'Academic espionage': China suspected of flooding U.S. with students to access sensitive programs

1. The massive influx of Chinese students in recent years, they say, has led directly to Beijing's advantage in the development of hypersonics and other cutting-edge technology  though U.S. officials say privately that it's difficult, if not impossible, to track individual cases of students gaining specific insights in a given area and then taking that knowledge back home.
2. The FBI, State Department, Department of Justice and a host of other government agencies have ramped up their efforts to work directly with universities to encourage better vetting of Chinese students and to limit their access to any sensitive research related to national security.
3. Academic leaders, lawmakers, and military and intelligence officials say Washington needs to take a harder look at the number of Chinese who come to the U.S. to study engineering, aeronautics, astronautics, quantum mechanics and other fields that have direct connections to national security.
4. The issue of China's academic espionage raises delicate questions about discrimination and academic freedom, and the education and military sectors have struggled to strike the right balance between protecting classified research and attracting the diverse, international student base prized by top universities.
5. Although the vast majority of Chinese students attend school in the U.S. for straightforward academic reasons, other and in some cases professors come with close ties to the government in Beijing.
6. The issue is that there are foreign governments that are very aggressively trying to surpass the United States in specific science and technology fields, said Sarah Spreitzer, director of government relations at the American Council on Education.
7. U.S. officials say the Chinese strategy is long term and revolves around getting as many students into American universities as possible, with the hope that at least a handful of them return with new knowledge in cutting-edge fields.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/aug/22/china-academic-espionage-deploys-students-us-acces/