Scores of researchers from a top U.S. nuclear weapons lab are now reportedly on China's payroll, according to a just-published report.
The Epoch Times, citing a report from the strategic intelligence firm Strider Technologies, noted that some 162 scientists and researchers who worked at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) have been recruited by the Chinese Communists to work on Beijing's military programs.
The report's foreword notes:
The inspiration for this report comes from a March 2017 article in the South China Morning Post titled “America’s Hidden Role in Chinese Weapons Research.” The article notes that so many former Los Alamos National Laboratory scientists have returned to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and are now working on military research programs that they are referred to as the “Los Alamos Club.” However, no specifics about this “Club,” its membership, or the programs these scientists are working on were reported.
The objective in conducting this study is to contextualize and document the ongoing efforts of the PRC government to send promising scientists to U.S. national laboratories for training while also recruiting leading scientists back to the PRC to advance its own military programs," the foreword adds. "Former Los Alamos scientists have made, and continue to make, considerable contributions to the PRC hypersonic, missile, and submarine programs that present an array of security risks for the United States and the entire free world."
The report itself documents the extensive effort by China dating back decades to recruit top nuclear talent for Beijing's own nuclear and weapons programs under the rubric of a “Talent Superpower Strategy."
"Between 1987 and 2021, at least 162 scientists who had worked at Los Alamos returned to the PRC to support a variety of domestic research and development (R&D) programs. Fifteen of those scientists worked as permanent staff members at Los Alamos," the report says.
"Of those fifteen, thirteen were recruited into PRC government talent programs; some were responsible for sponsoring visiting scholars and postdoctoral researchers from the PRC, and some received U.S. government funding for sensitive research," the report continued. "At least one of these staff members held a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) 'Q Clearance' allowing access to Top Secret Restricted Data and National Security Information."
Out of 113 LANL postdoctoral researchers and permanent staffers who went back home to China, nearly 80 percent of them were chosen to take part in the Chicom government's talent programs, according to the report. They then went on to make strides in the development of the Chinese military's hypersonic missile program as well as unmanned vehicles, jet engines, warheads and stealthy submarines.
The report also pointed out several examples of the recruitment process's inner workings, primarily by exploring the careers of many associated researchers who were employed by the LANL and later hired by Beijing.
"Of the 162 returnees, at least 59 scientists were selectees of the PRC’s flagship talent recruitment program—the Thousand Talents Program (TTP) and its youth branch, the Youth Thousand Talents Program (YTTP)," the report noted.
"Ninety-eight of the scientists who returned were postdoctoral researchers, and 49 were visiting scholars. Although such individuals do not have access to the most sensitive research at Los Alamos, they still pose a risk of technology transfer and economic espionage. The DOE has acknowledged instances in which researchers elsewhere have passed dual-use and export controlled research to the PRC via visiting students and scholars," it added.
The report also said that, finally, the U.S. government recently began taking steps to mitigate the risks of China's ongoing recruitment strategy, but it may be too little, too late. For instance, China is already well ahead of the U.S. in terms of developing and fielding hypersonic missiles that can carry nuclear warheads around the globe and strike American targets in one-third of the time of existing ICBMs.
The next global war will not go well for America.
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