A Fresh Start: Safeguarding People, Rights, And Research Amid US-China Competition

>> Welcome, everyone. I am Larry Diamond. I'm a senior fellow here at the Hoover Institution, and it is really a great pleasure to welcome all of you who are attending this event, which is co sponsored by the Hoover Institution, the Asian American Scholar Forum, and the committee of 100.

Our title is a fresh start safeguarding people rights and research amid us China competition just to recapitulate what we said in the announcement, I think we're all aware that for some time now, competition between China and the United States has been intensifying. And among the many consequences of this is that it has put American colleges and universities, and specifically researchers, scientists, and scholars of Asian heritage under a kind of microscope.

And against a backdrop of increasing anti-Asian hate, there has been rising concern that recent efforts to protect US technology and research have infringed on civil rights and civil liberties, resulting in considerable pain and also mistrust. So today we want to consider, first of all, what went wrong. And second of all, we want to explore how to work together to advance international collaboration and uphold civil rights and civil liberties, while at the same time safeguarding America's leadership in research, science and technology.

We have an extraordinary panel to help us do that. Our first speaker, we have the great honor of welcoming Governor Gary Locke, who is chair of the Committee of 100, which is a nonprofit leadership organization of prominent Chinese Americans that was formed in 1990. The organization's dual mission is to promote the full participation of all Chinese Americans in American society and to advance constructive dialogue and relationships between the peoples and leaders of the United States and greater China.

In his distinguished career, I think you all know, he has served for two terms as governor of the great state of Washington, secretary of Commerce of the United States, and then our ambassador to China from 2011 to 2014. He will be followed by Gisela Perez Kusakawa, who is the founding executive director of the Asian American Scholar Forum, an organization that works- welcome to the world of allergies- an organization that works to protect the rights of Asian Americans and immigrants and to promote academic belonging, openness, freedom, and equality.

She has played a leading role in policy advocacy on anti-profiling, national security, and civil rights, including spearheading coalition work to end the Department of Justice's China initiative. A civil rights attorney, she serves on multiple nonprofit boards. Ms. Kusakawa is admitted to practice law at the District of Columbia and the Third Circuit Court of Appeals.

She lives in Washington, DC, and has received her JD from the George Washington University Law School. Our third speaker will be my colleague here at the Hoover Institution in our program on China's Global Sharp Power and historian of modern China, Glenn Tiffert. Glenn co-chairs the Hoover Project on China's global sharp power and works closely with both government and civil society partners to document and build resilience in the face of authoritarian interference with democratic institutions.

Most recently, he co authored a report on this issue called eyes wide open ethical risks in research collaboration with China. So with that, I think we can begin. Over to you, Governor Locke.

>> Gary Locke: Well, thank you very much, Larry. It's really a pleasure to be on this panel with such esteemed colleagues and to be here at Stanford University, just a great, great institution.

I love being on campus, and of course, the weather is pretty nice, too. And it's great to see a dear friend, Steve Chu, in the audience as well, who served as us secretary of energy at the same time that I was at the Commerce department. Clearly, we have big issues between the United States and China.

It is a major economic rival along with geopolitical issues as well, and we have to be very mindful of that. China is trying to be predominant in so many aspects of technology and industry and economics and poses great competition to our companies, to our leadership in the world, and to freedom and democracy, quite frankly, and our influence around the world.

So the issues and the challenges that we face with China cannot be overstated, cannot be simplified. At the same time, we need to understand that our dispute and contention with Beijing is with the government of China and not the people of China, and certainly not Chinese Americans. Chinese Americans who have given their blood, sweat and tears to the formation of this country, who have served in our armed conflicts, who have led and created many of the innovations and medical breakthroughs and advancements that we all take for granted in our daily lives.

And certainly, those of you here at Stanford know of the contributions and the value of Chinese American researchers and professors and scientists, as well as the contributions of international students, so many of whom are from China. It is that diversity of thought, of ideas and perspectives that has really enabled, I really think, that makes America truly great.

It is that diversity of history, of culture, of language and perspectives. So the challenge is, how do we address the issues of national security and maintaining our economic prowess and leadership in the world in terms of technology and standards, while especially in the face of competition and rivalry from China, but at the same time protecting the civil rights and civil liberties of Chinese Americans?

And I think that what has happened over the last several years as the geopolitical rivalry and the concerns in the Congress and national security agencies have come to greater attention that there's greater vilification and stigmatization, and almost a blanketing of negative thoughts and perceptions toward Asian Americans, but specifically Chinese Americans.

We're seeing laws proposed in states such as Texas and Florida that would say people of Chinese ancestry, unless you are a US citizen, may not own land. For housing or for your own grocery store or business? I mean, that is really hearkening back to the alien land laws, which really targeted people of Asian descent, Japanese Americans and Chinese Americans.

And then, of course, the China initiative, which was launched by President Trump. But actually we're going back, even to President Clinton's days under the Economic Espionage Act, in which our federal agencies were targeting economic espionage. But most of those cases focused on people of Asian descent, primarily Chinese Americans.

And yet the results of those yielded almost very, very few cases of espionage orchestrated by China. And we have cases replete of misconduct by federal investigatory agencies, the FBI, in which people were wrongfully charged professors, department chairs, just in the last few years, whose reputations have been utterly destroyed, utterly destroyed, because of sloppy investigations and actual misconduct by government officials.

So, there's been a chilling effect among researchers of Chinese dissent at our colleges, universities, and private industry. And I think that we have a huge challenge ahead of us in terms of trying to protect us interests, making sure that affiliations and memberships by professors and researchers are fully documented.

But we cannot tar all Chinese Americans with such a broad brush. And so I think that while our interests and our objectives are sound, our strategy, our methods of trying to protect us interests have gone far astray. And so those would just be my opening comments. Well, that's a very clear and compelling thesis to put on the table, as you conclude, to start us off.

 

>> Larry Diamond: So, Gisela, would you like to continue now?

>> Gisela Perez Kusakawa: Yeah, thank you so much, Larry and to the Hoover team, Francis and many others working in the back. It's such a pleasure to be here, to start this dialogue, to see many of the ASF members here. I will just start off that the Asian American Scholar forum has really filled a gap within the civil rights space.

I'm here to provide more of that civil rights perspective in our country when it comes to the human rights and civil rights concerns of Asian Americans. I came here from one of the leading most prominent Asian American civil rights organizations, Asian Americans advancing justice AJC. ASF was recently voted in as a member of the National Council of Asian Pacific Americans, which is one of the oldest and most prominent, which includes some of the oldest and most prominent Asian American civil rights organization.

The Asian American civil rights community is deeply invested in ensuring that Asian American scholars are no longer silent, that they have a voice and a seat at the table in their country, especially as they have been some of the most directly impacted by these poorly devised policies in our country.

Under the current environment, in the US China tensions that my colleagues here will speak on. I will add that we are a domestic civil rights organization, and so that does limit the scope of our work. But we are very concerned about the impact on the Asian American community as a whole, and particularly those of Chinese descent.

We don't think that Asian Americans and Chinese Americans and immigrants should continue to be collateral damage as we try to fix our policies in our country in addressing US China relationships. I also want to add that we are at a point in our country where this is not something that should be a surprise to everyone.

There has been a history for Asian Americans to continue to be scapegoated whenever the United States has rising tensions with a foreign Asian country. We had learned this, from the incarceration of Japanese Americans, 120,000 residents of Japanese ancestry, both citizens and children alike, were rounded up by their own government under the rationale that somehow, because of their ancestry, they were more prone to committing acts of espionage.

This is really critical because as we are working in the current relationship, the US continues to have different relationships with Asian countries. We have to remain critical of how we respond to it. Asian American civil rights issues have always been intrinsically intertwined with how the US relationships have been going on with other countries.

