MIT Professor Charged With Hiding Work For China (apnews.com) 83
A Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor was charged Thursday with hiding work he did for the Chinese government while he was also collecting U.S. dollars for his nanotechnology research. The Associate Press reports: Gang Chen, 56, was arrested by federal agents at his home in Cambridge on charges including wire fraud, officials said. While working for MIT, Chen entered into undisclosed contracts and held appointments with Chinese entities, including acting as an "overseas expert" for the Chinese government at the request of the People's Republic of China Consulate Office in New York, authorities said. Many of those roles were "expressly intended to further the PRC's scientific and technological goals," authorities said in court documents.
Chen did not disclose his connections to China, as is required on federal grant applications, authorities said. He and his research group collected about $29 million in foreign dollars, including millions from a Chinese government funded university funded, while getting $19 million in grants from U.S federal agencies for his work at MIT since 2013, authorities said. "It is not illegal to collaborate with foreign researchers. It is illegal to lie about it," Massachusetts U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling told reporters. Chen's attorney said the professor "loves the United States and looks forward to vigorously defending these allegations." MIT said it is "deeply distressed" by Chen's arrest. "MIT believes the integrity of research is a fundamental responsibility, and we take seriously concerns about improper influence in U.S. research. Prof. Chen is a long-serving and highly respected member of the research community, which makes the government's allegations against him all the more distressing," the school said in a statement.
Chen did not disclose his connections to China, as is required on federal grant applications, authorities said. He and his research group collected about $29 million in foreign dollars, including millions from a Chinese government funded university funded, while getting $19 million in grants from U.S federal agencies for his work at MIT since 2013, authorities said. "It is not illegal to collaborate with foreign researchers. It is illegal to lie about it," Massachusetts U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling told reporters. Chen's attorney said the professor "loves the United States and looks forward to vigorously defending these allegations." MIT said it is "deeply distressed" by Chen's arrest. "MIT believes the integrity of research is a fundamental responsibility, and we take seriously concerns about improper influence in U.S. research. Prof. Chen is a long-serving and highly respected member of the research community, which makes the government's allegations against him all the more distressing," the school said in a statement.
Why always the Chinese? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Why always the Chinese? (Score:5, Interesting)
I think it is mostly opportunity. China has a much larger population, so there are more Chinese emigrants and children of emigrants in countries like the US. And China has an enormously larger economy, with correspondingly large buckets of money to use on espionage and espionage-like endeavors.
To some extent, it is also a difference in recent history. Russia had waves of emigration until the 1990s, and anyone who left before 1989 basically left as an enemy of the government. That is much less true of China, so recent Chinese emigrants tend to have fewer hard feelings and more close relatives back in China. China uses both feelings of patriotism (or ancestry or whatever applies to a particular target) and outright pressure (your grandma is nice, it would be a shame if something happened to her) to try to recruit people of Chinese descent.
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But the problem here doesn't seem to be espionage or anything like that? It's understandable if the Chinese government or private companies choose to co-operate with people having the appropriate language and cultural skills.
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US universities are rife with Chinese students.
https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com]
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The word implies that it is undesirable. Can you explain why it's bad for US universities to have many Chinese students?
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Because US kids are displaced from universities that their parents pay taxes to support? Not only that, if you happen to be an illegal alien (I refuse to use undocumented, but that's another topic), you get in-state tuition rates, while kids from the next state over have to pay about double. Universities have become much more focused on funding rather than education, as can be seen by the focus on football/basketball.
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I'm the UK the foreign students pay a lot more than the domestic ones. British students are subsidised by them. Lots of Chinese students would be devastating.
Re:Why always the Chinese? (Score:4, Informative)
This article tells a bit of the story. The percentage of foreign students in US universities has climbed from under 2% to nearly 5% since the mid-70s. Also, the percentage of Chinese students has gone from ~10% to over 30% of all foreign students between 2000 and 2015.
http://graphics.wsj.com/intern... [wsj.com]
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5%? Is that all?
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Because it really sucks when you can't get into a class or find lab time because your program is made up of a majority of Chinese students and they are able to squeeze out US student access.
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That sounds like a complaint with the university not providing enough labs for the number of students it accepted.
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It absolutely is. But it's endemic in the US university system. Especially so in the University of California system. But it makes sense when you consider the amount of money they generate from foreign national students.
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The only crime here, inappropriately filling out an application form, no espionage claims. As long as the professor was doing the work he was paid for by the US government, what is the problem. Just took another contract from China at the same time. There was no exclusivity claimed or espionage, just you did not declare that contract with China on a form.
This is more a civil matter than a criminal matter, it is just being pursued in a biased, racist and aggressive manner, as they wish to paint the defendan
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Is it a case of more Chinese being in positions to betray America or is it some cultural difference?
It's about the Benjamins. China has the money to make everyone comply, from the state department that pencil-whips the visas, to the boards that hire the staff to the individual staff members. Absolutely all of them are on the tip.
That includes our incoming administration at every level.
Re: Why always the Chinese? (Score:3)
Re:Why always the Chinese? (Score:4, Informative)
It is "always" the Chinese. The Chinese government has a program in place to siphon as much technology from the United States as possible, starting from the mid 80's. I forget what the Chinese called the program. Why pay to develop tech when you can just take it?
