Wonder how the CCP infiltrated America’s scientific establishment?
I found an extraordinary 2001 Chinese government-linked document that appears never to have been examined during the Senate confirmation of Biden’s Cabinet-level science adviser, Eric Lander.
The Chinese-language report says Lander—then director of the Whitehead/MIT Center for Genome Research—was appointed “honorary dean” of China’s first graduate program and training base dedicated to genomics and bioinformatics.
The English version published by People’s Daily described him as “honorary president” of the two centers.
This was not merely another foreign award.
The program was jointly established by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Zhejiang University to produce a continuing supply of genomics and bioinformatics specialists for China.
The document described the training base as another major initiative of the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ genomics center and the Huada Gene Research Center—part of the early institutional network associated with what became BGI.
It also reveals something even more significant: Lander’s Whitehead/MIT genome center became a “sister center” with the Chinese Academy of Sciences genomics center and Huada.
The declared purpose was extensive cooperation involving “personnel” and “technology.”
That BGI connection looks far more alarming in hindsight.
The Pentagon now identifies BGI Group and BGI Genomics as “Chinese military companies,” stating that BGI Group is affiliated with the People’s Liberation Army and contributes to China’s military-civil fusion system.
The Commerce Department has separately blacklisted multiple BGI entities, warning that their collection and analysis of genetic data posed risks of Chinese government surveillance and diversion to China’s military programs.
U.S. regulators have also warned that human genetic samples collected by BGI may reach China’s government-funded National GeneBank—creating serious privacy and national-security risks.
Yet Lander’s reported Chinese appointment and the sister-center relationship appear nowhere in his 190-page Senate questionnaire.
The questionnaire lists his positions, memberships, awards, honorary degrees, boards, publications and professional history. Searches for “Zhejiang” and “Huada” return nothing.
The relationship was plainly relevant to the job for which he was being considered—and the Senate never appears to have examined it publicly.
Senators specifically asked Lander about China’s espionage targeting American science.
Sen. Roger Wicker cited FBI Director Christopher Wray’s warning that China represented America’s greatest long-term counterintelligence and economic-espionage threat, then asked what universities should do to protect valuable research.
Lander answered that universities needed greater awareness, cybersecurity and “openness and transparency with respect to research and development collaborations.”
He did not mention his own reported Chinese honorary appointment or the personnel-and-technology partnership involving his American genome center.
The Senate nevertheless confirmed Lander by voice vote on May 28, 2021.
Biden elevated him to the Cabinet and placed him in charge of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy—giving him extraordinary influence over biotechnology, American research institutions and the government’s response to Chinese scientific exploitation.
Lander then helped write the federal government’s research-security rules.
In January 2022, he warned that China’s government was working to “illicitly acquire our most advanced technologies” and oversaw guidance requiring scientists to disclose foreign affiliations, appointments, contracts and support.
The official writing America’s rules for disclosing foreign scientific relationships had a reported Chinese honorary title and an institutional partnership involving personnel and technology that the Senate never publicly explored.