And a huge part of this, is this perception in our country that we have not been able to get rid of, that somehow Asian Americans are not fully like other Americans, that somehow we are perpetual foreigners, that our loyalty is something that is always at question, and this is something that is deeply problematic.

This is an experience that Asian Americans are having right now, where they're facing heightened scrutiny from their own government, but understand that this also comes at a time where there's rising anti Asian hate and violence. So at the same time that many of these professors, academics, and even students as well, may walk down the street and find themselves subjected to violence by individuals, they may also find themselves under scrutiny by places of employment, by academic institutions and federal government.

This is really important to understand because I've had a professor mention that he was walking down the street and someone was yelling at him, and then at the same time, he's worried about just filling out a regular disclosure form at his university. It is so important that we understand the human experiences, that arise from how our policies come about.

I want to follow up with what Governor Gary Locke had mentioned, on this chilling effect. So Asian American Scholar Forum released a report in September last year entitled, caught in the Crossfire Fears of Chinese American Scientists. And in that report was our national survey of professors of Chinese descent in the United States, with over 1300 people responding.

89% of the respondents, said that they would like to contribute to US leadership in science and technology, but 72% feel unsafe in the United States, 61% feel pressure to leave the United States, and most of them are junior professors, the next generation of our teachers in our country.

And 42% are fearful of conducting research. And an alarming 45% intend to avoid federal grant applications, especially senior faculty, due to fear. And so our concern today is how can we address this chilling effect? How can we come together to ensure that the Asian American community feels safe and welcome in the country that they call home?

In our efforts to safeguard our country, we should not be shooting ourselves in the foot and diminish the light that has attracted some of the best and most talented minds around the world to our country. And I wanna add that, of course, as a civil rights attorney, I'm always going to view these issues not only in the contributions that Asian American scholars are providing for our country.

Yes, that's very important, their achievements, their accomplishments. But I'm also looking at this through the lens of their humanity as people. Even before I was an attorney, I had worked with refugees and asylum seekers who had fled war, who had fled dictatorships, authoritarian governments, and heard about their experiences.

So I'm deeply aware of how governments abroad could hurt and impact individual people. And I firmly believe, as I spoke to so many of them who voted with their feet, as my colleague Professor Yasheng Huang, mentioned, that coming to the United States is a very special experience for many immigrants.

This is a place that is a safe haven. This is a place where they have dreams of accomplishing a life that is full of freedom and human dignity. And our work at Asian American Scholar Forum as a domestic civil rights organization is to make sure that our country lives up to our American values, and that we ensure that we bring ourselves closer to having that American dream.

It is not perfect. It is a work in progress. And certainly, some of our past work, like working together to end the China initiative, is a good step forward. But together, if we focus on cooperation and our shared interests, I genuinely believe that we can come towards a solution that will ensure Asian Americans are living their life in the United States with dignity and without fear.

 

>> Larry Diamond: Great, thank you so much. Everybody's been so disciplined in their allocation of the time. Usually, I have to start signaling people.

>> So, Glenn, you better be equally disciplined.

>> Glenn Tiffert: All right, well, thank you, Larry. It's a great honor to follow Governor Locke and Gizella in their comments, and I just really wanna echo much of what they've said.

But I'd also like to back up a little bit and widen the frame, because I think we should focus also on how our institutions have really mishandled the problem set that we confront today, and served poorly the people who are caught in the middle. I understand this story really in three parts.

Part one begins in the 2008 financial crisis, which plunged American higher education into years of austerity. State governments, in particular, slashed funding for hiring and research, and everyone was asked to do more with less. This accelerated a transition within universities from paying faculty on what had been 12-month calendar year schedules to 9-month academic year schedules, the so-called summer nights.

That incentivized them to pursue external funding and research support for their summer months. On top of this, competition for scarce resources intensified the imperatives to publish or perish. And in so doing these things, we inadvertently opened a door that the Chinese government walked through. At that particular moment, the Chinese government was flooding the zone with money, eager to catapult its own academic system, weigh up the league tables, and jumpstart the industries of tomorrow in China.

It undertook a massive modernization and expansion of its higher education sphere, including talent programs that were meant to lure researchers in priority disciplines to China for full-time or part-time appointments. To US-based faculty, this looked like a no-brainer. You got extra income, you got enhanced research productivity subsidized by the Chinese government.

If you were originally from China, you got free trips to visit family, friends to maintain professional networks, and the satisfaction that you were giving something back to the country of your birth. If your skills match China's developmental priorities well, government funding and research support were offered that exceeded anything that US universities could match.

And they would even sweeten the deal by offering startup capital for you to commercialize your research and potentially get rich. For US universities, the deal was even better. Joint programs, buildings, and even entire branch campuses, paid for mostly by the Chinese government to the tunes of hundreds of millions of dollars, were created.

For the most part, this was perfectly legal, as long as it was properly documented and disclosed to US funding agencies and regulators. But the rules were complicated enough that it was possible to make good faith mistakes. Compliance and enforcement were extraordinarily lax. US researchers and institutions tended to approach all of this through a transactional lens, sort of looking through a straw, whereas China was thinking much more strategically.

How do we create domestic industries and innovation chains from scratch and shift the center of gravity and critical technologies and industries to China? And their successes are all around. Photovoltaics, batteries, 5G, pharmaceuticals, supercomputing, hypersonics, computer vision, and the list grows every year. The money incentivized the transfer of skills and technology with few questions asked, which invited varying degrees of ambition, opportunism, greed, dishonesty, and theft in some cases.

Some people ran shadow labs in China, which inflated their income and research output and made them look like academic superstars here in the US. They were simply responding to incentives that we had created. And this went on for years and no one was really paying attention. The Chinese government and US institutions and researchers in both countries were all getting something out of it.

Part two of the story really is a failure of internal governance. Since 1985, it has been US policy that fundamental research is basically unrestricted by the government, which means that the burden of doing the right thing falls on the shoulders of US researchers and their host institutions. That's the flip side of the academic freedom and institutional autonomy that they enjoy.

But the academic community did not acquit itself well in this respect. Compliance failures, abuses, and risks accumulated across the system. Many of the China initiative cases could have been prevented if universities had simply detected the problem early and remedied them in-house. But they didn't. It wasn't a priority.

Everyone was getting something that they wanted. And so this changed when governments suddenly became seized with how poorly academic engagements with China were being managed. And how the Chinese government was asymmetrically exploiting the openness of our research enterprise to exfiltrate technology, data, and advance values and interests that were in conflict with our own.

Most seriously, hundreds of collaborations were taking place with Chinese researchers who worked or were associated with China's defense, industrial, and military base, and that advanced China's basic capabilities in areas like anti-submarine warfare, ballistic missiles, jet engines, and state surveillance. Universities had no idea that this was happening within their walls, even when a little due diligence would have exposed it.

A moral panic ensued, and government overcorrected. It did not guard against the harm that could come from intervening before it had studied the problem adequately and devised appropriate remedies. It hastily reached for the lever of law enforcement. Even when prosecutions and investigations Were often not the right tools for the job, because even though most of this activity was alarming, it was perfectly legal because of the unrestricted nature of fundamental research.

Suddenly under pressure, universities also overcorrected. Government gets most of the blame here for driving scholars from their jobs, but that's not quite right. In many cases, it was the universities that did it, going above and beyond the administrative sanctions that were imposed by funding agencies. And I read this as part of the larger issue with institutional due process and labor relations that manifests in the handling of a lot of controversies within academia.

Again, much of this was unnecessary, preventable, and destructive. The scary thing is I'm not sure that we've got a better handle on the problem than we did five years ago. And the mistrust runs as deep as ever. Lots of fine-sounding policies have been adopted, but what is missing is the data, the evidence, the domain knowledge, and the community collaboration.

