By: Aaron Kim, ITMG Insider Threat Analyst
Oak Ridge National Laboratory has been a hotbed of US nuclear experimentation for decades. It has also been a subject of target by foreign countries like China. More than 1,700 technologies developed in the lab are in China’s radar, according to the three-year-old startup Strider Technologies Inc.
Using custom software to scour widely available sources of information on China’s internet, Strider executives said they identified two postdoctoral researchers in nanotechnology who, while working at Oak Ridge, were recruited into China’s Youth Thousand Talents Program. The researchers were lured by perks including a grant of 500,000 yuan (about $75,000) apiece and other subsidies worth up to 3 million yuan (about $450,000), the executives said. Both relocated to China and are now employed by university labs with ties to China’s defense industry, they said.
This is the potential of Strider, which uses “open-source data from China to identify technologies most at risk of being stolen—and to spot the people who might be tempted to steal them. The company’s pitch coincides with a debate in the US over how to investigate Chinese industrial espionage while protecting civil liberties and follows a decision by the Justice Department to shut down a program targeting crimes involving China amid allegations that the agency was targeting people based on their ethnicity.”
Oak Ridge said they have strict policies to “protect US scientific research and technological innovation from exploitation by foreign governments while continuing to recognize international cooperation as a bedrock value.” Employees are required to disclose any “perceived participation” in foreign recruitment programs, and foreign nationals are subject to background checks and restrictions on work they can perform, the lab said.
China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not respond directly of Striders claims but a spokesperson for the ministry said, “Statements about the Chinese side’s so-called stealing of intellectual property ignore basic facts and are entirely malicious slandering and smearing against China. We firmly oppose this.” China’s scientific achievements were “fought for through the intelligence and sweat of the Chinese people,” the spokesperson said.
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