Bill Priestap, then the FBI’s head of counterintelligence, described the “Thousand Talents Program” in congressional testimony this past December as an example of “non-traditional espionage.” He said the goal was “luring both Chinese overseas talent and foreign experts alike to bring their knowledge and experience to China, even if that means stealing proprietary information.”
The problem for the Chinese is that this “brain gain” effort was so aggressive that it backfired. The New York Times reported this week that the FBI has recommended denying visas to some Chinese academics suspected of having ties to Chinese intelligence. The Energy Department recently banned anyone involved in China’s talent-recruiting programs from working in its laboratories.
There’s blowback in the trade negotiations, too. Lorand Laskai of the Council on Foreign Relations noted last year that the Trump administration mentioned “Made in China 2025” more than 100 times in its Section 301 trade complaint against Beijing. A newly wary China has stopped referring to the Thousand Talents Plan or mentioning award recipients, according to reports by Bloomberg News and Nature, respectively.
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