To translate those policies into effective action and to assess their impact and fitness for purpose. We're still, in many ways, flying blind, and that's dangerous. The same is true of many of the countries that we work with. We have to do better, and that's why we organized this event, to each contribute what we do in our own corners of this problem, set towards a more balanced and just solution.

US China relations are unlikely to get much better in the near term, and they could get much worse. So the stakes are extremely high for us to get this right. Thank you. Great, thank you all, again, for your discipline and for being so lucid and concise. Maybe we can probe these issues in a little bit greater depth for a while, and then we'll come to our audience both in person and online.

So it seems we're wrestling here with multiple problems and how they articulate with one another. We've got a problem of racial prejudice, racism, whatever you wanna call it. It's got a long history in the United States, it's got a history here at Stanford University. Let's remind ourselves that the wealth that eventually came into this great university was partly built on the indentured labor of Chinese workers on the Union Pacific Railroad.

So it goes way back. We have a specific problem of prejudice against Chinese Americans and Asian Americans, which has gotten worse in the face of. In the context of rising us China competition. But we also have the problem of general racial insensitivity and prejudice as America increasingly becomes a multiracial society, and elements of american society have difficulty accepting that we have a problem of research security.

It's a question about how big a problem is it? What are the multiple sources of the problem? And, you know, what are the range of actors, and how do we monitor that? I do wanna say that let's keep in mind, since the famous spy for the Soviet Union, Robert Hansen, just passed away yesterday, that this person who was giving away, indeed, selling all these precious American secrets to the Soviet Union was not a Russian.

He was an American, right? And so people who are violating laws about research security or norms in ways that merit prosecution, they could be of any ethnicity, potentially. So let's begin with the university environment and the research security challenge there in a little bit greater depth. And then I'd like to come also to the broader societal challenge that we face here.

So you probably have some more specific things you wanna recommend, Glenn, that universities could do. Maybe you could offer a few specific bullet points. And then I'd like to ask our other two panelists to react to those and reflect on what are the risks and dangers of going down that road.

And how do we reconcile these two imperatives? The one imperative of elevating and protecting the equal treatment of Gisela's word is belonging and dignity of vulnerable minorities, and the imperative of protecting our research security. There's got to be some way of simultaneously valuing both of these objectives. So you want to lay some bullet points on the table?

Absolutely, thank you, Larry. I think part of the solution lies in exactly what we're doing here. We're bringing stakeholders from multiple corners of this problem set together. And the goal here is that we each contribute our perspectives to converge on a more just solution in the middle. I think the problem has been, up to this point that the various stakeholders have not been in conversation with each other and have been playing to their bases and pursuing their own small corners of the problem.

And so you get non-comprehensive solutions, you get solutions that have tremendous blind spots, solutions that lend themselves, I think, to the odious history of discrimination and racism that we have in the United States. Even if it's only implicit and not explicit, there needs to be all stakeholders at the table just as a starting point.

Now, beyond that, as I said just a moment ago, we are really flying blind here. We still are reaching for hasty policies in this area without good data, without good analysis, without a good understanding of exactly where the risk is and what the best scope solutions to try to deal with that.

So you wanna say a specific word about what kind of data you wanna collect? Right, so there are multiple ways in which you can collect data. For example, there are large scale data science bibliometric analyses of collaborations, and this is done by various scholars who work in this area.

Who identify, and some of our work here at the Hoover institution has done this, where you can discover that, for example, collaborators from particular institutions misrepresent who they are. And that they will have affiliations that are much more complex than the sanitized affiliations that they present to American universities.

This is all knowable information if you just do the basic research on it. And so the question really is, whose responsibility is it to do that basic research? Universities have often said, for example, State department gave this person a visa, so I presume that they're safe to work with.

The State Department will turn around and say, well, it's not our job to police what happens on your campus. It's your responsibility to know what's happening within your walls. And so up to this point, really, there have been tremendous gaps between the various players in this space. That we need to actually close in order to devise effective policy.

What's lacking is also domain knowledge. We should expect physicists, chemists, computer scientists, to do their physics, chemistry and computer science, not to be experts in Iran's nuclear program or the technology acquisition policies of the CCP. Instead, we need domain experts who actually study this full time and can bring that to the table as part of the conversation.

That's not happening, either, right now. So we need to move into a space where we can bring the various people with their knowledge, with their understanding, and also with a sense of what the stakes are in scientific collaboration and what it means to actually do science to the table.

That's really the key thing here. We're starting to do that, and we need to do it globally and internationally, too, with our partners.

>> Larry Diamond: Okay, now, let me ask Governor Locke, who, I think I indicated, is not only a former governor and secretary of commerce and ambassador to China, but is now a college president.

Do you have any thoughts or reactions to this? Do you see any potential slippery slope in this kind of first cut at a policy initiative, or what are your thoughts? And then we'll come to Gizella.

>> Gary Locke: Well, I'm interim president of a community technical college. We also offer four year degrees, especially in computer science and cybersecurity and some of the sophisticated technology fields.

But we don't engage in government research and receive government research grants. But clearly, I think following up on what Glenn was saying, there needs to be clearer standards, particularly by the federal government. Because it's violation of these federal laws and regulations that are putting Asian-Americans, and specifically Chinese-American scientists and researchers and professors in the crosshairs.

The federal government needs to get its act together and perhaps have consistent rules and regulations, because someone is applying for a grant under NIH and fills out various disclosure forms, but the disclosure forms and requirements, let's say, by the NSF, might be completely different. And then you suddenly find yourself trapped.

So there needs to be greater consistency and perhaps uniformity among the federal funding agencies, number one, and I think efforts are underway in that regard. Number two, it's really incumbent upon the universities to really set the parameters and the guidelines and the restrictions, and do the enforcement and monitoring.

The federal government can't do that, because each of the institutions have their own particular research and their own intellectual property that they're trying to protect. They also have a vested interest because so much of the innovations and discoveries and research is done by these scientists and researchers. But if there's a chilling effect, if five times there's a study that came out from the University of Arizona surveying some almost 2000 scientists across the country.

And 93% of non-Chinese descent scientists believe that scientists of Chinese descent do make important contributions to the research and the teaching programs within America. But five times as many Chinese-American or Chinese scientists and professors, or five times as many professors and researchers of Chinese descent feel they are being racially profiled.

And twice as many scientists and researchers of Chinese descent believe it's too difficult to obtain funding for research projects in the United States. So if the heads of your laboratories and research groups at Stanford University are afraid to even apply for grants, what does that do in terms of the prestige and the output of research and innovation and development at Stanford University if your top people of Asian descent don't even want to apply for grants?

I mean, what is that doing to the pipeline of innovation and discovery coming out of Stanford University? So I think that the government needs to get its act together, be more clear, and there needs to be more aggressive, I think, enforcement, education and monitoring within the universities.

>> Larry Diamond: Gisela.

 

>> Gisela Perez Kusakawa: Yes, I wanted to address some of the points that Glenn and Governor Locke had mentioned. I think, first, it's so important to understand the changing norms that have been happening within the academic environment and the escalation that we had seen with the Department of Justice's China initiative.

One of the main concerns within the legal professional community on the China initiative was really how it criminalized what had been so many typical academic activities and norms. We're not commenting specifically on whether all of these past norms should be exactly as they were, but they had changed, and people are now being charged under criminal felonies by the Department of Justice.

That was part of the reason that we had needed that to de-escalate. And it was entirely appropriate that the Department of Justice came to the conclusion that this was not the right approach, and they had added additional thresholds to how they would conduct criminal investigations moving forward. So that included, whether there's even a nexus to national security, what's the materiality of this sort of case to the Department of Justice?

These are really important to understand how far we had gone. We were putting people into prison for perhaps even making a mistake on a disclosure form. I think it's also important to understand that this is something that we're not going to get right, right away. And so, while we are moving in the right direction, we need to start thinking, what are the due processes in place to protect Asian-Americans?

