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.
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.
The Convenience of the Internet (Score:1)
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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
Batten down the hatches! (Score:2, Interesting)
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How much Fashion Fabric do you think you can cram up your ass, you fucking spammer?
The timing of this is cynical: 2025 (Score:2)
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.
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Nazi Germany blamed Jews, Nazi USA blames Chinese
That is called unfair discrimination - the Chinese are persecuted less than the Russians.
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The same situation happened in WW2 with Japanese Americans .
You have these bad egg Chinese scientists who are putting their law abiding countrymen at stake.
Next thing you have is a wholesale containment protocol of all of them being rounded up for temporary holding while people get their heads on straight.
China is asking for it at this point.
All the while the real criminal dictator in Russia just sits back and laughs. The theft being perpetrated by what was the KGB has not slowed it has just become the domain of the Russian mob and their lackeys who have managed to subvert the democratic process in the US. We are seeing the comeuppance for allowing the CIA to go into bed with organized crime after the second world war. Hell even the precursor to the CIA went into bed with the local Mafia under the guise of preventing subversive activities which
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When someone uses the word democracy in conjunction with USA you can take that as proof they have nothing of value to add to any political conversation. Facts do not matter to you, only the dogma matters and how you can use every little situation to blame the problem on everyone but yourself.
Re:This is how it starts. (Score:4, Insightful)
No our democracy is far to fragile to start vilifying other peoples again, hell even a crook like Richard Nixon understood this fact.
What you call "vilifying other people" I call "calling them out on their bullshit."
Let's make this very clear: China IS our economic enemy. They want to be #1 and will do whatevs to get there.
Sticking your head in the sand, ignoring it, and calling people who call it out "facists" and worse is counterproductive. You, and those who think like you do, will lead us to a very dark century.
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But information wants to be free. Trade secrets are an unnatural state of affairs.
It's time to stop doing any business with China (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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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
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Re:It's time to stop doing any business with China (Score:5, Interesting)
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' ??
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--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
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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.
Re: It's time to stop doing any business with Chin (Score:2)
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
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Well that was random.
Perhaps you missed the point: Don't screw yourselves over this, you stand to lose far more than you stand to gain. Have a proportional response.
Re: It's time to stop doing any business with Chi (Score:2)
"Perhaps you missed the point: kowtow now!"
FTFY
There's an upside to all this Chinese theft (Score:2)
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.
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What they also don't have is any teams of Greenpeace lawyers with powers to block scientific and technical progress wherever they find it. Even in cases where China is "stealing" developments from the US and EU, more power to them if they can implement while we can't.
Re: There's an upside to all this Chinese theft (Score:2)
Yeah, fuck the environment! Yeehaw!
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It's politically a lot easier to get a natural gas generator built in the US than a nuclear plant. Which one is better for the environment?
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Did you know that the Chinese are now harvesting so many organs from those poor Uighur Muslims and Falung Gong members that they have run out of ill people to transplant them into?
You jest (although it's not clear why) but that will never happen. They'll just export them. Er, more of them, that is.
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Re: Chinese are inherently untrustworthy (Score:4, Informative)
As far as regional languages, I have also seen that. I was visiting Wuhan with a friend. She was from Zhengzhou. By American standards, these cities were not particularly distant from each other. However, we were looking for something and I asked her to ask someone if they could direct us to where we were going. I saw my friend getting very frustrated as she was talking to the woman. I asked her, "what went wrong?" My friend's response was "That woman does not speak Chinese."
What I later found was that we were the ones who did not speak Chinese. I have been told that I have a very strong Zhenzhou accent. . . imagine that. . . Some were small differences, like zai nar instead of zai nali. Others were completely useless, I found that I was better off asking where the WC was instead of asking where the toilet was. I had internalized the Zhengzhou hua word instead of the putong hua word.
Along the same lines, I was helping a new Phillipino worker get oriented. I took her to the cart location that I normally went to for a quick dinner. It is important to know that this Phillipino woman looked very Asian. The woman I ordered the food from asked the new person with me why I had ordered, my Chinese was very poor. I then told her that the women with me did not speak Chinese at all. The vender got quite annoyed, she was certain that we were just messing with her.
I have plenty of those types of stories. As far as the "national duty" to spy, I have stories about that topic too, but I am not where I have those already written out some good stories on that topic, but I am not at the computer where I have them. The expectation that the Chinese will spy is very strong.
"You knew I was a scorpion" (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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That has also been US policy for at least three quarters of a century.
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Could be a good thing (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: Could be a good thing (Score:2)
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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.
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Treason Anyone (Score:2)
Tribal knowledge (Score:2)
That is completely absurd WindBourne (Score:2)
What were you smoking to come up with that?
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Academic Research == Open and Free as in Software (Score:3)