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What a collapsed trial says about US claims of Chinese high-tech spying: Anming Hu's case was meant to be a victory for the "China Initiative," a US effort to root out spies. Instead, it turned more attention on the FBI. (Karen Hao, June 27, 2021, MIT Technology Review)

Hu is one of dozens of scientists, mostly of Chinese descent, whom the US government has investigated over the years amid allegations that they were hiding their connections to China. Since 2018, such cases have been investigated under the "China Initiative," a controversial multi-agency program that aims to detect, prosecute, and stop economic espionage linked to Beijing.

While the US government says the program is necessary to combat what FBI director Christopher Wray calls "the greatest long-term threat" to the United States, a growing group of activists, legal scholars, and national security experts have argued that it rests on shaky foundations, is limited in its efficacy, and fuels wide-scale racial profiling that has profoundly damaged the US scientific community.

In mid-June, Hu's case became the first China Initiative case to go to trial and put both sides of the argument to the test. The result? A mistrial when the 12 jurors deadlocked after only a day of deliberations.

The testimony of the primary FBI agent on the case, Kujtim Sadiku, likely did not help: he admitted in court that his probe into Hu's activities--which involved putting the researcher and his son under surveillance for 21 months, adding Hu to a no-fly list, and seizing his computer and phone--was based on false information, according to the Knoxville News Sentinel. Sadiku also admitted to spreading false information about Hu that damaged his reputation in the international research community and giving UT false information implicating him as an operative for the Chinese military, which led the university to fire him. Sadiku never followed up with the university to correct the record.

By the time the case went to trial, the charges against Hu did not involve economic espionage-- the original reason for the investigation--but, rather, six charges of wire fraud and making false statements. The latter allegations hinged on a single administrative form at UT that the FBI says Hu filled out incorrectly to intentionally conceal a relationship with Beijing University. Hu and his lawyer maintained that Hu filled it out according to university rules and disclosed his relationship on multiple other forms and in email exchanges with UT and a NASA contractor.

Posted by Orrin Judd at June 27, 2021 12:00 AM

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