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SCREEN CAPTURE / C-SPAN
Heads of U.S. intelligence agencies testified at the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing. |
During the Feb. 13 Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, all the heads of America's intelligence agencies were in agreement that Russia did interfere in U.S. elections in 2016 and continue to do so in the 2018 elections. While most of the media focused on those conclusions, there was an exchange between Senator Marco Rubio, R-Florida, that caught the attention of AAPI lawmakers.
Rubio and FBI Director Chris Wray singled out Chinese students and scholars as a national security threat to the United States. During the exchange, Rubio asked, “What…is the counterintelligence risk posed to U.S. National Security from Chinese students, particularly those in advanced programs in the sciences and mathematics?”
Rep. Judy Chu (CA-27), CAPAC Chair:
“There is no doubt that we must take espionage threats from foreign countries seriously. However, Senator Rubio’s leading question and FBI Director Wray’s sweepingly broad response were completely irresponsible generalizations that attempt to paint all Chinese students and scholars as spies for China. I condemn these remarks entirely and reject these dangerous attempts to build a case that Chinese students, professors, and scholars should be viewed with more suspicion than others.
“Unfortunately, the growing perception that simply being of Asian ancestry or having ties to China makes you prone to espionage has created a culture of fear that has negatively impacted the Asian/American community. We need to look no further than the examples of Sherry Chen and Dr. Xioaxing Xi, two Chinese/American scientists who were wrongfully accused of espionage by the FBI only to have their charges dropped with no explanation. This caused irreparable harm to their careers, reputations, and lives, and many Asian American students, scientists, and scholars now fear that they may be subjected to the same discrimination.
“Our nation’s highest law enforcement officials should not condone profiling that encourages individuals to view all Chinese and Chinese/Americans with more suspicion. If the FBI is acting under the assumption that simply being Chinese makes one a unique national security threat, that is a serious problem that must be addressed immediately. There is no room for this sort of prejudice in our country’s laws or practices.”
Rep. Ted Lieu (CA-33), CAPAC Whip:
“There are certain policies and actions by our government that, while directed at foreign nationals, could affect Americans who happen to be of certain ethnicities. In this case, tarring Chinese foreign national students en masse as being more suspicious is overbroad and will also feed into the false and harmful narrative that somehow Chinese/Americans are more suspicious. It is this false narrative that contributed to the wrongful indictments of Chinese-Americans like Sherry Chen and Professor Xiaoxing Xi. I worked on those cases last year and helped cause the Department of Justice to change its policies to help make sure Chinese-Americans are not targeted by law enforcement because of their ethnicity.
“I called on FBI Director Wray to clarify his comments and make a strong statement that Chinese-Americans are not viewed by the FBI as any more suspicious than any other American.
“I also have a suggestion for the Trump Administration. Before spending a lot of time and resources looking at foreign nationals allegedly getting publicly available information, perhaps the Administration should first crack down on the over 130 Americans in the White House who still don’t have permanent security clearances and are inappropriately viewing highly classified non-public information.”
Rep. Grace Meng (NY-06):
“I strongly condemn comments made by the Trump Administration's FBI Director Christopher Wray that racially profile international students from China. The intelligence community, rightfully, should always be concerned about foreign nationals who have access to our most sensitive secrets. That, however, never excuses an attempt to categorize an entire group of people as a threat to our national security. This narrative is unfortunately not new, and should not be perpetuated by our country's highest law enforcement officials.”
Rubio and FBI Director Chris Wray singled out Chinese students and scholars as a national security threat to the United States. During the exchange, Rubio asked, “What…is the counterintelligence risk posed to U.S. National Security from Chinese students, particularly those in advanced programs in the sciences and mathematics?”
“I think in this setting I would just say that the use of nontraditional collectors, especially in the academic setting, whether it’s professors, scientists, students, we see in almost every field office that the FBI has around the country. It’s not just in major cities. It’s in small ones as well. It’s across basically every discipline.
