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services, satellite communications and imagery, and business application software. It has been estimated that the theft of trade secrets alone costs the U.S. “between $180 billion and $540 billion” annually.”*

Closely related to Communist China’s espionage campaigns are its state-backed efforts to evade U.S. export control laws. These laws are designed to prevent the export of sensitive technologies with military applications.”* However, a significant problem facing agencies like the Departments of Commerce, Defense, and State is the growth of “dual-use” technologies, which have both military and civilian utility. For example, airplane engine technologies have an obvious commercial application. When acquired by a strategic economic and military competitor like Communist China, however, such commercial items can quickly wind up propelling the aircraft of the People’s Liberation Army.

As an example of Communist China’s coercive and intrusive regulatory gambits to force the transfer of foreign technologies and IP to Chinese competitors, foreign companies often must enter into joint ventures or partnerships with minority stakes in exchange for access to the Chinese market. Once a U.S. or foreign company is coerced into entering a joint venture with a Chinese partner, the door is open to the transfer of technology and IP. Similarly, a relentlessly coercive Communist China has forced American patent and technology holders to accept below-market royalty rates in licensing and other forms of below-market compensation for their technologies—and the American government has done little or nothing about it.

Information Harvesting. Every year, more than 300,000 Communist Chinese nationals attend U.S. universities or are hired at U.S. national laboratories, innovation centers, incubators, and think tanks. To put this in perspective, according to the Chinese Ministry of Education, only 20,000 American nationals were studying abroad at Chinese universities on the mainland in 2018.”° These Chinese nationals—often members (or the sons and daughters of members) of the Chinese Communist Party—now account for approximately one-third of foreign university and college students in the United States and about 25 percent of graduate students specializing in science, technology, engineering, or math (STEM).”° As a Defense Innovation Unit Experimental (DIUx) report has warned:

Academia is an opportune environment for learning about science and technology since the cultural values of U.S. educational institutions reflect an open and free exchange of ideas. As a result, Chinese science and engineering students frequently master technologies that later become critical to key military systems, amounting over time to unintentional violations of U.S. export control laws.?’

State-backed Chinese enterprises also increasingly finance joint research programs and the construction of new research facilities on U.S. campuses. For