I was told, by a three-letter-organization representative, to be on the lookout for persons of chinese ancestery outside my company trying get friendly with me.
They gave very specific examples of the kind of technology that was stolen and they named names. There are, if I recall, at least 3 levels of compenstion, from recent graduate, to Subject Matter Expert with a Phd, or some someone with business ties to technology they want.
The Chinese goverment has contracts with their citizens in the US to collect specific information. Even better if they can get the US to fund the technology they want.
Part of the reason a person requesting grant money is asked if they have any financial ties with a foreign power is to get them to acknowlege they have such a contract. Not illegal if you do, but will get you into trouble if you don't. But self-identifying could limit your access to research.
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Yeah it was well known in the 1980s that CCP had a program where they would finance your education in western universities and give a high paying job if you were able to get admitted there. Now you can't say this without being called a racist.
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There are similar warnings about Americans in China. When I got married they took my wife aside and asked her about me, and then gave her a pamphlet with a little comic about a Chinese woman who falls for an American man and leaks secrets to him. It mentioned that plying her with gifts and money was a common tactic.
I imagine there are far more checks on emigrant workers and students.
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Sure there are, but it's been politically incorrect to mention that China has been in an economic/IP war with the US for the last couple decades, and deity forbid you say something or be accused of being racist/xenophobic. And, there are far more Chinese (approx. 5 Million) in the US than Americans in China (approx. 72k in 2018)
Re: Why always the Chinese? (Score:2)
Why pay to develop tech when you can just take it?
Because it makes a nation look nothing less than weak, cowardly, and impotent.
Both (Score:2)
and even if they don't want to cooperate, they get their family/friends/whatever actually in China threatened or worse unless they do.
They're also famous for 'honeypot' scams where they do shit like send chicks to fuck you while it's recorded for blackmail and whatnot. There are easy to find examples of all of these.
Don't forget, one of the primary CCP tactics is to claim all ethnically Chinese people as theirs and to conflate ethnicity with their communist dictatorship.
You also have absolutely complicit t
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The answer is obvious.
Do the chicks, but wear a XI mask the whole time and shouting " I am the great Pooh Bear!"
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Its because China is politically unpopular.
Its not entirely clear what exactly this guy did wrong. He took up a consulting job on the side. Well yeah, thats what academics do. Just because the US doesnt like that country doesn't make this just. I mean shit, the guys surname is "Chen". Kinda seems like that just maybe he might not see a problem taking up some consulting work in the motherland?
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I'm guessing you could never qualify for such an academic position, as you are clearly illiterate. The fucking summary tells you what he did wrong.
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Actually I've spent most of my adult life working at universities, and I'm still puzzled at why its a bad thing to take work from a chinese research place.
Like I get he was supposed to disclose it on the grant application. But I'm puzzled as to why its important?
But I'm not. amercian, I dont have this particular hangup, so what do I know right?
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Its because China is politically unpopular.
Its not entirely clear what exactly this guy did wrong. He took up a consulting job on the side. Well yeah, thats what academics do. Just because the US doesnt like that country doesn't make this just. I mean shit, the guys surname is "Chen". Kinda seems like that just maybe he might not see a problem taking up some consulting work in the motherland?
If he is receiving research grants from the US there may very well be restrictions on which countries he accepts other grants or payments from as well. I know that when I dealt with confidential material (ITAR related, not even classified) I had to notify the security officer whenever I traveled to certain countries. China, Russia, Venezuela, Cuba, and a few others were all on that list. Depending on what I was working on at that time the security officer may have needed to escalate those travel notifica
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Its not entirely clear what exactly this guy did wrong.
Sorry, no. Reporting those jobs is a legal requirement. It's pretty clear you didn't read the article, not that that's expected here.
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Funny, it wasn't that way up until late in the Obama administration when Vlad decided he wanted to do some land grabs.
A Massachusetts Professor (Score:2, Funny)
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With sympathy for China. Color me shocked. I bet he has the whole beard and thick black glasses thing going on, too.
Sympathy for China? He has an Asian name, but it's not clear what his feelings are about China. TFS makes it clear that the problem was not that he had connections with China, but rather that he did not disclose them in his grant applications. And TFA quotes his attorney as saying "[Chen] loves the United States and looks forward to vigorously defending these allegations.”
He is 56 years old and has spent 30 years in the USA. In other words, he has spent more time in the USA than anywhere else. Of cour
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TFS makes it clear that the problem was not that he had connections with China, but rather that he did not disclose them
It depends on how you read TFA:
Gang Chen, 56, was arrested by federal agents at his home in Cambridge on charges including wire fraud,
was charged Thursday with hiding work he did for the Chinese government
People don't get arrested by federal agents for failing to file proper paperwork. They are saying he was hiding something. That sounds like there's something more going on here. *shrugs* But we are merely speculating based on a few paragraphs at this point.
Re:A Massachusetts Professor (Score:4, Informative)
He (allegedly) failed to disclose connections that he was required to disclose by law, and presumably he sent the grant proposals via the internet. That would be wire fraud. So, I think we're reading TFS/TFA the same way.
