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Elsa B. Kania has quickly become one of the most prominent voices analyzing U.S.-China relations, especially on Chinese military strategy and the dynamics of technological innovation. A Harvard graduate, she has studied in Beijing, worked as an analyst and testified before the U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Now, she splits her time between Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she’s a doctoral student at Harvard, and Washington, D.C., where she’s an adjunct fellow at the Center for a New American Security. Her current objective, she says, is to finish her book, Fighting to Innovate, which is forthcoming in 2021. What follows is a lightly edited Q. and A.

Q. Your work often looks at the role the state plays in fostering innovation. How do China and the U.S. treat that role? And how do these roles contribute or not to the intensifying competition we’ve seen in recent years between the two countries? 

A. China’s leaders have recognized for decades that science and technology are imperative to national rejuvenation, and this ethos has become especially prominent under Xi Jinping. China is now emerging as a powerhouse and would-be superpower in science and technology, thanks in large part to the transfer of foreign technologies, as well as expertise, through legal and extralegal mechanisms. Yet there is also genuinely indigenous innovation occurring that should not be overlooked or discounted. 

I worry sometimes that China’s leaders have learned many of the right lessons about innovation from U.S. history, while U.S. leaders may fail to recognize them. We must remember the importance of investing in basic research and science education, while thinking about the welfare of our whole society. These are core underpinnings of our national strength, and we’ve let them erode. 

The United States is now slowly realizing that we are no longer so unparalleled in innovation, and that has been a protracted and, in some respects, painful realization. While the United States once tended to dismiss science and technology in China, anxieties about losing leadership can provoke exaggerated assessments that can be deleterious to informed understanding of the competitive challenge. 

At the same time, as you have said before, there have been significant efforts by the Chinese government to engage in tech transfer. What are some of the state-directed tactics that China has adopted?

The prominent examples of these activities include cyber espionage, undertaken not only by the People’s Liberation Army but also by the Ministry of State Security, as well as its contractors. At this point, nearly every major American company has at some point been targeted for its intellectual property or business secrets by a range of cyber threat actors. The damage that has occured cumulatively is difficult to calculate but certainly considerable. There are also incidents in which individuals have been directed or incentivized to bring back IP in ways that are clearly illegal. 

But, in fact, a significant proportion of the tech transfer tactics appear to be legal, which creates a level of ambiguity and presents difficult questions for U.S. policy. The Chinese government has often leveraged techniques that seek out gaps in U.S. laws or loopholes in U.S. policies, including to exploit the openness of American academia.

I believe U.S.-China cooperation in basic research is essential and should be continued to the extent feasible, but certainly, risks can come into play. Since we’re here at Harvard, we can look to the example of Charles Lieber to see how fraught of an issue joint research in academia can become. Professor Lieber is alleged to have deceived the university and government investigators about funding he was receiving, as well as the degree of his involvement at the Wuhan University of Technology. 

When I first heard about this case, the circumstances raised red flags for me, including because the Wuhan University of Technology is known for dual-use and defense-oriented research in materials science. Professor Lieber’s collaboration with the WUT may have indirectly supported Chinese military research — or at least that possibility can’t be ruled out at this point.

So, where is the line? These kinds of collaborations “raise red flags,” but how can we more clearly define what is legal vs. illegal tech transfer? In the venture capital world, should investments with links to the Chinese government be prohibited? In academia, should any collaboration with military-linked universities be banned? 

I’d frame the issue as a question of risk mitigation, and I’d argue for targeted responses, rather than sweeping prohibitions on collaboration or investment. The critical challenge is recalibrating or disentangling aspects of engagement that can be problematic, while avoiding collateral damage for American innovation, and hopefully sustaining cooperation in domains where U.S.-China collaboration is imperative. 

As a starting point, the U.S. government should continue to promote best practices among American educational institutions and enterprises. For instance, any university or company considering whether to accept funding from or looking to collaborate with a Chinese counterpart should conduct due diligence regarding their potential partner, including on the question of links to the Party-state and military. In general, research collaborations that could create negative externalities for U.S. values or interests — such as advances in surveillance techniques that can be exploited to enable human rights abuses or progress in technologies with military relevance — should be curtailed or at least constrained. 

The U.S. government can also introduce stricter red-lines for clarity in some cases. Otherwise, uncertainty about what the rules are or about how policies may change can have a chilling impact on collaboration. For instance, there is a rationale to continue expanding the blacklist to designate actors of concern, such as through the Department of Commerce’s entity list. U.S. policies that dissuade or prohibit collaboration with designated military-linked universities and enterprises in China, or require specific approval for joint research on sensitive subjects, can contribute to a reasonable adjustment.   

Hopefully, greater transparency can also be conducive to improved outcomes. For instance, expanded requirements for disclosure, whether by academics of potential conflicts of interest or by investors seeking to enter the U.S. market, can also reduce the risks of obfuscation. There is no single solution, but such measures should be devised and revised if necessary in consultation with the relevant stakeholders across industry and academia.

Can you talk a little about dual-use technologies? What they are and how have they changed this discussion about technology transfer beyond the initial issues of economic damage or competitiveness? How real are the security concerns for the United States? 

