A new report details how China is recruiting scientists from the top government-sponsored research laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico, to bring knowledge to their country to build missiles and drones.
Los Alamos is where the U.S. built the atomic bomb dropped in World War II, and officials are sounding alarms U.S. taxpayers are effectively funding scientists who are taking their expertise to build China's war machine.
"China is playing a game that we are not prepared for, and we need to really begin to mobilize," Strider Technologies' Greg Levesque, who wrote "The Los Alamos Club" report, told NBC News.
The private intelligence report dug into past allegations of the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) experts having been used by China to train experts to help build missiles and weapons in their country. Notably, the work at LANL is government sponsored, putting U.S. taxpayers on the hook for training China's military weapons experts.
"Through talent recruitment programs like the Thousand Talents, China pays scientists at American universities to secretly bring our knowledge and innovation back to China — including valuable, federally funded research," FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a 2020 speech. "To put it bluntly, this means American taxpayers are effectively footing the bill for China's own technological development."
The Strider Technologies intelligence report found at least 154 Chinese scientists worked on government-sponsored research at LANL over the past two decades and then did that work back in China.
"This is the first time where we have a comprehensive, open-source reporting that identifies the people, the places, the services, and the organizations in China who are benefiting from that talent who once worked here at national labs," former U.S. intelligence official Bill Evanina told NBC News.
"No one can say this is not a national security issue, because from hypersonics to acoustical capabilities and to warheads, we are perpetrating the ability for adversaries to utilize weapons against us. And that is hard for any American to swallow."
Levesque told NBC News the talent transfer "poses a direct threat to U.S. national security."
"We have benefited enormously from the inflow of Chinese talent," the Wilson Center's Robert Daly told NBC News. "And I hope that we can continue to do that — it's essential to the United States. But China is now developing weapons systems, capabilities, doctrines and, frankly, attitudes toward its own power that means we have to go back to the drawing board in some of these areas."
Under former President Donald Trump, the Energy Department in 2019 made a new rule to prohibit the talent programs linked to China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea, which did curb the brain drain, according to Strider's report.
"National security and defense require fierce protection of critical technology development, even as we safeguard the open science research that underwrites the United States' technology leadership," the Energy Department told NBC News.
"In response to growing research security threats, the Department of Energy has taken significant steps in recent years, including the adoption of rigorous vetting, counterintelligence reviews, and restrictions on participation in foreign talent programs. The Department of Energy also implements procedures to ensure compliance with U.S. export licensing requirements, including those governing the release of controlled technology to foreign nationals in the United States."
There is still more work to be done to safeguard American interests and national security.
"The correct number of Chinese or Russian citizens at our weapon labs should be zero," Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, told NBC News. "We cannot turn a blind eye to the vulnerable position the U.S. is put in when foreign adversaries are able to access critical U.S. technologies."
The Strider report found that 15 Los Alamos veterans work at SUStech, including the president, Chen Shiyi, who made major contributions to China's hypersonic missile program. Chen did not respond to emails.