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They do for $19 million, unless you're already wealthy. Or in Wisconsin.
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One does wonder (Score:2)
I am thinking the numbers would blow by even the highest expectations.
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or Senior NASA Scientist Pleads Guilty To Making False Statements Related To Chinese Thousand Talents Program Participation And Professorship [justice.gov]
heck that article we are commenting on you can't look in the hard news without tripping over this China stuff.
Or you can keep your eyes closed, fingers in your ears and continue to hum loudly
It's Russia, It's Russia !!! oh please let it be Russia!
Does not matter to me either way.
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Heck the CCP is just buying Americans right out in the open.
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Funny thought Russia could be doing it also. Maybe smarter since we are not hearing or seeing much of substance against them beyond the usual anonymous Intell Community official says blah blah but we can't show you it is super secret and stuff ;) Trust Us wink wink
Heck the CCP is just buying Americans right out in the open.
Probably more a question of scale. There are currently almost 400.000 Chinese student in the USA while there are only a few thousand Russians (I believe - they are not even in the statistics I found). And the Chinese economy is 6-7 times larger than the Russian economy (PPP GDP). And I would also guess that it makes more sense for the Russians to focus such efforts on Europe due to the proximity.
Nanotechnology research (Score:5, Funny)
To be fair, it was just a tiny bit of work.
Just imagine if the foreign govt was Israel (Score:2)
MIT's response kinda reads like (Score:2)
"MIT said it is "deeply distressed" by Chen's arrest. "MIT believes the integrity of research is a fundamental responsibility, and we take seriously concerns about improper influence in U.S. research. Prof. Chen is a long-serving and highly respected member of the research community, which makes the government's allegations against him all the more distressing," the school said in a statement."
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wait, MIT did not know that the lab got $30 million of funding from foreign sources while it got $19 million from US sources. How is that possible? Managing $30 million of grant requires extensive administration; did the entire lab got paid out of shadow money that were declared as volunteer to MIT?
Most likely what happened is that someone in the grants administration forgot to submit the appropriate paperwork. I doubt the PI actually fills out that paper work themselves.
I submit grants to the NSF regularly
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> Managing $30 million of grant requires extensive administration; did the entire lab got paid out of shadow money that were declared as volunteer to MIT?
Does your administration not take a tremendous cut of the grant for "overhead"? In some universities it can be 60%*. That's money that disappears from the research lab and goes on the general books.
Sounds like MIT is very distressed for a good reason.
* https://academia.stackexchange... [stackexchange.com]
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Yes, my university takes about a third of the grant. (Really it is about 50% of direct cost, so 30% of the grant amount.)
What I mean is that $30 million in about 10 years is a lot of money. That's about $3 million a year. That's a ton of money. That's probably a dozen lab assistant and some pretty serious equipment. If the lab assistant are foreign student they need visa certification and things like that.
So that's my question, is it even possible to have $3 million a year flowing in your lab without the un
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As was pointed out by the government, it is not illegal to get foreign money. (Though in some cases it obviously should be.)
Most likely, all the attestations are to be provided by the PI. If they are done electronically, it's very easy to just leave the defaults. Probably the bureaucracy never checks, and assumes that PIs are honest and know what they are doing.
But... (Score:1)
If he was sleeping with a sitting Democrat Senator or Congressman, there would be nothing to be done.
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let it play out.. (Score:5, Interesting)
ONLY THEN did the gubermint get serious about investigating. And they found that he had done absolutely nothing wrong. He sued the government for colossally f*&king up and destroying his career, and the government settled out of court.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
I'm sure that China is trying to grab as much info from our universities as possible. Maybe this guy has done wrong. But maybe not.
Re: let it play out.. (Score:1)
An honest mistake, they clearly mistranslated âoeHunter Bidenâ or maybe that plank from California who was suckered by a Chinese spy.
Re:let it play out.. (Score:5, Insightful)
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That's all fine and dandy, but there are also laws regarding import/export that need to be followed. You may disagree with those laws, but that's not the point.
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In terms of classroom education, you're 100% correct.
However, it's pretty common that profs in physics, chemistry, and the engineering fields will do a combination of share-with-the-world research (funded by the NSF) and research that is export controlled (funded by DOD aka military). The military funded research at university is never full-on-secret-weapons-research, as far as I know. However, it's in fields that the military is
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Bottom line - there is military-funded research being done in the universities in areas that blur the line between open and secret , and you can't tell where it's being done.
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Dot an i? (Score:1)
Wire fraud is a fraud... (Score:4)
It's time for "wire fraud", "mail fraud", and "honest services fraud" to be removed from legislation. These criminal codes are used as heavy-handed, blunt tools with overly broad applicability, leveraged as prosecutorial tools against anyone who commits an act the U.S. federal and state governments disagree with, whenever no otherwise specific criminal codes can be applied.
The U.S. is acting just as oppressively as the foreign government being implicated here.
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Too bad I don't have points.
University spies (Score:1)
Wouldn't be so bad... (Score:1)
It is an established fact that China steals what it can from us to then use it to take income and jobs.