These questions of U.S.-China technological engagement become even more complicated when questions of dual-use technologies come into play. Simply speaking, “dual-use” implies the concurrence of civilian or commercial and military applications. This is not a new problem. For example, nuclear technology can support a civilian nuclear energy program or contribute to the development of nuclear weapons; so too, advances in biotechnology can be leveraged for medical purposes and across a range of commercial applications, but could also be weaponized. There are similar dynamics in play with artificial intelligence, though AI has also been described as more of a “general purpose” technology, not unlike electricity.  

A reality today is that commercial enterprises have become the primary engine of progress, which accelerates the diffusion of emerging technologies. China’s national strategy of military-civil fusion is seeking to improve the capacity to leverage academic research and the efforts of companies in ways that also support military modernization. From cyber defense to drones, new initiatives in military-civil fusion are starting to gain traction, while further blurring the boundaries and perhaps heightening the risks when it comes to research engagement with even non-military institutions. Once, military-civil fusion was obscure, with its study relegated to only a small community of analysts and academics, but today this strategy provokes concern and controversy against the backdrop of concerns about China’s military power.

Chinese military modernization has often surpassed the initial expectations of American observers. The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) used to be derisively described as “the world’s largest military museum.” But today, it presents a more serious challenge to the U.S. military in the Indo-Pacific — certainly within the South China Sea and increasingly beyond that as the PLA seeks to become a “world-class” military. For techniques and technologies with military potential — whether in materials science or artificial intelligence — concerns about the threat of IP theft are heightened, and the stakes are higher when such advances could advantage the PLA relative to the U.S. military.

In recent years, the U.S. government has introduced several new policies to stop the transfer of sensitive technology, including the Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act and the “China Initiative” at the Department of Justice. Has this helped curb China’s economic espionage? 

Yes, and no. Such policies are indeed warranted to increase authority for review and enhance accountability in incidents of illegality. The DoJ’s initiative, for example, recently brought a case against a PLA officer who had concealed her military affiliation to pursue research at Boston University. 

So far, these policies appear to have been more punitive than proactive for the most part, and attempts to deter these sorts of activities will be inherently difficult. However, as China has become capable of increasingly indigenous innovation, the importance of IP theft as a mechanism for technological development has lessened, and these efforts have evolved to be more targeted to compensate for specific bottlenecks and weaknesses.

The sweeping investigations that appear to be underway, reportedly involving over 1,000 cases across multiple sectors, have raised concerns about the risks of any tendency towards generalized suspicion. Any failure by the U.S. government to be careful or balanced in efforts to counter tech transfer can play into Beijing’s narrative and propaganda that U.S. concerns about economic espionage are groundless and purely a matter of prejudice or protectionism. 

Which brings us to many of the people who are often caught in the middle of the U.S.-China technology conflict, such as researchers and students. How do these policies affect them? You recently helped organize a pledge by foreign policy and national security professionals to take action against anti-Asian racism. How can the U.S. investigate illegal activity without veering into racial profiling? 

As China tends to be seen as a strategic competitor, even potential adversary, in U.S. policy circles, U.S.-China scientific engagement and research collaborations that used to be considered acceptable, and even encouraged, have started to be regarded as potentially problematic. To some degree, the course correction of recent policy changes is warranted to counter illegal behavior and problematic practices that had been pervasive for decades. But the changing standards have also resulted in understandable confusion, and serious concerns have been raised about the risks of racial profiling. 

There have been some awful mistakes, for example, where the FBI has wrongfully accused, and DOJ wrongfully charged, Chinese-Americans scientists and researchers. In those cases, U.S. law enforcement turned out to be incorrect about the science or the circumstances. Any occurence of bias or prejudice in targeting clearly contravenes U.S. laws and principles. These countermeasures must not come at the expense of privacy rights, civil liberties, and academic freedom. 

I’d argue for an external review or independent assessment of those incidents. U.S. counterintelligence and law enforcement institutions should be subject to scrutiny in order to evaluate whether there are institutionalized prejudices or shortcomings that contributed to such wrongful charges. The onus must be on the U.S. government to introduce safeguards to prevent the recurrence of undue profiling, which undermines civil rights and national security. 

America has a long and awful history of systemic prejudices and injustices. And along with the pandemic has come a surge of blame, hatred, and xenophobia that has proven similarly virulent. The recurrence of racist rhetoric, including by politicians and officials in the Trump administration — and even the president himself — can have real-world consequences by exacerbating the incidence of anti-Asian racism. 

It is terribly worrisome to see such complex issues and policy debates playing out in a political environment in which racism and xenophobia are being weaponized for partisan purposes. Under these conditions, those of us who have any role or voice in debates have an obligation to consider the potential unintended consequences of our work and words on these issues. Personally, I struggle with these concerns everyday.  

I believe that all of us in the foreign policy and national security have an obligation to take action against such prejudice, while working to stand in solidarity with Asian American communities. Ultimately, diversity and inclusion are among our greatest strengths — and Americans must never forget that.

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