National Science Foundation watchdog overwhelmed by foreign influence caseload

National Science Foundation Inspector General Allison Lerner told Congress her office is struggling to manage the rapidly expanding caseload of allegations that China and other countries have co-opted government-funded scientists and researchers. 

Ms. Lerner told lawmakers that her office first became aware in late 2017 of foreign talent recruitment programs, which countries like China use to incentivize and influence U.S. government-funded researchers to act in adversaries’ interest. 

As of Monday, Ms. Lerner said, investigations of such foreign influence programs involve 63% of her office’s investigatory caseload and FBI referrals to her office for investigations have spiked too.

“At this point, I think even if we doubled the number of people in our investigative office, we would still be hard-pressed to keep up with the number of allegations that are coming in,” Ms. Lerner said at a House Science subcommittee hearing. “These cases tend to be complex and time-consuming and in responding to them we have sorely tried our staff who are doing their level best but working beyond their capacity.”

Ms. Lerner said her office has encountered researchers required by foreign talent programs to use U.S. government funds to bring foreign students to America and travel abroad for work on behalf of other countries, and to collect federal funding while also being paid by a foreign country. 

Critics of the U.S. government’s attention to the Chinese Communist Party’s efforts to compromise government-funded research say people concerned about Chinese espionage are bigoted and discriminatory. 

Xiaoxing Xi, a Temple University professor, told Congress he was falsely accused of impermissibly working for China and the government should not punish people for making paperwork errors. 

Mr. Xi was arrested in 2015, but the U.S. government dropped charges against him later that year. He described his emotional trauma at Tuesday’s hearing and said he was thinking of the U.S. taxpayer when watching federal agents point guns at his kids. 

“On that fateful morning, when I answered the loud knocks on my door and the FBI agents put handcuffs on me, while the agents point their guns at my wife and two daughters and ordered them to walk out of their bedrooms with their hands raised, I thought, ‘Why are they doing this to me? I haven’t done anything that warrants this. This operation must cost taxpayers tons of money’” Mr. Xi told lawmakers. 

Ms. Lerner said Wednesday that her office looks at scientists’ and researchers’ conduct and not their race. She said her team is focused on contractual obligations and not paperwork errors. 

Such efforts to provide transparency will scare away foreign scientists, according to Mr. Xi. 

“I think it is definitely important to have a clear rule about disclosure, however, overemphasis on disclosure sends a message that, ‘Don’t collaborate with this foreign scientist’,” Mr. Xi said. “Foreign scientist, they will say, ‘Well why do I want to risk legal problem by collaborating?’”

Mr. Xi’s story of his 2015 brush with law enforcement has long been trumpeted by the Committee of 100, a Chinese American leadership organization working to shape public opinion against the U.S. government’s investigations of foreign influence by China. 

The committee has teamed up with Rep. Ted Lieu, California Democrat, who is seeking to end the Justice Department’s “China Initiative” started under former President Donald Trump to probe potential economic espionage.

The committee has spread Mr. Xi’s story in press releases, multiple white papers from 2021 and 2017, and at a 2015 event at law firm Jones Day’s Washington, D.C., office. 

Ms. Lerner, who has served as NSF’s inspector general since 2009, and the federal government do not appear poised to quit investigating foreign influence operations aimed at government funding.

Now that the government has discovered the foreign influence efforts, Ms. Lerner said America’s adversaries are adapting to conceal their operations. 

“The greatest challenge I see is the evolving nature of this threat we are facing,” said Ms. Lerner at Tuesday’s hearing. “In response to the United States’ efforts to address the risks posed by these programs, government sponsors are using encrypted apps and implementing other changes to avoid detection of the true nature of their relationships with members. To succeed, our response to this challenge must be agile and creative.”