Exclusive: Pentagon Faces Questions for Funding Top Chinese AI Scientist

U.S. lawmakers are demanding answers from the Department of Defense as to why it ignored signs that a scientist who got tens of millions of dollars in federal research grants was for years transferring potentially sensitive research on advanced artificial intelligence to China, Newsweek reports exclusively.

The chairs of two House committees and three subcommittees also asked the National Science Foundation (NSF), which is a federal government agency, and the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) why they failed to pay attention to "concerning signs" over the Chinese-born scientist Song-Chun Zhu, in similarly worded letters sent to all three institutions on Wednesday.

Newsweek revealed in November 2023 that Zhu had received over $30 million in U.S. grants to lead research into the most advanced artificial intelligence that could have major military implications.

"U.S. federal grant providing agencies ignored numerous concerning signs while granting Mr. Zhu $30 million in grants," the chairs of the Committee on Energy and Commerce and of the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) wrote in a letter addressed to the Secretary of Defense, Lloyd J. Austin III.

The letters reflect growing unease among lawmakers, the intelligence community and science research specialists about the loss of exquisite technologies to China, which is locked in a battle with the U.S. for scientific as well as military supremacy. China has said it will outdo the U.S. in multiple spheres, including the economy and military, by 2049 at the latest. AI is especially sensitive, with scientists saying that whoever dominates it may gain an unbeatable edge over others. The Pentagon itself has for years highlighted the essential role that artificial intelligence is expected to play in the battlefields of the future.

"In a period of intensifying geopolitical competition with the CCP, ceasing federal government support for Chinese AI development is a critical national security imperative," the lawmakers said.

The NSF responded to a Newsweek request for comment with details of how it was addressing some questions of foreign influence. Newsweek also requested comment from the Department of Defense (DoD) and UCLA. An email requesting comment from Zhu, sent to addresses in Beijing and at UCLA, was not answered.

The lawmakers demanded that the Pentagon give "complete documentation relating to all grants that the DoD gave," including copies of all internal communications relating to Zhu's work as well as a detailed breakdown of Zhu's research carried out with DoD grant funding, and "a list of all recipients of DoD research grants who are currently living in China."

The committees said that Zhu's case was part of a wider problem of research security and technology loss to Beijing. Zhu returned to Beijing in 2020 to join Peking and Tsinghua universities and to found BIGAI, one of the nation's leading AI institutes. He also heads up a new, state-funded AI institute in Wuhan, near his hometown of Ezhou.

"Mr. Zhu's case is not an isolated occurrence in the field of scientific research," the letters, signed by Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), the chair of the energy and commerce committee, and Mike Gallagher (R-WI), the chair of the CCP committee, said. Also signing were the chairs of the subcommittees on communications and technology, on oversight and investigations, and on innovation, data and commerce.

"The illicit transfer of sensitive and advanced technology and know-how by participants of PRC-backed talent recruitment programs has been, and continues to be, distressingly common," the lawmakers said.

Chinese Army Links

Research by Newsweek showed that in 2004, Zhu set up an institute near Wuhan called the Lotus Hill Institute for Computer Vision and Information Science, while employed at UCLA. He worked in parallel there and at UCLA sharing doctoral and post-doctoral students, and also held a position at a university in Beijing that is known as one of the "Seven Sons of National Defense"—so called because of their designated role supporting the People's Liberation Army.

The letters also noted that Zhu was a member of a Chinese state "talent plan." Most of these are directly funded by the Chinese state and all have the purpose of transferring breakthrough technologies, and early-stage ideas and knowledge, to China.

China has hundreds of "talent plans" that aim to tap top brains in the U.S. and around the world. Many, but not all, recruits are from China, with non-Chinese also sought out. The "Thousand Talent Plan" that Zhu joined in 2010, according to online Chinese-language reports, is the best known, set up in 2008 and overseen by the powerful Organization Department of the CCP.

A spokesperson at the Chinese embassy in Washington, D.C., did not directly address a question from Newsweek about the talent plans. But Liu Pengyu said that accusations that China was purloining U.S. technology were "baseless."

"China's scientific and technological achievements are made with the hard work and wisdom of the Chinese people," Liu said in emailed comments. "To politicize and weaponize scientific and technological issues and to suppress the development of other countries are blatant acts of hegemony and bullying. We firmly oppose this."