If we all agree and are under the same consensus, like Larry mentioned, that there is racial bias, that this exists in our country and it permeates us both in society and within our federal government. As Congress makes these laws, whether you agree with them or not, and they get the federal agencies now have to create policies and they need to implement them, and then now universities need to implement them.

Along the way, where are these checks and balances? Where are these protections for the communities that address how these different laws and policies are going to be implemented in our country? These are the details that are so important for us all to be engaged in, in understanding. It's not just the federal government, it's so many different layers within our country.

And it can't be that the mistakes and problems along the way, we just need to see how it turns out. Are more Chinese-Americans suddenly decreasing in numbers at our universities? We can't just look, well, this is a facially neutral law, or this is a facially neutral policy. What is the result?

When you look around your universities, when you are talking with your peers Are they scared to lead that federal grant proposal? Are they scared to be at the forefront? Do, have they now become more in the background? Are you having more difficulties getting international students? You really need to ask these difficult questions.

This is part of our process in ensuring that there are ways that we are actually protecting communities that are vulnerable. I also want to add that there is also a shift, right? There is a change between the national security community and universities and the federal government and how we're tackling fundamental research.

This is something that universities should be engaged in the discussion. Do they even agree with the direction that many of our legislation's going towards? That needs to be something that everyone is involved in. We cannot just let these changes happen. If you are an academic, if you are a scientist, you're an academic institution not having your voice in the room.

You're eventually going to experience it when it's funneled down. And now you have to implement these policies coming from the federal agencies. We also need to recognize the imbalance of power between the federal grant agencies, the universities, and the faculty members. This is a really important part for us to recognize throughout this process.

It is not comfortable as a faculty member to complain about some of these changes. How can we make this a more comfortable experience? What are the pathways for a faculty member to file a complaint when there is a problem, when they are experiencing racial bias? There needs to be pathways and avenues to this.

Otherwise, we won't truly know if something is working. I also want to share that it's not just about this environment of deterrence, right. We need to think about the positive efforts, and so many of my colleagues, ASF, share this with me time and time again. But how can we win the talent competition?

How can we ensure that the United States remains attractive, that we are still attracting the best talents around the world? It can't be just that we're trying to use tactics to make people scared of doing certain activities. It also needs to be that we are creating an environment that makes people want to contribute their talents in the United States.

And so there are so many pathways and so many ways that we still need to work together. Different expertise. But absolutely, as we make these steps moving forward, we cannot make the same mistake we did in the past, which is not to talk directly with the communities that will be most impacted.

If you're wondering, what impact will this policy have, just speak directly with the Asian American scholar community, speak with the professors, get their insights. And you will have more foresight in what the future impact of these policies and laws are going to be.

>> Larry Diamond: I want to come to China in a minute.

But you raised the issue of how to attract the best talent. Our late and revered colleague whose name will be given to dedicate the new building that we're building there here at the Hoover institution. Our former secretary of State George Shultz frequently offered an answer to that in a very specific form, and it was basically this.

I heard him say it many times, bring the best talent from around the world to our universities and STEM subjects as well as others. Fortunately, universities are one of the sectors we still have a competitive edge in. And then when they graduate, particularly with a graduate degree, staple a green card to their diploma, that's exactly the language he used.

So do you think that's feasible? Is that the way we should go, governor?

>> Gary Locke: I very much believe in what secretary of State George Shultz said, and that was also reiterated by former defense secretary Bob Gates that Steve and I served with during the Obama administration. He was also former CIA director under the Bush administration, Bush one, and then was later president of Texas A&M.

 

>> Larry Diamond: And I think now another great resident of the great state of Washington.

>> Gary Locke: That's right. He lives up in the rural parts of the state of Washington, though I think he's traveling around the world and doing a lot of speaking and consulting work. But our stature and our preeminence in the world in terms of technology and innovation is.

Because we have always brought and welcomed incredible talent, people with energy, drive, ambition and dreams. We have always been that beacon of freedom, hope, and opportunity. And that's why if we bring, and of course, American colleges, universities are preeminent in the world. That's why we have more international students coming to american colleges and universities than any other country in the world.

And it's because of our, what we emphasize, which is critical thinking and freedom of discovery and thought that has led to. And so many of the graduates of Stanford University and our colleges and universities here in the California area. Have gone on to create the incredible industries that we take for granted here in Silicon Valley, many of them founded by people of chinese ancestry.

So I very much believe that we should make it much easier for the very best, wherever they come from, who then get a graduate degree, especially a PhD, should be enabled, allowed to stay. Now, obviously, we have to make sure that there are protections, but that should be our fundamental premise.

We don't want to educate people here and then send them back to their native countries where they can then create industries and technologies. That compete against the United States on our own, our own people and our own workers and our own companies. We should welcome that talent and basically harvest it or reap the benefits of that for even selfish economic reasons, of course, comes challenges and ensure that our intellectual property is protected.

Whether those individuals are working for private industry, a laboratory, defense contractors, national laboratories, and certainly colleges and universities. But we should not be just so afraid of foreign students that we're gonna shoot ourselves in the foot.

>> Gisela Perez Kusakawa: I absolutely agree. I think this is one of the areas where we all agree.

There is no disagreement that our country benefits from not only having international students, but having an improved immigration system that allows them to stay and have pathways the citizenship. Not only do we want the students to stay here, we want them to go on and become our academic leaders.

We want them to have families here, have generations of contributions to our country. What people often forget is the Asian American community is a predominantly immigrant community. When we're talking about future asian american citizens, we are largely immigrants. I am an immigrant. I was born abroad. And so it's so important to see this as a pipeline also for asian american citizens in our country.

 

>> Larry Diamond: Glen, I'll ask you the same question. But with an additional twist in some of the reports that have come out about PRC kind of technology transfer strategies or capture strategies, they have identified where some of the applicants are coming from, for example, from academies and universities that are connected to the military establishment in China, the so called seven sons of national defense.

So that led people to ask, well, is there some way of our more effectively vetting people, not only from China but everywhere, before they come to study, potentially in technical fields that could have national security implications? And then once they come, you assume they've been given a visa.

We've not found any reason to have concern about them, and they should be just treated like every other graduate student in the United States of America. So consider both dimensions of that, the process of evaluating everybody around the world for visas, and then immigration reform.

>> Glenn Tiffert: So this is a really challenging problem, because if you take the classic graduate student or postdoc aged individual, this is someone who's in their mid-twenties.

They don't have much of a background that has generated any activity of concern, necessarily. And the visa officers who are reviewing their files have very limited information in front of them. So it's extremely challenging for them to identify and discriminate or discern who might be of higher risk and who is of lower risk, apart from the institution that they hail from.

And so for that age group, it's particularly difficult for visiting scholars. It's easier because visiting scholars are older, they have a more established publication record, they have institutional affiliations that you can track and look into more deeply. But the larger problem is one of volume. We have 270,000 students just from China and over 100,000 from India and tens of thousands from other countries as well.

And so there is yet no process to do the kind of screening that you describe. Instead, apart from a few individuals who hail from a few institutions, and it's the institution that's the trigger. It's generally not being done. We're much better at screening out terrorists, and that's a much, of course, much more clear and present danger, and as we should be focusing attention on that.

And so the concern then, really is, you know, what happens when people are in the United States? To what extent are we simply aware of what they're doing? To what extent do we make ourselves more welcoming so that they choose to stay in the United States? I think, as to touch on what Gazella and Governor Locke said, China is in it to win it.

And I think our strategy here cannot rely on China to fail or on the US to throw obstacles in China's path, we win the competition by being better versions of ourselves, by being more welcoming environment, by encouraging people to stay, by creating pathways for them to contribute. We've not been doing that well enough.

