Growing signs that a small portion of foreign students and professors at American universities are stealing research have troubled national-security officials, reports Bloomberg News. Recent federal reports say there have been increases in countries’ obtaining sensitive government or industry research by working alongside American professors, downloading files from the laptops of American researchers while they are attending conferences overseas, and using fake companies to license technology created in university labs.
And Americans who study abroad may be recruitment targets for foreign intelligence agencies. In one example, a junior at Grand Valley State University who studied at East China Normal University, in Shanghai, was reportedly paid more than $70,000 to apply for jobs at the U.S. State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency. He was sentenced to four years in prison last year after pleading guilty to conspiring to provide national-defense information to China.