“And I think the level of naïveté on the part of the academic sector about this creates its own issues. They’re exploiting the very open research and development environment that we have, which we all revere, but they’re taking advantage of it. So one of the things we’re trying to do is view the China threat as not just a whole-of-government threat but a whole-of-society threat on their end, and I think it’s going to take a whole-of-society response by us. So it’s not just the intelligence community, but it’s raising awareness within our academic sector, within our private sector, as part of the defense.”
Pressed further by Rubio to comment on Confucius Institutes -- of which Rubio, a Republican from Florida, has been a critic -- Wray said the FBI has been monitoring the institutes. About 100 American universities host Confucius Institutes, which are centers of Chinese language and cultural education funded by a Chinese government entity. Rubio said he believes these institutes are “complicit in these efforts to covertly influence public opinion and to teach half-truths designed to present Chinese history, government or official policy in the most favorable light.” Rubio asked Wray, “Do you share concerns about Confucius Institutes as a tool of that whole-of-society effort and as a way to exploit the sort of naïve view among some in the academic circles about what the purpose of these institutes could be?”
“We do share concerns about the Confucius institutes,” Wray responded. “We’ve been watching that development for a while. It’s just one of many tools that they take advantage of. We have seen some decrease recently in their own enthusiasm and commitment to that particular program, but it is something that we’re watching warily and in certain instances have developed appropriate investigative steps.”
Daniel Golden, an investigative journalist and author of the 2017 book Spy Schools: How the CIA, FBI and Foreign Intelligence Secretly Exploit America’s Universities, said this is the first comment he recalls from a FBI director about China targeting American universities.
“I don’t remember anything this candid about academia and Chinese espionage from such a high level,” Golden said. He described Wray’s comments as “a point-by-point recital of the first half of my book. He makes the same points I made about Chinese espionage, concern about Confucius Institutes and the vulnerability of academic research.” In the book, Golden argues that academic research “offers a valuable, vulnerable, and low-risk target for foreign espionage.” He notes that “despite pursuing groundbreaking technologies for the Pentagon and the intelligence community, university laboratories are less protected than their corporate counterparts” and argues that “ignorance about intellectual property safeguards, or even hostility toward them, is rife among science students and faculty.”
Yet some expressed concerns that the exchange between Rubio and Wray risks painting Chinese students with a broad brush and could contribute to an environment for international students that is increasingly perceived by many as unwelcoming.
Relatedly, a National Security Strategy document released by the White House in December said the government would “consider restrictions on foreign STEM students from designated countries to ensure that intellectual property is not transferred to our competitors, while acknowledging the importance of recruiting the most advanced technical work force to the United States.”
“It is wrong to cast an entire group of students, professors, and scientists as a threat to our country based simply on where they come from,” said Patrick Toomey, a staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, which has joined a lawsuit by a Chinese/American professor, Xi Xiaoxing, who was wrongfully arrested for sharing secret technology with entities in China. The suit claims among other things that Xi, a professor of physics at Temple University, was discriminated against based on his Chinese ethnicity and communications with Chinese entities.
“The United States has a proud tradition of international academic collaboration, which attracts the best and the brightest to our universities, fosters innovation and ultimately benefits all Americans,” Toomey said. “The FBI’s mind-set has already led to overzealous investigations of Chinese/Americans, with disastrous consequences for those wrongly tarred with suspicion.”
Jill Welch, the deputy executive director for public policy at NAFSA: Association of International Educators, said that it is “important to remember the extensive security measures already in place,” including “the thorough vetting and monitoring already in place for international students and scholars” and deemed export control measures designed to prevent the transfer of technologies to other countries.
“It’s also important to remember that we’re in a global competition for talent and that we need to balance any new measures with the reality that international students are essential to our educational institutions, and we must avoid deterring future students,” Welch said.
As for the comments on Confucius Institutes, Gao Qing, the executive director of the Confucius Institute U.S. Center in Washington, questioned what the FBI had learned from its monitoring of the centers. "If they are watching Confucius Institutes for a while, I’m really curious about what they found out," he said. "To me, it sounds to me like they have been watching Confucius Institutes but have found nothing. It should be an educational process for our senators to understand what Confucius Institutes are really about." He said that the curriculum of the institutes focuses on Chinese language teaching and cultural awareness, not Chinese policies or the government.
