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Western universities and laboratories are on the frontlines of a battle over talent and technology. This assertion may seem like scaremongering, but when cold hard facts are considered, it is unfortunately true. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is undertaking an unprecedented assault to obtain scientific and technical research from the west. The broad CCP assault requires an equally broad response that must now include vetting for insider threats at universities and laboratories to bolster research security.
Spies Among Friends
In the present context, insider threats can be most usefully understood as existing on a spectrum, from fully paid-up agents (a spy in popular parlance) to research collaboration that could benefit a hostile foreign power.
There is a long history of hostile states exploiting academic freedoms at western universities. A hundred years ago, because the Soviet government had few diplomatic relations with foreign governments, it relied on intelligence officers without diplomatic cover, known as illegals. One of the earliest known illegals entered MIT as a student in 1938, Semyon Markovich Semyonov (codename TVEN). He was tasked with collecting scientific and technical research. It was, however, in the other Cambridge, in England, where Soviet intelligence had its greatest success. The Cambridge Five – Kim Philby, Guy Burgess, Donald McClain, Anthony Blunt, and John Cairncross – were all recruited at or soon after leaving Cambridge University in the 1930s. The Cambridge Spies were each motived by communist ideology, shaped by their intellectual discussions at Cambridge. During World War II, they became hugely damaging Soviet agents inside the British government. Some of the most important intelligence they gave to Moscow was the activities of codebreakers at Britian’s Bletchley Park.
The greatest Soviet insider threats occurred at an American top secret wartime laboratory to build the world’s first atomic bomb. The MANHATTAN Project was fully penetrated by Soviet agents. The Soviet agent, Klaus Fuchs, a brilliant physicist working at Los Alamos National Lab, provided Moscow blueprints and calculations for the atomic bomb. He was motivated by his communist ideology and the belief that nuclear weapons should not be held by one power alone. Fuchs later said that he divided his mind into two compartments: one for his friends and colleagues, the other for his communist beliefs, with the latter always superseding the former. It was, Fuchs said, a kind of controlled schizophrenia which allowed him to betray his friends and colleagues. Soviet espionage at the MANHATTAN Project accelerated Soviet development of Moscow’s own atomic bomb. Accelerating research and development is the essence of what espionage can achieve. The intelligence provided by Fuchs and other agents at Los Alamos meant that when the Soviets detonated their first atomic bomb, in 1949, it was an exact replica of the weapon the US dropped on Nagasaki four years earlier.
After the end of the Cold War, in the 1990s, Chinese espionage replaced Soviet intelligence at Los Alamos. At the end of that decade, Chinese intelligence was discovered to have obtained nuclear secrets from the New Mexico laboratory. 9/11 interrupted and distracted the US response to Chinese intelligence at Los Alamos.
Vetting
The penetration of the Cambridge Spies and agents like Klaus Fuchs, represented one of the greatest failures of western security in modern time. They were able to inflict their damage thanks to inadequate vetting by the British government. At the time, British vetting relied on a cross check on MI5 records. There were no proactive investigations into applicants’ backgrounds. The obvious flaw in the system was that if a candidate distanced himself or herself from communist associations there would be no traces in MI5 records. The Soviet recruiters of the Cambridge Five skillfully got them to do exactly that: breakaway from all communist groups. Thus, the Cambridge Five were able to slip through the British security net. Only later did MI5 obtain records of the Cambridge University socialist club, which contained names of the Cambridge Five and which could have provided important clues to their true motivation.
After the identification of the Cambridge Spies, beginning in 1951, the British government belatedly introduced positive vetting – in which there were intrusive investigations into a candidate’s background. Today the process is known as Developed Vetting. As the recent scandal of Lord Mandelson’s appointment to British Ambassador in Washington shows, the process of Developed Vetting is purely advisory. The decision to employ an applicant is up to the employing body itself.
In the CCP Crosshairs
The CCP has a strategy to exploit western research and development. The CCP has instigated a number of talent programs, by which Chinese researchers are sent to western institutions, but are then required to return to China, bringing the fruits of their research with them. A variant of CCP talent programs is to exploit Chinese diaspora scientists at western institutions, often by blackmailing them through family members and China itself. Such talent programs are part of the CCP’s national rejuvenation program by which it seeks to replace the United States as the world’s leading economic and military power. The CCP demands that any research and development that cannot be delivered from homegrown talent must be obtained from overseas. As well as talent programs, the CCP also exploits research collaboration with western universities and laboratories. There is in principle nothing wrong with this, as long as such western institutions appreciate that the CCP will try to steal any intellectual property produced by such collaborations. The problem arises when western scientists hide their connections to Chinese entities, as was the case with former Harvard professor of chemistry, Charles Lieber.
Frequently Chinese researchers are not forthcoming about their continued affiliation with the Chinese military. For example, open-source data obtained and analyzed by a private sector strategic intelligence firm, Strider Technologies, shows that since 2020 over 8,000 STEM publications have involved collaboration between Chinese military entities and more than 100 UK institutions. The Chinese – UK research collaboration includes dual use technology – those with civilian and military application – such as hypersonics and antijamming communications.
Russia is also pursuing research collaborations with western institutions, with the aim of obtaining dual use technologies[CW1] .
A new approach
There will always be a need for traditional vetting for sensitive positions in western governments involving national security. It would, however, be mistaken to think that such vetting is comprehensive.
In the past, vetting required full state-backed resources. Today, that is no longer the case. Private sector companies are now able to use AI driven open-source data to reveal insider threats which, in some cases, western governments have missed. In 2022, for example it was revealed that a group of Chinese scientists working at none other than Los Alamos returned to China bringing with them research into defense technologies like hypersonics. The perversity of this situation cannot be overstated: US national defense research was benefiting the principal US adversary.
Bold action is needed. Western governments would be well advised to establish oversight bodies to identify vulnerabilities in research with military or dual use application. All such research positions can and should be vetted by open-source private sector providers. A subset of academics and civil libertarians will inevitably denounce this as unduly invasive. The fact that such vetting would be based on open-source data should, however, ameliorate those concerns. Furthermore, incase there are concerns about racial profiling, the vetting would pertain to the research positions not researchers themselves.
Ultimately the issue at stake is about western economic security – the intellectual property that will provide western economic prosperity. Think of western AI frontier laboratories. The question is whether the west is prepared to allow the secrets of this century’s technologies to be transferred to the west’s principal strategic adversaries, China and Russia.
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