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Biotech China Government Medicine United States Science Technology

Vast Dragnet Targets Theft of Biomedical Secrets For China (nytimes.com) 58

schwit1 shares a report from The New York Times: The N.I.H. and the F.B.I. have begun a vast effort to root out scientists who they say are stealing biomedical research for other countries from institutions across the United States. Almost all of the incidents they uncovered and that are under investigation involve scientists of Chinese descent, including naturalized American citizens, allegedly stealing for China. Seventy-one institutions, including many of the most prestigious medical schools in the United States, are now investigating 180 individual cases involving potential theft of intellectual property. The cases began after the N.I.H., prompted by information provided by the F.B.I., sent 18,000 letters last year urging administrators who oversee government grants to be vigilant. So far, the N.I.H. has referred 24 cases in which there may be evidence of criminal activity to the inspector general's office of the Department of Health and Human Services, which may turn over the cases for criminal prosecution.

The investigations have fanned fears that China is exploiting the relative openness of the American scientific system to engage in wholesale economic espionage. At the same time, the scale of the dragnet has sent a tremor through the ranks of biomedical researchers, some of whom say ethnic Chinese scientists are being unfairly targeted for scrutiny as Washington's geopolitical competition with Beijing intensifies. The alleged theft involves not military secrets, but scientific ideas, designs, devices, data and methods that may lead to profitable new treatments or diagnostic tools. Some researchers under investigation have obtained patents in China on work funded by the United States government and owned by American institutions, the N.I.H. said. Others are suspected of setting up labs in China that secretly duplicated American research, according to government officials and university administrators. [...] [R]oughly a dozen scientists are known to have resigned or been fired from universities and research centers across the United States so far. Some have declined to discuss the allegations against them; others have denied any wrongdoing. In several cases, scientists supported by the N.I.H. or other federal agencies are accused of accepting funding from the Chinese government in violation of N.I.H. rules. Some have said that they did not know the arrangements had to be disclosed or were forbidden.

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Vast Dragnet Targets Theft of Biomedical Secrets For China

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  • is a lack of security. What's wrong with keeping local copies of these data and updating them quarterly with hard copies from HDD's or even flash drives away from any Internet networked computer?
    • by guruevi ( 827432 )

      The problem with that is that those are precisely the things that walk away. I've been involved in the recovery of two cases as described in the article. The data was copied onto a hard drive, went overseas and never came back.

      The whole raison d'être of our grant system is to produce commercial products. But human testing is a lot easier and less restricted in China thus researchers will use US tax money to find out what is likely to work and finish it in China.

      These people are often taking full time s

  • I'm sure there are some cases where this is justified, but it also has the tinge of an entrenched incumbent who's starting to lose their grip and trying to hang on by trying to slow everything down and maintain the status quo instead of outpacing the competition. Silicon valley for example is a hotbed of the spread of knowledge, and the closer you look the more "theft of secrets" you would find.
    • Wow, talk about a cynical ploy. The date was chosen just one year past trumps second term. Not enough time for the next president to reverse course since Nasa would already have would down all it's future missions. Just enough time to assign blame to the next andmistration when it fails leaving us without a viable space station or viable NASA. And just close enough to claim credit for any early bright spots in the outcome.

  • by blindseer ( 891256 ) <blindseerNO@SPAMearthlink.net> on Thursday November 07, 2019 @02:03AM (#59389890)

    We need to stop doing any business with China. They just can't seem to play by the rules so we should take our ball and send them home.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      We need to stop doing any business with China. They just can't seem to play by the rules so we should take our ball and send them home.

      No there are much better and more profitable options than that. Firstly give the criminal Chinese Americas a kick in the balls by turning Pub Med [nih.gov] into a locked down Pub Fed and make it only available to friends and detainees at a new Club Fed build on Trump land in Florida with a golf course and casino attached. Of course get the Chinese to pay for the project. Then even more importantly start charging huge sums for access to scientific data collected by State sponsored institutions like Universities. Outla

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Chozabu ( 974192 )
      Sounds like it could be a plan, until we consider: Which country does "play by the rules"?
    • We need to stop doing any business with China. They just can't seem to play by the rules so we should take our ball and send them home.

      What happened to all universities sharing scientific findings with each other ? Is this now considered 'stealing' ??

      • by Anonymous Coward
        Maybe if you're talking about an open discussion of a position paper on the inherent inequity of gender economies between two Shakespeare characters.