We've not been investing in our higher education system while it is still the envy of the world. Our per capita research productivity is less than Germany, the UK's, and even China's now. And we're simply doing, we're resting on our laurels. And so it's about reinvesting in America. I'm deeply troubled, for example, by the debt agreement that was signed in the Congress, that did not authorize, did not appropriate money that was authorized for basic research in the Chips act, simply that was sacrificed just as a matter of inflation.

Government support for basic research will shrink next year. It's impossible for us to compete on those terms. And so I think it's critical for us to do that. There is so much, there is no nation that is more tightly integrated into the american research enterprise than China. And that's a function of 40 years of openness towards China.

It's a function of everything that China has become. Incredible talent, world class facilities, generous funding, just on the merits. Chinese researchers are people you would want to work with. There's a minority of them that we have certain concerns about, and we need to develop tools in order to figure out who that is and adopt appropriate safeguards.

But there's every reason for us to continue to collaborate, just to do it in a safer, wiser way. 13.4% of all science and engineering doctorates last year were granted to students from the PRC. This is a critical contribution to the United States. Year after year, 80% of doctoral students from China indicate a preference, desire to stay in the United States.

Let's make it easier for them. You know, we understand what needs to happen. Immigration reform is part of it. Investing in our basic research is part of it. It should be easy to do. And yet our strategies have mostly been about restricting rather than enabling.

>> Larry Diamond: So let me just note that another thing that Congress took away in the final negotiations over that same CHIPS act was a provision that our own Congresswoman from San Jose, Zoe Lofgren, had written into the House version of the CHIPS Act.

That essentially would have stapled the green card to the diploma of all STEM graduate students, masters and PhDs. So it was in one version at one time. One has to believe it could pass at some point. So I'm about to go to our audience, but before I do, I do want to ask a question about China.

And Governor Locke, for this purpose, I will call you Ambassador Locke, and I have a hunch that if you were in the room right now and maybe you have been in the room with our current ambassador to the People's Republic of China, Nick Burns, he would look a little enviously on the kind of moment you were in, in China, which was maybe the end of the good old days under President Hu Jintao, before Xi Jinping became president of the PRC.

And the competition we've been speaking about, and frankly, the tension which we've seen in the last few days in the Pacific area, maritime area has grown worse. So how do you think we should think about US-China competition today, and how worried are you? How worried should we be about the collision that China and the United States seem to be on?

 

>> Gary Locke: Well, I'm very concerned that US China tensions are, are at a low point and I think can only get worse. I don't see any prospect for significant improvement over the next several years, which is why the fallout. On Asian Americans, and especially Chinese Americans, is so critical.

The castigation, the vilification of anything and everything Chinese has, as Gisela indicated, resulted in violence against Asian Americans and especially Chinese Americans. Whether it's on the subways, in the streets of San Francisco, in Seattle's international district, Chinatown, and that's of concern. I mean, the FBI has reported and various law enforcement agencies have reported an increase magnitude of five times the number of hate crimes against Asian Americans.

And it's because we will, because of our black hair and characteristics, except when you get to be my age, we'll fight here. We're viewed as perpetual foreigners. Were viewed as perpetual foreigners. Even if we were born here and our dads served in World War II as part of the Normandy invasion, like my father, even if we're third generation American, we're still viewed as perpetual foreigners.

So I think the relationships are going to get worse. And I think that as we enter into a political season, Democrat or Republican, national level, presidential level, you know, you score points being tough on China. And we're seeing that with laws across in the Congress and across the states.

I do think that. Well, and especially with some of the policies of the United States in terms of. Well, for instance, there's the famous case of ZTE, which is a maker of 5G equipment, but also inexpensive cell phones. And during the Obama administration, ZTE was found in violating various us sanctions.

I always forget whether it's North Korea or Iran. And they were basically put on probation. During the Trump administration, it was felt that ZTE had not complied with the terms of probation. And so President Trump ordered that no US company could supply technology to ZTE. That would have bankrupted ZTE, because they use the Corning glass that's on our cell phones.

They get it from Corning for their very inexpensive cell phones that they sell worldwide. So now, the Trump administration did reverse that prohibition and modified the sanctions against ZTE. But what was the message to the chinese government and to the chinese companies? We need to double down on our made in China 2025.

We need to be independent of supply chains of critical supplies and technology from the United States. So we're seeing a decoupling of our economies. And of course, we in the United States are doing the same thing. We cannot be so reliant on whether chips for automobiles and household products coming from China.

We also can't be so dependent on China for protective gear, as we saw during the COVID epidemic. So we're gradually seeing this decoupling. Now, China wants to be world class in so many areas. If Germany or Ireland or Nigeria said that they want to be world class in certain areas, we would say, hey, more power to you.

We want to be world class in so many fields as well, and more power to the United States. The question is, how do we do it in a way that recognizes the legitimacy and the sovereignty of every country without theft of intellectual property, without jeopardizing our own national security?

And so we've got to figure out how to be very strategic and surgical as we address these particular issues without tarring and feathering whole ethnicities of people. I'm reminded that Norm Mineta told us this story. He was secretary of transportation under George W Bush. And right after September 11, President Bush had a cabinet meeting, and they were talking about how to respond to the terrorist attacks.

But President Bush said, whatever our concerns with the terrorists, we got to make sure that what we did to the Japanese during World War Two, we do not do to Muslim Americans in our country. And he pointed to Secretary Norm Mineta. We have fundamental differences with China, and the relationships will get perhaps even worse.

We cannot castigate and vilify all Chinese Americans in the process.

>> Larry Diamond: Anything you want to add to that, Giziela?

>> Gisela Perez Kusakawa: I want to add that it's critical to understand that this is not just isolated within the universities. If we forget the human element to this, that's when we make mistakes.

I remember this past Lunar New Year. My niece wished me a happy Lunar New Year. She's half Chinese, half Filipino. But my brother told me that they did not put any Lunar New Year decorations outside the house because my sister in law's mother told them, don't do that.

You guys could get in danger. This is a typical experience. We're not talking about this is a US born Chinese American girl's experience. That is going to be her experience growing up in the United States. And she wants to be a doctor. She wants to be like many of our members, to go into the field of science.

We need to ask ourselves, what is the next generation's experience going to be if we don't ensure we provide these checks and balances and protections for them? Recently, there was an Indiana student that had been stabbed seven times by a white passenger. And when officers asked her what was the reason, she said, because she thought that that student looked chinese and it was one less person to blow up our country.

This perception that Asian Americans are national security threats, the inability to differentiate us from a foreign government. Can you imagine if you and your children and your children's children are somehow held responsible for the activities of a foreign government and the burden and the sort of experience and trauma you're going to have?

This is something that we need to change in our country, and it's something that is going to be an ongoing problem for the asian american community because people cannot seem, based on how we look, make these, as Governor Locke mentioned, these sort of surgical assessments. And that has always been the biggest problem with a lot of our policies.

They are too broad. They lack specificity. They lack experts. They lack voices from impacted communities. And so that's why we really need people to be very. Critical every time these issues come. And we need people to speak up for these communities early on, even when it feels a little scary to speak up, because we need to remember that the national security pretext is always going to be used when it comes to asian american racial justice issues, because one of the main profiling concerns we have is that we're profiled as somehow enemies of the United States when we have contributed and been a part of american history for so long.

And it's just such an important part for everyone here in this room to be engaged and be a part of this wor. Whether you're coming in as a bystander, whether you have a peer or faculty member, this is impacting you all, cuz these bad policies that are racially biased, these are not just bad policies for Chinese American scholars.

It's bad policies for scholars as a community. And it might not be something that you fundamentally agree with even outside the racial issues.

>> Gary Locke: If I could just add to that, I think it's important for political leaders at all levels to send those positive statements about an affirmation that our differences with the policies of any foreign government are with the government of that country and not of the people of that country or people of that ethnicity.