"Science and technology is an open business. As two major R&D countries, China and the United States should maintain exchanges in S&T. The more than 40-year history of China-US scientific and technological cooperation has fully proved that China-US exchanges and cooperation are mutually beneficial and have improved the well-being of the people of the two countries and the world at large," Liu said.

"We hope that some people in the U.S. will abandon the Cold War mentality and zero-sum game concept, correctly view and maintain exchanges and cooperation between China and the U.S. in the fields of science and technology and people-to-people exchanges, and do more things that are conducive to enhancing mutual trust and cooperation between China and the U.S."

In an interview, William C. Hannas, lead analyst at the Center for Security and Emerging Technology at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., said there were "serious safety and national security concerns surrounding the unwanted outflow of technology."

"Although China's indigenous research is not to be slighted, it can and does take what it needs from abroad to fill in the gaps," Hannas said. China has a state-sponsored acquisition system, built up over decades, that increasingly targets basic science, and in the U.S., "we don't embargo basic science in any field."

"We sorely need a comprehensive review of our policy toward technology collaboration and transfer that protects our equities without shutting out global talent," Hannas said.

The NSF's Chief of Research Security, Rebecca Keiser, told Newsweek in an email, "NSF is implementing the prohibition on malign foreign talent recruitment programs" as required by law. "Through NSF's research security analytics efforts, we are able to identify talent plan memberships that are not disclosed. NSF works closely with its Office of Inspector General to address these nondisclosures."

In the letter addressed to UCLA Chancellor Gene Block, the committees said U.S. universities needed to do more to manage the problem.

Preventing foreign adversaries from receiving highly sensitive U.S. research—funded by federal government grants—will only be effective if "universities 'take responsibility in addressing this threat,'" they wrote, citing an earlier Senate report on the talent plans.

The lawmakers asked for copies of all external communications about Zhu to which UCLA was a party, including between UCLA and funders, other educational institutions, and law-enforcement agencies, as well as "copies of all official UCLA guidance and regulations about determining foreign conflicts of interest as they relate to grant funding." That would include membership of talent plans. In its report, Newsweek revealed that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had investigated Zhu, though no outcome was made public.

The Department of Justice launched a "China Initiative" in 2018, investigating multiple people including Charles Lieber, a Harvard University chemist who was sentenced last year. The initiative was dropped in 2022 amid allegations of racism, with the FBI largely ceasing criminal investigations, law enforcement sources said.

DoJ efforts have instead turned to civil litigation, such as a case against Stanford University for failing to disclose overseas funding for about a dozen professors including Richard Zare, a chemist who was a member of a talent plan run by Fudan University in Shanghai. Late last year Stanford paid back the government $1.9 million. Since 2022 academics receiving federal funding have been prohibited from simultaneously being members of a "malign" foreign talent plan.

Citing a report by UCLA, the lawmakers said that 60 cents of every research dollar directed to the public university between July 2019 and June 2020 came from federal agencies, thus, "both the federal government and UCLA have a vested interest in ensuring no American taxpayer dollars go to researchers with ties to the militaries of foreign adversaries, particularly the People's Liberation Army." Like many advanced technologies, AI has major military uses.

Training a Generation

After graduating from the University of Science and Technology of China, Zhu moved to the U.S. and obtained a PhD at Harvard University in 1996. He taught at different universities before moving to UCLA in 2002 as a professor of statistics and computing, heading a computer science and AI laboratory. In his lab Zhu effectively trained a generation of students from China, with many returning there to work in top laboratories, universities or companies that often were connected to Zhu or to other top scientists among more than a dozen in the same field who have also returned to China to build its AI prowess.

To build a picture of the funding and of Zhu's activities, Newsweek carried out a months-long investigation of federal grants databases, scientific papers, reports from Chinese and U.S. universities and companies, and local and national government reports in China.

Most of the federal grants awarded to Zhu were in the decade before 2020, the year he returned to China after 18 years at UCLA's Center for Vision, Cognition, Learning and Autonomy.

But two grants continued into 2021: one was for $699,938 to develop "high-level robot autonomy" that was "important for DoD tasks, such as autonomous robots, search and rescue missions," according to the DoD grants website. Another, for $520,811, aimed to build "cognitive robot platforms" for "intelligence and surveillance systems via ground and aerial sensors." Zhu was named as principal investigator on both grants awarded by the Office of Naval Research.

Among key donors were the specialist military research agency DARPA, the Navy and the Army.