated by Chinese students. China has also generously invested in Chinese 'study programs' in academic institutions abroad.

There is ample evidence in Canada that Chinese diplomatic missions maintain close contact with their nationals, liaising with them continually after convincing them that their first loyalty is always to their country of origin which is deeply interested in receiving information from them. Chinese student groups have been known to oppose anti-Chinese activities by minority groups like Tibetans and Uyghurs studying in Canadian universities.

Chinese students and scholars have always been welcomed to Canadian academic institutions. No fewer than 143,000 Chinese students study at colleges and universities in Canada at the present time. They are not subject to the same kind of vigilance as suggested by the FBI's draft paper. No similar warnings to Canadian universities have gone out from the Canadian security establishments, even while CSIS acknowledges a problem with economic espionage, failing to name any single country.

In the CSIS recent annual report a section gives warning to business leaders relating to such a threat in strictly generic terms. This is in contrast to U.S. authorities' clarion call on improper siphoning of secrets and advanced knowledge from U.S. research facilities by Chinese agents. Last year, students and professors of Chinese origin were specifically mentioned as an espionage threat by FBI director Christopher Wray.

In fairness, the Risk to Academia document acknowledges immigrants and visiting students and scholars are vitally important to the American research system, pointing out that the "vast majority" of those from China have legitimate academic reasons to be in the United States. The darker side is the Chinese government's efforts to sweep up intellectual property, making use of some students and professors as "non-traditional collectors", and that colleges and research institutions must counter such tactics.

Spies might seem like a throwback to earlier days of world wars and cold wars, but they are more prolific than ever—and they are targeting our nation’s most valuable secrets. The threat is not just the more traditional spies passing U.S. secrets to foreign governments, either to make money or advance their ideological agendas. It is also students and scientists and plenty of others stealing the valuable trade secrets of American universities and businesses—the ingenuity that drives our economy—and providing them to other countries. It is nefarious actors sending controlled technologies overseas that help build bombs and weapons of mass destruction designed to hurt and kill Americans and others. And because much of today’s spying is accomplished by data theft from computer networks, espionage is quickly becoming cyber-based.  FBI wbsite