How does the US plan to avoid research falling into Chinese hands work? U.S. doubles down on protecting university research from China
Apparently the US is taking action to &quot;prevent sensitive technology from being stolen by the Chinese military&quot;. The article doesn't go into many details of what that action is, but it does say:

The NSCAI [National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence] recommendations would require more disclosure on research funding and partnerships at universities. It also proposes creating a database of individuals and entities to flag risks in advance.

How does this plan work? In principle everyone is a security risk, since everyone can defect or seek to immigrate to China. Even if we neglect defections/immigration, unless US universities stop admitting Chinese students or exclude Chinese postdocs/visiting researchers entirely, they could always take their knowledge back with them. Checking the source of resource funding and partnerships doesn't seem effective either - one could always change funding sources or partnerships after the PhD/postdoc etc is over.
The nominal goal is to keep people from running two labs, using US funding to develop ideas that then get teleported to the china lab for commercialization. The guys indicted so far were all running labs in China they didn't disclose.
Like charles lieber, who seems to have run a china lab.
It also looks like they're going after people for not filing fbars, which is kinda shitty since half the green card holders in the US are probably guilty of that.
Is this a real problem? Probably not. But it sounds good if you aren't an academic. Same way &quot;tough on crime&quot; always works.