I think as Asian Americans, we're so proud of our culture and our heritage, just as the Irish are very proud and the Polish and the Germans are very proud of their culture and their history. But we would not, you know, tribute to Irish Americans the war and the violence of the Irish Revolutionary army, or we would not ascribe to all German Americans the atrocities of Hitler during world War two.

And the list goes on and on. We've got to be able to differentiate that. But it also starts with leadership and courage from our political officials at all levels, from the president to the members of Congress, to our mayors and city council members and clearly our college presidents, because MIT was very courageous in standing up for one of their professors who was charged with under the China initiative, and they really protected him because, as Gisla indicated, it impacts and has a huge chilling effect on all faculty engaged in research if their researchers are called on the carpet for really technical violations.

 

>> Larry Diamond: Glenn?

>> Glenn Tiffert: Yeah, I couldn't agree more. There's one group within the asian american community, I think, that we've not raised in this discussion, which probably deserves extra attention and extra protection, and that is individuals from China who are here in the United States attempting to exercise the freedoms that they enjoy here in the United States, but are being surveilled and intimidated by representatives of the PRC government here that are operating covertly.

And this happens in our universities, it happens in our churches, it happens in our society. And this aspect of transnational repression, the fact that students express views in the classroom and their parents get a knock on the door by the chinese police 48 hours later in China is of tremendous concern because I think it does not allow people who come to the United States to enjoy the freedoms that we aspire to and that we try to live up to as full participants in our society.

And so we need to do better by them as well. And their concerns and interests should certainly be part of the conversation. To this day, I feel like the transnational repression is not getting the attention it deserves. And certainly the PRC government is not the only government that exercises transnational repression in the United States and in the west.

There are a variety of governments, but we have an obligation to everyone on our soil to extend the same rights and privileges and freedoms to them. And we could do better in that regard as well.

>> Larry Diamond: Okay, let's open it up. I think we have a roving microphone.

This gentleman in back there has a ready hand, so please stand up and ask your question.

>> Kirthan Kinney: Hi, my name is Kirthan Kinney. I'm a student in the MBA MPP program here. My question is, I guess fairly, is for any of the panelists to answer. So I particularly appreciated the point about children growing up because when I was growing up in the two thousands, a fairly common refrain from my mother was to make sure that other people didn't think I was a terrorist growing up.

And it seems very much that the wheel has turned, but just onto different groups and it will continue to turn. The term AAPI was originally created, as I understand the US, not because there's one community, but because there's many communities trying to act in solidarity with one another.

So I guess my broad question is how can we ensure that when we're talking about each individual group or whichever one is at the bottom of the wheel today and which one is particularly concerned with respect to hate crimes that all communities can in fact be engaged and rally?

Thank you.

>> Gisela Perez Kusakawa: I can take that one on. And I'm sorry that that is what you experienced growing up because that is what we're concerned with for each generation. And this is part of the reason that the Asian American Scholar Forum exists, because we know it's Chinese Americans today, but who is it going to be tomorrow?

Understanding that there's this cyclical scapegoating of our communities. I think what's really important, and you lifted up this identity on AAPI, I wanted to share that for the Asian American Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander community, it's such a broad identity, but part of the reason that we have it.

And I still remember this from my former mentor. She was the former Senator of Minnesota, Mee Moua, and she was the first Hmong senator there. And she had been asked by a student, how can we claim to represent all these communities? And it is hard. And her response was, if the Hmong community was to go with this alone, we would not have enough power to be able to make changes.

And so what you have found in the United States is minorities have come here from different experiences, oftentimes coming from countries that have their own conflicts. I mean, my name is Gisela Perez Cusakamos, I'm deeply aware of the different dynamics in Asia. But when we come here to the United States, we are experiencing a different reality.

We are working towards a future where our children, who are Asian Americans, are going to have what we hope will be a better life, but knowing that they're going to experience it as minorities, not in the same way that they would have in the country of origin. And so part of this work is working in solidarity, each other.

When we actually first criticized the Department of Justice China initiative, it was hard to get people to support this effort. It was hard to get civil rights organizations to support this effort. But do you know who were some of the first supporters who did not need a one hour call from me to explain why they should support our amicus brief for Dr. Franklin Tao?

They were the Japanese Americans. Civil rights community. They were muslim communities, arab south asian communities who had experienced this and knew that this was a pattern. So when they heard me say, we need you to support this Chinese American professor who we are worried is being scapegoated as a national security threat, they understood that it was complicated, but it sounded familiar.

And so this is why our work is not just for this one community. It's for all communities under this pan Asian American, south Asian branch umbrella, where we want to make sure that this does not continue to be a pattern that happens over and over again, where our communities are actually working in solidarity with each other.

 

>> Faisalaude: All right, thank you. My name is Faisalaude, and I'm a nuclear reactor engineer, but I'm not gonna ask a nuclear question. Wrapping up everything you guys mentioned, I heard on one side you spoke about immigrants, residents, and citizens. On other side, I heard you spoke about civic responsibilities and rights.

Now, putting these two together, do you like to get all your opinions on, do you think these civic rights and responsibilities should be equally applied on all these classes, or should they be specifically tiered for each one, especially since you mentioned a sort of a roadmap to eventually become, if I'm not mistaken, a us citizen?

 

>> Gary Locke: I'm not quite sure if I fully understand the question, but I think that different groups of individuals in the United States, whether they're a student on a visa to people who now have a permanent residency or citizenship here in the United States, that the examination and the safety measures and the protocols that we have really depend on what they're doing in the United States.

So, for instance, if you're applying to come to the United States as a student, as Glenn was saying, there needs to be scrutiny. And if you're a researcher, we have the information to know whether or not you're affiliated with, let's say, a nuclear program in China, and whether or not.

And then the question is, if you're coming over, what are you planning to do? If it's just to give a speech or a talk that may not be of a threat to national security? If you're gonna planning on working and affiliating with the university on a joint project, well, then you have to be concerned about theft of intellectual property, etcetera, etcetera, to a general student.

If they're here to study music and art, is that a national security threat, etcetera, etcetera? So I think we have to be much more discerning of why people are here and what they're doing, and then the same thing with those who have degrees that have been awarded by our colleges universities.

Where are they planning on working? We want to give them a green card, but where are they working? And certainly even a student that's here in, let's say, Stanford, in the STEM field, this would apply to, for instance, all foreign students. Are they having access to very classified information or very sensitive technology and research that's occurring in the lab?

That should be a protocol for all colleges and universities, not just colleges that have students coming from China. And then when we're looking at prosecutions under the China initiative or the Economic Espionage Act, we need to make sure that we have solid protocols on how investigations are done.

And that we're really focused on economic espionage as opposed to reporting requirements. And there needs to be thorough investigations. What's really been troubling with some of the investigations have been that the so called sensitive information was not at all sensitive, but freely available over the Internet. Or where someone was accused of stealing the intellectual property of another person when they questioned the owner of that person after the charges had been filed, after the person had been arrested, taken away at gunpoint, and handcuffed and publicly charged, they then asked the so called owner of the technology, and he says, this isn't even sensitive at all.

So what kind of sloppy investigations are being conducted? I'm a former prosecutor. I'm a former prosecutor, and I very much believe in due process and tough enforcement and tough punishment. But I also wanna have pride in law enforcement, that people are not fabricating evidence. And we have many cases in which FBI agents admitted that they fabricated the evidence and the testimony, in which the judge in dismissing the case apologizes on behalf of the US government.

What kind of signal are we sending? I simply think that we have to be much more nuanced and much more surgical and precise in our approaches at all different levels.

>> Larry Diamond: Okay, let's take an online question here that Francis is gonna pose. Then we'll come to you, and then we'll come to you, okay?

 

>> Speaker 7: Hi there. So, question from the online audience. This is for Glenn in particular. Can you articulate the risk you perceive to basic fundamental research conducted in us universities? And does the risk to the fundamental environment really warrant the actions that have been taken that are chilling engagement and collaboration?