        --But, engineering schools have patents, licenses and intellectual property the same as any other business. And as in the case specifically mentioned here, some of that "research" was funded by outside sources which gives them property rights over it. So yes. To "give away" what is not rightfully yours, is stealing.

        If you want to go Full-Stallman and hav

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by SirLanse ( 625210 )
        If I come to your house and you give me a beer, that is Sharing. If I go into your bedroom and take your wife's jewelry, that is Stealing. If you are net yet publishing and want to get your patents in order, and they take the info and patent ahead of you. That is stealing.
    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      China can't lose. You can hobble yourself by making it harder to share data and collaborate, you can ban Chinese talent and exacerbate the skills shortage while increasing their supply, but none of it will slow China down very much.

      • I agree. We should just give up on being an independent, democratic country.

        We should stop selling all our best land to corrupt CCP members and making it too expensive for ordinary Americans to live there. Instead we should just give all our land to Emperor Xi!

        Likewise the universities. Instead of selling expensive education to the children of aforementioned corrupt CCP members, we should just hand over the universities to the Chinese state. Then no Americans will be able to study there! Just think how th

  • No doubt the Chinese government has already assembled a team of scientists and medical doctors to apply this stolen research to the creation of a super soldier long before the US gets their version off the movie screen and into a lab.

    I can think of one thing these would-be creators of Captain China won't have to worry about: getting gunned down for "mass murder" by religious zealots if they rinse out a Petri dish full of zygotes.

  • by Volatile_Memory ( 140227 ) on Thursday November 07, 2019 @07:48AM (#59390242)

    China has made no secret of their "16-character policy" formally adopted in 1997 which translates to:

    Combine the military and civil
    Combine peace and war
    Give priority to military products
    Let the civil support the military

    To do business with them is to expose yourself to espionage and sabotage which is required of Chinese companies by the PRC.

    • Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)

      China has made no secret of their "16-character policy" formally adopted in 1997 which translates to:

      Combine the military and civil
      Combine peace and war
      Give priority to military products
      Let the civil support the military

      That has also been US policy for at least three quarters of a century.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • by jimbrooking ( 1909170 ) on Thursday November 07, 2019 @09:24AM (#59390428)
    If the can manufacture life-saving drugs and charge affordable prices, more power to them.
    • by Ogive17 ( 691899 )
      Manufacturing is the easy part. R&D is the issue.
      • by Anonymous Coward
        And apparently if you go to NIH, you will find that the researchers are 1/3 Chinese, 1/3 Indian, and rest miscellaneous. So you can see that the Chinese are well able to do R&D. At NIH you will find whole floors or wings that are Chinese. Go to any university's science department or engineering department and you will find the same thing.
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Yeah, that globalization has worked wonders for America. We continue to pay for and do majority of R&D, and then manufacturing goes to a foreign company who then charges a fraction of the price. Oh wait, American prices are out of sight. Why? Due to the IP going overseas and then companies charging what they feel like.
        • by Anonymous Coward

          Just stop R&D if you don't want to do it anymore.
          It won't help you at all. You wont make any money instead of the lots of money you make now. You will rely on other countries for new drugs.
          You will probably end up with cures rather than treatments, so that's one consolation.

          Alternatively you could just stop selling/licencing to foreign countries. Lose what little money you do get. Make your prices even higher in America, or make less profits. Again, your choice.

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • IF they are spying for a different government, is that not Treason? They should be hanged by the neck until dead. It may not stop others from doing it, but THOSE people won't do it again.
  • Probably a bigger long term issue is going to be the lose of Tribal knowledge. If American admin is sincere about stopping the theft of IP, they will start limiting the % of workers in a lab that can be from head professors/researchers original nation. So, anybody that is brought in to a position from a foreign nation, should be limited to say 25% coming from the same nation ( or similar ). So a Chinese Prof can hire 1 in 4 from China, HK, Taiwan, but can pick up American, Europeans, Indians, etc. The idea
  • by Chromal ( 56550 ) on Thursday November 07, 2019 @01:11PM (#59391186)
    It's the nature of academic research to be open, repeatable and therefore verifiable. This means if researchers do and publish something in the US, it is available to researchers and the public in China, Russia, France, or even Lesotho. This is how it's supposed the work. There's absolutely nothing wrong with this, in fact closing it off would be an attack upon academic freedom the likes of which the world might only expect from monstrous totalitarian regimes.

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