Universities turn to private intelligence to assess China risk

Universities and research institutions are turning to private providers of information - some of them former US intelligence analysts – to understand whether their collaborations with China are risky.

With China increasingly seen as an adversary in Europe and the US, universities are under pressure make sure their research links don’t contribute to China’s military, surveillance state, or give away sensitive technological knowhow.

But with few China experts in universities, and limited public tools, private providers are springing up to fill the gap, claiming they can help universities better understand their risks – although some caution these services are no substitute for deep academic knowledge of the research in question.  

One such service is Data Abyss, run by a former US air force intelligence analyst, L J Eads, based in Dayton, Ohio. Eads has created multiple databases tracking collaborations with Chinese defence-related universities, plus one that looks at US funded research taking place in Russia.

He paints a picture of universities that can barely keep track of who they are working with.

“I have to ask [universities]: do you even know about some of these collaborations or joint ventures?,” he told Science|Business. “Some universities in my experience don’t even know that they’ve existed”, at least for small scale projects, he said.

Eads of course has an interest in talking up the need for his services. But he stresses his venture is not-for-profit. “We're basically just trying to pay for development time and cloud costs,” he said.

Most of his clients are US university research security offices, which he charges around $180 a month. Eads currently works for Parallax Advanced Research, a Dayton-based private, not-for-profit research institute focusing on national security.

Around 24 universities, companies and funding agencies pay to subscribe – including the US’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency - largely in the US, Canada and Germany, he said. Eads says he’s also worked with King’s College London to conduct analysis on their quantum collaborations.

The tool is not just subscription-funded. Data Abyss red teams the US’s existing regulations for the Pentagon, which funds around a quarter of Eads’ work.

One of Data Abyss’s selling points, Eads says, is that it taps into an “abyss” of data from Chinese military journals that aren’t normally included in more mainstream bibliometric databases.

“No hacking or espionage involved,” he said. “It’s just using computer science for web scraping, collecting, processing.”

This extra data allows universities to find military collaborations they might otherwise miss. “What universities don't know about is […] we have university staff or postdocs or professors that are openly collaborating with military units,” he said.

New line of business

Eads isn’t the only one offering this kind of service. “A whole new line of business has emerged in research security with many third party providers entering the market,” said Andrea Braun Střelcová, a researcher at the Berlin-based Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, who focuses on China-Europe research ties.

Virginia-based Jeff Stoff, who like Eads has a background in US intelligence, also provides due diligence and risk assessment services to universities. So far, he’s only advised German institutions.

His organisation, the Center for Research Security & Integrity, also releases public reports. Last year, a report from Stoff sent shockwaves through German academia by uncovering the extent of the country’s collaborations with Chinese military research institutions.

“There has been a proliferation of private firms entering this space, but they can be costly, especially for smaller research institutions that have smaller budgets,” said Stoff, who stresses that his work is not-for-profit.

Meanwhile in the Netherlands, the firm Datenna promises to find “hidden links between Chinese companies, universities, and research institutes with China’s national security and military organisations” using a wealth of data.

Few restrictions

This new line of business has emerged as universities scramble to get a grip on who they are partnering with, and understand waves of new government guidelines and rules in a rapidly darkening geopolitical context.

What might surprise Europeans is that even though the US is typically more hawkish towards China than the EU, there are surprisingly few hard rules stopping dubious collaborations in the US, Eads argues. There are, however, requirements that federal grant applicants disclose other supporters of their research, and the former Trump administration prosecuted some academics for not reporting some Chinese funding.

Still, “there's no laws or restrictions that tell the university they can't collaborate with so and so,” said Eads.

Over the border in Canada, there are explicit rules that ban federal funding for cooperation in “sensitive” areas with more than 100 universities and institutions in China, Russia and Iran. “We don't have that in the United States,” said Eads.

For example, the US Department of Commerce’s entity list, which covers hundreds of organisations including Chinese research institutions, only restricts export of specific technologies, rather than broader collaboration.

“Universities build massive partnerships with entities [on the list]”, Eads said. “The entity list just restricts the trade of technology. Not talent, not knowledge, not infrastructure.”

The Pentagon also names dozens of Chinese institutions in its Section 1286 list, but only advises “caution” for “any researcher or institution engaging with institutions on this list”. “But it doesn't say you can't collaborate with entities on that list,” said Eads.

Outspoken

Eads may be a former intelligence officer, but he certainly isn’t staying in the shadows – quite the contrary.

Indeed, he makes plenty of noise about what he sees as dubious collaborations on Linkedin.

Eads even runs Linkedin polls asking his followers which country’s China ties should next come under scrutiny. “Will it be Australia or Japan? Three hours left to vote!,” he asked followers earlier this year.

After his followers voted for Australia, he whipped up the “Australia Funded Chinese Defense Research Tracker”, which tracks Australian collaborations with China’s Seven Sons of National Defence and People’s Liberation Army-linked universities.

“I’m trying to get a reaction because most of the time from my experience an under reaction means no reaction at all,” he told Science|Business. “You almost have to push an overreaction to push any kind of reaction or conversation at all, which is very unfortunate.”

Public alternatives

With Eads and others filling gaps in universities’ knowledge about China, the question is whether a publicly funded, open alternative would save universities money, and better allow academics to do their own due diligence on potential partners.

There are currently no such state-funded, open resources. Perhaps the closest open source of information is the China Defence Universities Tracker, created by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. But this database only looks at institutions’ links to the military, rather than individual papers, and is already five years old.

The European Commission is thought to have been mulling the creation of a database, but nothing has emerged yet. In January, it proposed the creation of a European Centre of Expertise on Research Security, funded out of Horizon Europe’s budget.

However, if based on temporary Horizon funding, rather than being permanent, “I won't consider it sustainable and implementation will be limited,” said Braun Střelcová.

There needs to be a contact point for information at the European level “that is free for the users and where the smaller or less affluent universities and research institutes can inform themselves for free,” she said.

And although open source data from private providers can be “super helpful” for universities, she cautioned it has to be coupled with a deep understanding of the actual research before leaping to conclusions about risk.

“The people running the companies are not academics,” said Braun Střelcová. “They do not understand the practices and norms of academia, let alone in specific research fields.”