 

>> Glenn Tiffert: This is a really thorny problem because our traditional approach has been to treat, as I said, fundamental research as unrestricted and to treat classified research classification is the right way to deal with sensitive research. Those are categories that were established during the Cold War, and really they describe, I believe, an era that no longer holds strictly true.

The categories are breaking down. During the cold War, for example, many of the sensitive technologies, if you think of nuclear technologies, missile technologies, originated in the defense industrial base and later proliferated into industry. Today, it's the reverse. Industry is the driver of so much technological change, and it's actually the military applications that often lag, and the pace of change is much faster.

And so things are happening in the fundamental research domain now that are much more of concern. I'll give you a perfect example. There are now open source AI tools that can be used for drug discovery, and they're revolutionizing the way that pharmacologists target disease. Those exact same tools with the same exact open source molecular libraries can be used to design better chemical weapons, better synthetic opioids, better versions of fentanyl, or biological weapons.

And they can, in fact, be transmitted the digital files to labs in India and China and synthesized and mailed to you. This is the world we live in now. That is all happening in the fundamental research domain. Another example, we've got cases, a particular case I'm thinking of, in which a researcher uses digital signal processing technology and neural network tools in the domain of hearing aid research to improve hearing aids.

That technology is then diverted anti-submarine warfare in China because it's directly applicable. And so the fundamental research category, the idea that something is merely open and published and therefore safe, no longer really captures the complexity of the world that we live in today.

>> Gisela Perez Kusakawa: And if I could just add, because I think this question deserves its own panel.

Actually, it deserves its own roundtable. This is a question where we should have university leadership come together and decide whether they agree with the changes in the perception of how fundamental research is going to be treated by our government. We do need people in the room. It's a complicated one, because much of this research is published.

So professors getting in trouble for work that's publicly out there in the open, this is a challenge. If our country is making a shift, it needs to shift, in a way, with the people and the universities. Do other faculty members, do researchers agree with the shift that the government is having on this issue?

I think this is something that require so many people in the room for us to really dig into.

>> Glenn Tiffert: There are dialogues, by the way, that are happening in exactly that space.

>> Gary Locke: And here's the kind of the consequence of, or the highlighting the importance of what Glenn was talking about.

So let's say there's this fundamental research, whether it's brain science or, let's say, hearing aids, and it's a collaboration between a professor here at Stanford with someone in China or any other country. It's very innocent fundamental research. But then if the collaborator in China then turns around and uses it on submarine warfare, is that American Stanford professor now liable if Russia were to do the same thing?

How do you draw the line? And how do you know how others might use this very fundamental, basic research, whether it's finding a cure for cancer or gene therapy? Who knows where that might go? And is the American professor, researcher, scientist of whatever ethnicity, is that person now liable under economic espionage or accused of collaboration with a foreign government?

 

>> Glenn Tiffert: This is what frightens me. Governor Locke, we are not giving people the tools and the information necessarily necessary for them to make informed judgments about who they can collaborate safely with and who they should not collaborate safely with? And ultimately, that judgment has to lie with the researcher, because we don't want someone in Washington deciding that who doesn't understand the nature of the research.

And so really, the problem here is that we're failing the researchers.

>> Larry Diamond: So we have three individuals who've had their hands up persistently. I'm going to start collecting questions now. Can I ask you each to just take a few notes, and then maybe you each can choose which ones you want to answer.

So you want to start? Please be brief, okay?

>> Speaker 8: So, thank you. So, I'm a PhD student in physics here. My question is, so I think at the end, you briefly mentioned that there are problem with people in America that are still under pressure and surveillance by a foreign government.

So I want to share that I experienced exactly that during my undergrad here in the US, not here at Stanford. So I'm not going to go in details on what I experienced, but what happened. But what I did was I collected evidence and I reported to the school.

And then the school assured me it's going to be anonymous. And it elevates higher up, higher up, higher up. And then until the end, it says that for anything to be prosecuted, it has to be a public and revealed in my identity. And it has to be a debate to be fair for both the accuser and the accused, which I appreciate the justice, all this process.

But I think my question would be like, if in the university, what the university can do if things like this happen, and even if I move on beyond university, then, like, who should I reach out to? Or where can I get help if anybody experience things like this?

Thank you.

>> Larry Diamond: Okay, great. Francis, could you give your microphone to the gentleman there? We'll close with Secretary Chu.

>> Devon: Thank you for being here. My name's Devon, I'm a student in the GSB, and I come from China. And so I want to shift my focus to the academic environment, to business side.

A couple of weeks ago, entrepreneur friends of mine who also come from China pitched to in the Bay area. And the first question we got is, are you american? So I think even though he's a green card holder, his idea is all US focus. But our conversation cannot continue.

And now, every day when we open the Wall Street Journal, every news about China is so negative. The similar situation also happened on China, Chinese social media. So my question is, from our individual perspective, how would you advise that the Chinese students or Chinese immigrants like me, how can we survive and succeed in the US society?

Thank you.

>> Larry Diamond: Great, and to the lady on the side there, can someone reach with the microphone?

>> Mei Lin Fung: Hi, I'm Mei Lin Fung, I'm the chair of the People-Centered Internet. And I worry about some of the trend of this discussion when, especially when it goes to fundamental science.

And, wow, it could be used for submarines. You know, we're all still people, and the people of the world still want to do science together. So we have to be very careful about the slippery slope we start to go down when you put everything in a geopolitical lens, because science belongs to the world, not just to any country.

 

>> Larry Diamond: And finally, we're privileged to have two former cabinet members in the room so our former Secretary of Energy, Professor Steve Chu.

>> Steve Chu: Okay, my question's to both Glenn and you, Larry. It was raised the national security decision director of 189, which was under Reagan, President Reagan, and affirmed by three other presidents, said that you define fundamental research as that which is published in the open literature, and that any attempt to curtail fundamental research that's published in the open literature should not happen if the way to control it is through classification and which is very different.

Proprietary government things. Companies all over the world try to steal each other's stuff, China especially. But we're talking about unclassified research. There is no classified research at Stanford, okay? So the decision. And, Glenn, you very clearly said that has to be re examined because there could be dual uses.

So let me give you an example of a dual use. Someone develops Internet protocol, okay? And it's actually one of my friends who's developed this Internet protocol, TCIP. But, you know, the Internet has done good things and really bad things. Pornography, it's actually making democracies very fragile because of what it's doing today, okay?

So the person, the basic research that went into the Internet protocol because it had a dual use, therefore we should not publish it. Therefore we should rethink what is published, okay? Now I go around and I'm chair of the German Energy Advisory Department for Helmholtz, it's like the DOE, okay?

I just spent two days there. We're talking about their research, which is open research. I'm chair of the in France. I dare not be a chair of anything in China like that. But these other countries, Great Britain, France, Germany, et cetera, don't have this view of open research and non publishable research.

So if you want to revisit the national security decision, directive 189, which I think you do, because it's dual use, everything can be dual use. And so then what do you do? Because that penalizes the United States unbelievably compared to any country that I know in Asia and Europe.

And so if you want to go down that road, you have to think twice. Now, Reagan, did a very strong thing, he said under no circumstances would we touch anything that's going to be published. Now, having pre access before it's published is bad and wrong and everything, but I think many politicians and maybe some, even people in the Hoover institution, don't understand that researchers, before they publish, it's in their best interest to not have it displayed.

Okay, and so there's total alignment there. And yet Asian American faculty members are now being accused of exfiltrating their data to China. Makes no sense. So my question to both of you is, let's talk about it honestly, you clearly, I heard, not even between lines, blatantly, it should be revisited.

I want to hear your view, Larry, about whether should that be revisited, and what would be in the United States' best interests commercially competitively if we revisit our view of unclassified work vis a vis Germany, France, England, everywhere else.

