2019. The Subcommittee examined how American taxpayers have been unwittingly funding the rise of China's economy and military over the last two decades while federal agencies have done little to stop it. The Subcommittee found that China has been recruiting U.S.-based scientists and researchers and incentivizing them to transfer U.S. taxpayer-funded intellectual property to China for China's own military and economic gain. The Subcommittee focused specifically on China's most prominent talent recruitment program, the Thousand Talents Plan. The Subcommittee also surveyed seven federal agencies' efforts to combat the theft of American taxpayer-funded research and technology through Chinese talent recruitment programs, finding that the U.S. government does not have a comprehensive strategy to combat this threat.
At the November 19, 2019 hearing, the FBI's Assistant Director for Counterintelligence stated that "[w]ith our present-day knowledge of the threat from Chinese talent plans, we wish we had taken more rapid and comprehensive action in the past, and the time to make up for that is now." Following the Subcommittee's report and hearing, the Department of Justice has charged several individuals with crimes related to their participation in the Thousand Talents Plan, including the Chair of Harvard's Chemistry and Chemical Biology Department.
Finally, the Subcommittee has examined cyberattacks against U.S. companies that have been attributed to Chinese actors. On March 7, 2019, the Subcommittee released a bipartisan report titled “How Equifax Neglected Cybersecurity and Suffered a Devastating Data Breach." The Subcommittee held a hearing on the report on March 7, 2019, which also examined the 2018 data breach suffered by Marriott. Chinese military personnel were indicted for their involvement in the Equifax breach on February 20, 2020, and Attorney General Barr indicated in announcing those indictments that Chinese government officials are also responsible for the attack against Marriott.
For this investigation, the Subcommittee reviewed more than 6,400 pages of documents and conducted more than 10 interviews, including interviews with individuals from the FCC, DOJ, DHS, China Telecom Americas, China Unicom Americas, ComNet, AT&T, Verizon, and Century Link. The Subcommittee also met with researchers who analyzed the Chinese government's use of telecommunications carriers to hijack communications. All entities and individuals complied with the Subcommittee's requests for information, documents, and interviews.
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