International Law

Sensitive University Research and Export Control Laws

You learn something everyday. Throughout the United States, university science departments perform sensitive research with military applications. The first case of spying I'd become aware of involving Chinese graduate students occurred at Cornell University in the early 1980s, evidently involving satellite imaging technology.

The grapevine through which I'd heard the rumor informed me that a former Chinese national Ph.D. candidate -- whom I once may have met at one of those awfully unproductive "you teach me Chinese, I teach you English" get-togethers -- had left the program to start a Chinese restaurant in the nearby town of Danby, where his contacts with the school allowed him a certain amount of access to confidential information performed on behalf of the Defense Department. I forget how much time he did. Of course, spying is not limited to Chinese -- it's just that my eyes are open to happenings in the Chinese community, rather than any other.

Some of the industrial spying stories are simply fascinating. Like the Ohio company, a leader in its field of metals processing, inviting a potential Taiwanese distributor into the factory. He was caught wearing shoes with magnetized soles to pick up metal filings on the floor of the factory, which would have later undergone metallurgical analysis. How such subterfuge was caught is anyone's guess. The Ohio company must have been on its toes. (Get the pun?) Of course, 10 years later, they've made significant investments in R&D sites in various cities in China, thereby heightening exposure to theft of secrets. One wonders the extent to which they 've been able to keep the door of the safe closed and locked.

I, for one, never knew that the assignment of a foreign national to a military research project in a university may require an export license. In today's recommended link, technology espionage meets university researchers meets the Defense Department meets export control laws. A fascinating web of intrigue for the lawyer to unravel.

Full post as published by Asia Business Intelligence on April 17, 2008 (boomark / email).