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Senator warns of Chinese surveillance at DOE national labs, urges declassification of MITRE report
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Summary
An unnamed senator told the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources that Department of Energy national labs are being targeted by Chinese intelligence and urged the DOE to declassify a MITRE counterintelligence report; the senator said Congress should step in if the department does not act.
An unnamed senator opened a Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources hearing by warning that U.S. Department of Energy research is at risk of exploitation by Chinese intelligence and by urging the department to declassify a government-commissioned counterintelligence study.
“Research into advanced computing is critical, critical to maintaining America's economic growth, our national security, and our leadership in the world,” the senator said, arguing that two of the world’s fastest supercomputers and another in the global top 10 at the department’s 17 national laboratories make the labs a prime target for exploitation.
The senator said that China is monitoring the laboratories closely and accused a branch of China’s intelligence apparatus that “focuses on science and technology” of conducting persistent surveillance. “This branch alone consists of about 100,000 agents,” the senator said; the remark was presented as the senator’s account and not independently verified in the hearing record.
Citing a 2022 report the senator identified as “Los Alamos Club” by Strider Technologies, he said the Chinese Communist Party targeted more than 160 Chinese nationals working at Los Alamos National Laboratory between 1987 and 2021, and asserted that some returned to China and helped advance military technologies using knowledge financed by U.S. taxpayers. The senator also pointed to an arrest earlier this year of a Chinese national and former Google software engineer whom he said the U.S. Justice Department charged with stealing software for a Chinese firm.
The senator said Congress required the Department of Energy in 2020 to study counterintelligence at the national labs and that the department hired MITRE to prepare that study. He said MITRE produced an unclassified report in April 2023, and that the secretary of energy later classified the report and reassigned the director of DOE’s office of intelligence and counterintelligence “without an explanation.”
“I have asked the department to declassify the MITRE report and for the department to come clean with the American people,” the senator said, adding that the department had refused. He said the refusal to share the report could signal that the department was hiding failures and urged DOE to “dramatically increase its efforts to protect our research from our adversaries.”
The senator concluded by saying Congress must “step in if the department fails to do its job,” and thanked the chairman before testimony began.
The statements in this article are based on the senator’s opening remarks in the hearing record. Where the senator cited reports, counts, or organizational assertions (for example, the size of an intelligence branch, the Strider Technologies report findings, or the MITRE report’s classification), those elements are reported as the senator’s claims or as described by him in the hearing; the hearing record in this transcript does not provide independent verification of those claims.