>> Larry Diamond: Great, so I hope you all took notes.

We'll go down. You don't have to each answer all four, but answer the ones that are maybe most of concern and experience to you. And, Governor, we'll start with you.

>> Gary Locke: Well, with respect to the student, I couldn't quite hear, but concerned about surveillance and monitoring by foreign governments of the activities of students.

And how do you try to curtail that, especially if you don't want to go public? Because then that may expose yourself to even more repercussions. I think that colleges and universities need to figure out how they can receive those reports and then maybe work informally with law enforcement to then have law enforcement meet with, confront, or even university officials meet and confront those who are believed to be passing on information and conducting that type of surveillance.

We need to protect the, you know, the interests and the identities of people who are fearful, but we need to, we cannot just let it slip under the rug, because those who are concerned, fearful, or feeling that they are a target do not want to go public and will not want to reveal their identities.

There still needs to be some reckoning and some investigation and some candid conversations between university officials or law enforcement and the alleged offenders. Let me just say that for a person who's an immigrant, and you're asked, are you an american? You can say, yeah, I'm an American. I'm of Chinese ancestry, I'm of German ancestry, but I'm an American.

I'm proud to be here in America. I love America. And science does belong to the world. Science does belong to the world. I mean, I think about despite the huge geopolitical differences between the United States and China, the world is looking for leadership from both, both China and the United States to address some of the existential issues facing the world.

China cannot do it by itself, nor can the United States do it by itself. And I take climate change as a perfect example. America produces more greenhouse gases than any other country in the world. Per capita, China produces more greenhouse gases than any other country in the world, but they have four times the population of America.

If the United States were to make substantial reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, but China does not, our efforts will be for naught and vice versa. And 100 years from now, if we tip over the precipice of irreversible climate change, the people of the world will not look fondly on the United States, despite our contributions to freedom, democracy, and transparency and innovation.

Nor will the people of the world look at the incredible contributions of China over thousands of years of civilization, from the printing press, the compass, the clock, etc. They're going to condemn both the United States and China for having tipped the planet into irreversible climate change. So it's incumbent upon the two countries, despite our geopolitical differences, to find ways in which we can work together.

Whether it's climate change, a cure for cancer, or some of the most dreaded diseases in the world, or fighting global terrorism, or stopping the proliferation of nuclear weapons, we have to find a way in which we work together and collaborate.

>> Larry Diamond: Great. Thank you, Gisela.

>> Gisela Perez Kusakawa: Yes, and I wanted to add to the student there that, that is a very serious problem.

And I think precisely why our focus in the United States should be trying to create a safe, even for people who are coming here, including many of the scholars and students. Rather than perceiving international students and scholars of chinese descent to somehow be a threat to the United States, we need to look at this with human compassion.

I had before worked with a Uyghur asylum seeker, and he has now gained status here in the United States. So I understand the ways that China's government can try to reach out to vulnerable populations. What we need to remember is that these are people that need our protections.

We need systems in place to ensure that they are able to truly spend their life in the United States in freedom, safe from this foreign government. I also want to add that there has been such a shift in what we consider to be a threat. We went from someone who was an active spy of a foreign government towards these blanket statements that anyone that could be influenced, if they have family there, can they be coerced?

That is not the right and human way to approach this. You cannot think that if someone has a father or an ailing mother abroad that somehow this is a risk. For you in the country, you should be looking at ways to help that individual rather than looking at them as threats to our country.

So just want to change a bit of that framing, because I think most people forget that our refugee and asylum legal system in the United States came into existence because we wanted to honor our american values. We wanted to welcome political asylum seekers to the United States. Were they coming from countries that were enemies of state?

Yes, that's exactly what we wanted. We wanted to offer them protection here. We wanted to create pathways for them to come to the United States. And so we really need to shift how we've been looking at this because it really doesn't align with the values and the laws that we've had previously.

And I wanna add to the student, Devin, right? Your question is such a powerful question because it doesn't change regardless what generation of immigrant you are. But my biggest advice is don't hide who you are. We had had past generations of Asian Americans, Japanese Americans who are bilingual and would try to hide that they can speak a second language.

We are not in that time anymore. Asian Americans can be proud of their culture. They can be bilingual. They can travel back and forth. This is part of our identity, part of our connections, and it allows us to give the United States a much richer experience. And on the question on fundamental research, I wanna lift up Judge Robinson, who had in her decision for Dr. Franklin Tao.

She's an attorney, she doesn't fully see what the scientific space is, but she lifted up that this special community, we have all benefited from it. Right now, they are experiencing such scrutiny, despite the fact that every single one of us have benefited from it. And here I will plug that ASF is doing Asian American history work, including the pioneers that have invented daily devices that we have all experienced.

Whether it's our FaceTime video conferences, we need to acknowledge the benefits that we have had from all of this hard work. And so I think it's really important for us to, before we have large scale changes in our country, have genuine conversations. If we change how we approach research, are we generally going to become more competitive, or is this going to harm us?

And is this going to harm the talent that we can attract in the United States? This is a tough question, and this is why I say it's important for us to ask that question before moving forward as a country and potentially making mistakes that we regret.

>> Larry Diamond: Okay, Glenn.

 

>> Glenn Tiffert: Yeah, I want to address my remarks to Secretary Chu's question in the main. We've spoken here about devising nuanced solutions to very complicated problems and avoiding blunt force solutions because they yield results that we regret. I see NSDD-189 as a historically contingent document. From 1985, a period where the Soviet Union was in clear, evident decline, the United States and the West were ascendant.

Four or five years later, we were at that moment where someone famously declared that the end of history was upon us, right? Through most of human history, including the most productive periods of America's technological and industrial preeminence, NSDD-189 was not government policy. We went through the fifties, sixties, seventies, and half of the eighties without NSDD 189.

And in fact, we lived in a world where we were deeply concerned about the leakage of key technologies to adversaries. This was the cold war, of course, and yet we prospered somehow. I'm not calling for a return to that era, but what I am calling for is a more thoughtful, nuanced approach to the complicated world that we live in.

NSTD 189 is a bright line test that says, if you are on this side of the line, you don't need to think at all about the implications or the security risks, the risks to human rights and research ethics, because it's open and fundamental, and you can collaborate with whomever you want to up to the limits of your own judgment.

I think we need to do better. We've documented enough cases now over and over again, where the absence of systemic or systematic processes and good information to guide people to make informed decisions about whether they should work with a particular partner in a particular line of research or not.

The absence of that has created tremendous problems. I believe that there are certain key technologies that are of concern and belong on restricted lists. But I don't think I would agree with you that if you build the list of critical technologies, pretty soon every technology is on that list.

And so a better approach would be to look at end users in conjunction with the technologies, to think very hard. Who am I collaborating with? What is their background? How will they apply that research? I can point to examples of international experts in AI who are getting NIH funding, do amazing brain science work, and work in neural diseases.

But take the technologies that they develop in that sphere, and this is the same individual, and applies them to state surveillance technologies. Do you need to work with that individual, or can you work with somebody else, even in the same institution? That's the best we can do, because otherwise we shut it all down.

And I don't want that. I don't want to live in that world, because I think that sacrifices too much but we do need to make nuanced decisions. And the bright line test of NSCD-189 is a license not to think.

>> Larry Diamond: Well, we're considerably over time. So I wanna begin by thanking all of you for your patience and rapt attention, frankly.

I wanna thank Governor Gary Locke for his distinguished career of service to the United States and the world. And I wanna thank Gisela Perez Kusakawa for her remarks and her eloquent leadership on these human rights and civil liberty issues. I wanna thank my colleague, Glenn Tiffert, for his contributions in this area.

And I want to thank the three organizations they represent that helped to produce this panel, the committee of 100, the Asian American Scholar Forum, and our own China program here at the Hoover institution. So thank you again for being so patient and attentive. And we're now adjourned.