Today’s New York Times ran the headline above.

At least two aspects of the “news” concern me.  First, this news should surprise no one and, second, we need to go beyond bans, prohibitions and sanctions to protect the intellectual property that American institutions develop.

One piece of work helps frame the first concern: In 2018, we generated a report that informed the US government that the PLA was using technologies that it had stolen from Duke University to make high altitude, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) balloons difficult to detect with radar. We even included a picture that looks a lot like the balloon that floated across the United States last year:

The stolen IP may have made it harder for the USAF F-22 pilot to shoot the balloon down. To honor Duke’s intellectual property (IP), which makes material radar absorbent, the PLA should have festooned the balloon with a giant Duke Blue Devil.

Regarding the second concern, US universities that conduct cutting edge research and development (R&D) pander to funds that come from abroad.  Yet, grants from the US taxpayer for R&D alone, excluding other programs like student loans, provide billions of dollars of funding to many of those institutions. In 2022, taxpayers funded about $170 billion for R&D according to the Congressional Research Service. (R46869 (congress.gov))

Executive and legislative actions, which generally deploy bans, prohibitions, sanctions and tariffs, consistently fail to staunch a problem that many have known about for years.

Instead of looking to control what the PRC does, US action should focus on managing what incentivizes American R&D institutions. The US government wields big sticks. It, on behalf of US taxpayers, could direct R&D funds for their ability to protect US taxpayer investments rather than using taxpayer money to influence voting.