Scientists as spies?: Assessing U.S. claims about the security threat posed by China's Thousand Talents Program for the U.S. life sciences.

In 2008, the Chinese government created the Thousand Talents Program (TTP) to recruit overseas expertise to build up China's science and technology knowledge and innovation base. Ten years later, in 2018, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) announced a new "China Initiative" that aimed to counter the transfer by U.S.-based scientists involved in the TTP of knowledge and intellectual property that could support China's military and economic might and pose threats to U.S. national security. This initiative launched a number of investigations into major U.S. federal funding agencies and universities and charged several scientists, many of them life scientists, with failing to accurately report their work and affiliations with Chinese entities and illegally transferring scientific information to China. Although the FBI cases demonstrate a clear problem with disclosure of foreign contracts and research integrity among some TTP recipients, they have failed to demonstrate any harm to U.S. national security interests. At the heart of this controversy are core questions that remain unresolved and need more attention: What is required to transfer and develop knowledge to further a country's science and technology ambitions? And can the knowledge acquired by a visiting scientist be easily used to further a country's ambitions? Drawing on literature from the field of science and technology studies, this article discusses the key issues that should be considered in evaluating this question in the Chinese context and the potential scientific, intelligence, and policy implications of knowledge transfer as it relates to the TTP.

Experiences During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Survey of Biosafety Professionals.

Introduction: Biosafety professionals were called to action during the COVID-19 pandemic. They were tasked with prescribing measures to keep workers and the community safe while often not having accurate information at their fingertips. Understanding biosafety professionals' experiences may help shape new approaches that could further advance preparedness and resilience goals for future pandemics. This article discusses the overall response efforts of the biosafety community. Objectives: The main objective of this article is to quantitatively and qualitatively interrogate the responses to an email survey sent to individuals with biosafety responsibilities during the COVID-19 pandemic. This article catalogues those responses and the different aspects in how biosafety professionals were involved in the pandemic. The focus of this research was on aggregate data and summarized results. Results: A total of 609 out of 654 respondents fully completed the survey, equating to a 93.1% completion rate. Respondents were individuals with varying levels of COVID-19-related responsibilities participating in emergency preparedness and planning, developing laboratory diagnostic capabilities, reviewing clinical trials, developing safety guidelines, writing return-to-work and quarantine procedures, and participating in press releases and communications. Conclusions: Biosafety professionals played important roles during the COVID-19 pandemic, from developing safety protocols for laboratories to resourcing personal protective equipment during a global shortage. They experienced challenges when balancing their home/work lives. Some biosafety professionals were very involved in clinical trials and vaccination efforts, but most were not. Overall, there were significant differences in how biosafety professionals were involved in pandemic response efforts.

Bringing the National Security Agency into the Classroom: Ethical Reflections on Academia-Intelligence Agency Partnerships.

Academia-intelligence agency collaborations are on the rise for a variety of reasons. These can take many forms, one of which is in the classroom, using students to stand in for intelligence analysts. Classrooms, however, are ethically complex spaces, with students considered vulnerable populations, and become even more complex when layering multiple goals, activities, tools, and stakeholders over those traditionally present. This does not necessarily mean one must shy away from academia-intelligence agency partnerships in classrooms, but that these must be conducted carefully and reflexively. This paper hopes to contribute to this conversation by describing one purposeful classroom encounter that occurred between a professor, students, and intelligence practitioners in the fall of 2015 at North Carolina State University: an experiment conducted as part of a graduate-level political science class that involved students working with a prototype analytic technology, a type of participatory sensing/self-tracking device, developed by the National Security Agency. This experiment opened up the following questions that this paper will explore: What social, ethical, and pedagogical considerations arise with the deployment of a prototype intelligence technology in the college classroom, and how can they be addressed? How can academia-intelligence agency collaboration in the classroom be conducted in ways that provide benefits to all parties, while minimizing disruptions and negative consequences? This paper will discuss the experimental findings in the context of ethical perspectives involved in values in design and participatory/self-tracking data practices, and discuss lessons learned for the ethics of future academia-intelligence agency partnerships in the classroom.

Anticipating Emerging Biotechnology Threats: A case study of CRISPR.

This article discusses the contingencies and complexities of CRISPR. It outlines key problems regarding off-target effects and replication of experimental work that are important to consider in light of CRISPR's touted ease of use and diffusion. In light of literature on the sociotechnical dimensions of the life sciences and biotechnology and literature on former bioweapons programs, this article argues that we need more detailed empirical case studies of the social and technical factors shaping CRISPR and related gene-editing techniques in order to better understand how they may be different from other advances in biotechnology-or whether similar features remain. This information will be critical to better inform intelligence practitioners and policymakers about the security implications of new gene-editing techniques.

The social context shaping bioweapons (non)proliferation.

This article explores the practices behind the creation and transfer of knowledge related to biological weapons (BW) in the former Soviet BW program and their implications for understanding bioweapons proliferation. Using in-depth interviews collected for an ongoing oral history project of the Soviet and U.S. bioweapons programs, this article shows that BW proliferation is a complex issue that involves thus far unrecognized social factors that can shape the production and proliferation of bioweapons knowledge. The article highlights (1) the local and personal character of bioweapons knowledge, specialized skills, and scientific know-how, which cannot be transferred easily from one person to another and from one location to another; (2) the importance of organization and management style in creating certain types of knowledge and skills and allowing or preventing the transfer of those skills to occur within and outside an organization; and (3) the differences that exist among various groups of former Soviet BW facilities in their ability to efficiently transfer bioweapons knowledge and laboratory skills. The article concludes with a discussion on the policy implications of these findings and provides guidance for constructing and implementing a more consistent and rigorous set of targeted nonproliferation interventions to address facility-specific "brain-drain" threats involving former bioweaponeers.

FeNO structure in distal pocket mutants of myoglobin based on resonance Raman spectroscopy.

FeNO vibrational frequencies were investigated for a series of myoglobin mutants using isotope-edited resonance Raman spectra of (15/14)NO adducts, which reveal the FeNO and NO stretching modes. The latter give rise to doublet bands, as a result of Fermi resonances with coincident porphyrin vibrations; these doublets were analyzed by curve-fitting to obtain the nuNO frequencies. Variations in nuNO among the mutants correlate with the reported nuCO variations for the CO adducts of the same mutants. The correlation has a slope near unity, indicating equal sensitivity of the NO and CO bonds to polar influences in the heme pocket. A few mutants deviate from the correlation, indicating that distal interactions differ for the NO and CO adducts, probably because of the differing distal residue geometries. In contrast to the strong and consistent nuFeC/nuCO correlation found for the CO adducts, nuFeN correlates only weakly with nuNO, and the slope of the correlation depends on which residue is being mutated. This variability is suggested to arise from steric interactions, which change the FeNO angle and therefore alter the Fe-NO and N-O bond orders. This effect is modeled with Density Functional Theory (DFT) and is rationalized on the basis of a valence isomer bonding model. The FeNO unit, which is naturally bent, is a more sensitive reporter of steric interactions than the FeCO unit, which is naturally linear. An important additional factor is the strength of the bond to the proximal ligand, which modulates the valence isomer equilibrium. The FeNO unit is bent more strongly in MbNO than in protein-free heme-NO complexes because of a combination of a strengthened proximal bond and distal interactions.