Monday, September 16, 2019

"The FBI Hunts Chinese Spies At An Elite American Children’s Hospital"

Forbes:
Yu Zhou and Li Chen were a husband-and-wife team that had built their reputations on breakthroughs in cutting-edge medical therapies at Ohio’s elite Nationwide Children’s Hospital. Along the way, they’d also founded a Chinese company and sold it to a Nasdaq-listed biotech business worth more than $150 million. But Zhou and Chen’s careers took a dramatic turn on July 29 when federal agents arrested them for stealing medical secrets from the former employer.

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part of a major operation by the FBI’s counterintelligence and IP theft units to hunt down those the agency believes are either pawns or recruits of the Chinese government.

It’s a purge that, from the perspective of the Department of Justice and national security experts, is a long overdue step in tackling the trade war with China. The flip side from those defending Chinese scientists under investigation is that this “red scare” is terrorizing and scaring off elite researchers who could benefit America’s economy.

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one of the current points of focus for the FBI is the Thousand Talents Program, set up in 2008 by China’s central government. It offers monetary rewards for the brightest Chinese minds working abroad to bring their knowledge back to China.