Ex-DOE Official Exposes Chinese Espionage

According to reports on August 18th, a former top Department of Energy official revealed details about the Chinese Government’s efforts to conduct espionage against American technology, warning that the United States must do more to protect U.S. innovation. Paul Dabbar, the undersecretary for science at the Energy Department throughout the Trump administration, said his experience in his role gave him worrying insight into Beijing’s efforts to recruit U.S. scientists and to transfer science and technology.

Previously, the intelligence community has spoken about the challenge posed by China, and the FBI has repeatedly warned about its economic espionage program through the Thousand Talents Plans (TTP).

“When I joined the U.S. Department of Energy in 2017, I was briefed about how pervasively the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had woven itself into the U.S. Government’s research and innovation efforts,” Dabbar wrote in an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal. “Traditionally, labs and academic institutions around the world and their researchers work on projects together. And periodically, foreign institutions, including in China, compensate Americans for their efforts.” Dabbar warned that “the Communist Party began to use these interactions to recruit people for their technology programs.”

He said the problem was already serious when he joined the Energy Department at the start of former President Donald Trump’s presidency. “I learned that people working at the Energy Department’s National Laboratories had significant engagements with China,” Dabbar wrote. “Some were paid by one of the many Chinese Communist Party Thousand Talents Plans while concurrently working at sensitive U.S. government labs. These agreements often required technology transfer as well as support for recruiting more members to the TTP.”