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SCREEN CAPTURE / C-SPAN
FBI director Chris Wray at the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing. |
“The vast majority of Chinese students are just here to learn and maybe do research, and they bring energy and intelligence and a fresh perspective to American higher education and they’re quite valuable,” said Golden, the author of Spy Schools. “It would be wrong and unfair to assume that some very large proportion of them are here for clandestine purposes.
"The other point I’d make is the view that somebody like Wray gave in his testimony is only half the picture. The other half is we’re trying to recruit some of these Chinese students and professors and use them as spies ourselves. It’s not only foreign undermining of U.S. colleges. It’s a two-way street.
"The point of my book is that both sides are exploiting universities, and I give numerous examples of Chinese students or professors who are approached by U.S. intelligence or pressured by U.S. intelligence to spy for us. We’re not entirely innocent in this matter,” said Golden.
Members of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus (CAPAC) released the following statements in response to the comments by Rubio and Wray:"The other point I’d make is the view that somebody like Wray gave in his testimony is only half the picture. The other half is we’re trying to recruit some of these Chinese students and professors and use them as spies ourselves. It’s not only foreign undermining of U.S. colleges. It’s a two-way street.
"The point of my book is that both sides are exploiting universities, and I give numerous examples of Chinese students or professors who are approached by U.S. intelligence or pressured by U.S. intelligence to spy for us. We’re not entirely innocent in this matter,” said Golden.
Rep. Judy Chu (CA-27), CAPAC Chair:
“There is no doubt that we must take espionage threats from foreign countries seriously. However, Senator Rubio’s leading question and FBI Director Wray’s sweepingly broad response were completely irresponsible generalizations that attempt to paint all Chinese students and scholars as spies for China. I condemn these remarks entirely and reject these dangerous attempts to build a case that Chinese students, professors, and scholars should be viewed with more suspicion than others.
“Unfortunately, the growing perception that simply being of Asian ancestry or having ties to China makes you prone to espionage has created a culture of fear that has negatively impacted the Asian/American community. We need to look no further than the examples of Sherry Chen and Dr. Xioaxing Xi, two Chinese/American scientists who were wrongfully accused of espionage by the FBI only to have their charges dropped with no explanation. This caused irreparable harm to their careers, reputations, and lives, and many Asian American students, scientists, and scholars now fear that they may be subjected to the same discrimination.
“Our nation’s highest law enforcement officials should not condone profiling that encourages individuals to view all Chinese and Chinese/Americans with more suspicion. If the FBI is acting under the assumption that simply being Chinese makes one a unique national security threat, that is a serious problem that must be addressed immediately. There is no room for this sort of prejudice in our country’s laws or practices.”
Rep. Ted Lieu (CA-33), CAPAC Whip:
“There are certain policies and actions by our government that, while directed at foreign nationals, could affect Americans who happen to be of certain ethnicities. In this case, tarring Chinese foreign national students en masse as being more suspicious is overbroad and will also feed into the false and harmful narrative that somehow Chinese/Americans are more suspicious. It is this false narrative that contributed to the wrongful indictments of Chinese-Americans like Sherry Chen and Professor Xiaoxing Xi. I worked on those cases last year and helped cause the Department of Justice to change its policies to help make sure Chinese-Americans are not targeted by law enforcement because of their ethnicity.
“I called on FBI Director Wray to clarify his comments and make a strong statement that Chinese-Americans are not viewed by the FBI as any more suspicious than any other American.
“I also have a suggestion for the Trump Administration. Before spending a lot of time and resources looking at foreign nationals allegedly getting publicly available information, perhaps the Administration should first crack down on the over 130 Americans in the White House who still don’t have permanent security clearances and are inappropriately viewing highly classified non-public information.”
Rep. Grace Meng (NY-06):
“I strongly condemn comments made by the Trump Administration's FBI Director Christopher Wray that racially profile international students from China. The intelligence community, rightfully, should always be concerned about foreign nationals who have access to our most sensitive secrets. That, however, never excuses an attempt to categorize an entire group of people as a threat to our national security. This narrative is unfortunately not new, and should not be perpetuated by our country's highest law enforcement officials.”
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