Trump-era anti-spy program against Chinese academics falters amid failed prosecutions. Critics ask why Biden hasn't terminated it.
After conducting days of surveillance, performing DNA tests on a hard drive that was fished out of a dumpster, and searching through personal emails, FBI officials became convinced that visiting UCLA researcher Guan Lei belonged to the Chinese military and might be stealing American industrial secrets.
But in a sudden turnaround in late July, U.S. authorities summarily dismissed all charges. The Justice Department gave no explanation, issuing a brief statement that it had reevaluated the case, along with several others, and determined that “it is now in the interest of justice” to drop the matter.
“Obviously, the FBI and Justice Department are under pressure to produce indictments against people with a so-called ‘nexus to China’ to match the political rhetoric sensationalizing the espionage threat from the Chinese government,” he said. “Even FBI analysts appear to have felt the investigators’ effort to connect these defendants to the Chinese military was overwrought.”The problem was, and remains, serious.
Moreover, the FBI’s tactics struck many Asian Americans as heavy-handed and discriminatory. The campaign came at a time when Asian Americans across the country wereDefending the program, FBI Director Christopher Wray warned that Beijing, in its effort to overtake the U.S. economy, had resorted to industrial espionage using “non-traditional collectors” such as researchers and graduate students.last year that the FBI had about 1,000 investigations involving China’s attempt to steal U.S.
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