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The Justice Department itself was not very outspoken. As we explained in our article main partTo date, DOJ officials have been unable to provide a clear definition of what constituted the China Initiative case or how many cases it brought in total. This lack of transparency has made it impossible to fully understand what exactly the China Initiative is, what it has accomplished, and what the costs are for those disproportionately affected.
“I want to see a balance sheet,” said Jeremy Wu, who holds senior civil rights and ethics positions in the US government. APA Justice Task ForceOne of the groups that independently monitors the China Initiative. “What did we win? Compared to how much damage it did, how many spies did we catch? [been] Is it done not only to individuals, but also to the future of American science and technology?”
Our database is not that balance sheet. But it’s an important step forward in answering some of the questions Wu has raised—questions the US government hasn’t been able to answer at this point. Rather, it caused confusion: Two days after we requested a comment, the Department of Justice made major updates to its webpage and removed cases that did not support the narrative of a successful counterintelligence effort.
how we did
This spring, we began scanning all the press releases that were later linked on the Justice Department’s China Initiative webpage, followed by another scrape of data from August. Then we pulled out thousands of pages of federal court records for each case and used that information to build our database.
We also scoured additional court documents and public statements from FBI and DOJ officials to find cases that were removed from the website or were never added. We then supplemented this information with interviews with defense attorneys, family members of the defendants, collaborating researchers, former US prosecutors, civil rights advocates, lawmakers, and outside academics who have studied the initiative. We found more cases that fit the general truth pattern of academics who were excluded from the Justice Department’s public list but either publicly disclosed as part of the initiative or accused of concealing ties to Chinese institutions, hackers allegedly working for the Chinese government, or illegal those accused of technology transfers.
Our goal was to create as comprehensive a China Initiative prosecution database as possible. We know there may be more, and our database may grow as we confirm the existence of additional cases. If you have more information about China Initiative cases, please contact us at: tips@technologyreview.com.
Our monitoring efforts became more difficult in June, when the Ministry of Justice stopped updating the China Initiative webpage. That time frame roughly coincides with the resignation of John Demers, the deputy attorney general for the national security division that oversaw the initiative.
After creating a rough database and analyzing the data, he and Wu of the APA Justice Task Force and Asian Americans Advancing Justice | The AJC, another civil rights group, followed suit, and we shared our initial findings with a small group of lawmakers, civil rights organization representatives and academics and asked for their comments.
What has the Ministry of Justice changed?
On November 19, two days after MIT Technology Review approached the Department of Justice with questions about the initiative, the department made major revisions to the China Initiative website, including several cases that we believe were not included or were included in error.
These changes were extensive, but did not clear much of the confusion about the initiative. In fact, in some ways they made the situation worse.
Wyn Hornbuckle, spokesperson for the DOJ’s Department of Homeland Security, did not respond to our specific questions, but reported via email that staff “is in the process of updating our website to reflect some changes, updates, and layoffs. ”
He also shared the department’s own numbers. “Since November 2018, we have filed or resolved nine PRC-related economic espionage prosecutions and seven trade secret theft cases. We also brought up 12 issues involving fraud against universities and/or grant-making institutions.”
We found more than 12 cases of research integrity – but only 13 of the 23 cases of research integrity included in our database are currently on the website. (One of these cases was settled before the charges were brought.) Six of these cases resulted in criminal complaints. Seven is still pending.
Seven of the eight research integrity cases that resulted in dismissal or acquittal were previously included on its website, but the DOJ has now removed them from its list.
Our analysis showed 12 cases accused of theft of trade secrets or economic espionage since November 2018. Ten of them are listed on the Ministry of Justice’s website. (The two were related prosecutions, but indicted separately.) Seven of these 10 people were charged. only not the theft of trade secrets and the more serious allegation of economic espionage. One was charged with both economic espionage and theft of trade secrets. The other two were cases of hacking – one involved quoting economic espionage and the other involving the theft of trade secrets.
The Justice Department did not respond to multiple requests for a more detailed breakdown of their numbers.
Our subsequent analysis showed that the DOJ removed 17 cases and 39 defendants from the China Initiative page, added two cases[with a total of five defendants, and updated existing cases with sentencing or trial information, if any][withatotaloffivedefendantsandupdatedexistingcaseswithsentencingandtrialinformationwhereavailable[toplambeşdavalıylabirliktevemevcutdavalarıvarsacezaveyargılamabilgileriylegüncellediğini”gösterdi[withatotaloffivedefendantsandupdatedexistingcaseswithsentencingandtrialinformationwhereavailable
Hornbuckle did not respond to a request for comment on what these removals had to say about transparency.
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