It is now obvious that the Chinese Communist Party has leveraged American taxpayer funded research to fuel its rapid ascent. Yet, we continue to facilitate China’s rise as a technological superpower by looking the other way as its agents spy on, steal from, and undermine the institutions that give America its competitive edge. Remember all the Soviet students in American universities performing cutting-edge research and the profound number of Soviet scientists working in our most sensitive laboratories? It would never have been allowed and that advantage helped seal the USSR’s demise. So why are we accepting it as a reality today?

Much like the first Cold War, there is an ongoing technological race to determine the future of international security, economics, and power. This technological race encompasses communications, bioengineering, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and the energy production to fuel it all.  To secure this advantage, the US has ramped up research and development on advanced technologies at national labs and universities. This advantage should be protected and not open to foreign agents of adversarial nations.

In today’s Cold War, the CCP has access to our talented researchers and the critical institutions of American national power that perform innovative work. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese students fill our top-tier research universities, thousands work with and visit our national laboratories, and an innumerable amount conduct commercial business here. With such high levels of access comes the increasing risk of espionage.

This issue is not new, but the risk is growing exponentially. In 1999, the Cox Committee had found that China had targeted national labs through direct espionage and solicited visits from US scientists to aid in their rapid development. These national labs are a network of government-funded research institutions housed under the Department of Energy that focus on science and technological advancements for US energy, security, and scientific advance.

As tracked by CSIS, between 2000 and 2023, there were at least 224 cases of Chinese espionage directed at the United States with nearly 50% of the cases of which involved Chinese military or government employees. Of these 224 cases, nearly 70% of cases occurred since Xi Jinping has assumed control of China. The CCP is not operating as a partner but rather a strategic competitor willing to blur lines and cause immeasurable damage to the US. The range of targeted industries is substantial. For instance, two Chinese citizens conducting research at the University of Michigan were recently charged with conspiracy and smuggling agroterrorism content into the US. At Harvard, the chair of the Chemistry and Chemical Biology Department and two Chinese nationals, one of which was a PLA officer, had gathered sensitive biological material before fleeing the country. My alma mater, Texas A&M, was targeted by a researcher who hid his affiliations from the university and its NASA backers.

Our universities are not the only targets of Chinese espionage. A recently released report from the Select Committee covering strategic competition with the CCP, Fox in the Henhouse, highlights the exploitation of the Department of Defense’s research and engineering policies. Their conclusion was that DOD funded research involved numerous Chinese military connections that directly benefited their industrial base, defense, and technological capabilities.

Make no mistake, this is a Chinese government-approved operation that explicitly targets American talent, research, and opportunity only to be used against us. China proudly promotes its Thousand Talents Program, seeking to bring thousands of experts back to mainland China after learning and stealing from the United States. This is a specific policy of the CCP to gain strategic advantages over the United States by stealing and exploiting American technology.

The United States must ensure that defense research, all tax-funded research at universities, and commercial collaborations are tightening oversight and security. If research is being performed that can provide critical advancements in energy, AI, quantum, bioengineering, weapons, and defense, American taxpayers deserve to know that it will not be used against them by malicious foreign actors. That is why Wisconsin must step up, especially to limit foreign interference in the UW System. We are encouraged to see legislation like Assembly Bill 663 that finally addresses these risks. Our bright scholars at UW schools should not fall prey to CCP interference and must feel confident that their intellectual property remains their own.

Federally, more should unite behind Senator Tom Cotton’s GATE Act, a national lab ban on scientists from China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and Cuba. Opponents have claimed we risk a brain drain, that Americans can’t do these jobs, or that they aren’t using the research maliciously. We know better. America produces, and attracts, incredible talent committed to these industries and our national interest.

American talent is a significant strategic advantage that helped propel our victory over the Soviet Union. The past decades have taught us that increasing cooperation and interdependence in critical domains has not enhanced our security standing. Our defense spending and deficiencies continue to rise, yet we continue to fund our own defeat.