Washington, D.C. — Senator Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) today introduced the Guarding American Technology from Exploitation (GATE) Act, legislation that would ban foreign scientists from China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and Cuba from visiting or working in Department of Energy National Laboratories without a waiver granted by the Department of Energy and the intelligence community.
Senators Mike Lee (R-Utah), John Barrasso (R-Wyoming), Susan Collins (R-Maine), and James Lankford (R-Oklahoma) are cosponsoring the legislation.
“Scientists from our adversaries like Russia and China should be nowhere near our national laboratories. Foreign nationals in our country’s most sensitive labs pose a clear threat to our national security and should end immediately,” said Senator Cotton.
“For too long, our national labs have been exploited by foreign adversaries. The Chinese Communist Party and other hostile regimes have systematically targeted these labs, luring away top scientists and using American research to fuel their military ambitions. Senator Cotton’s GATE Act is a necessary step to shut the door on this national security threat and ensure our most sensitive technology stays in the right hands," said Senator Lee.
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“Our foreign adversaries should not have unregulated access to the cutting-edge research at our national laboratories,” said Senator Barrasso. “The groundbreaking work at our labs must be safeguarded. We cannot allow foreign nationals to take advantage of and use our taxpayer-funded research against us. Our bill will protect our critical information and identify security threats to prevent harm to the U.S., our allies, or our interests.”
“Sensitive research conducted at Department of Energy National Laboratories is vital to America’s national security and economic development. Allowing foreign scientists from adversarial nations access to this information poses a serious risk of espionage, sabotage, or theft – actions they may be pressured to undertake by the governments of their home nations,” said Senator Collins. “This legislation is a necessary step to prevent our adversaries from gaining unchecked access to critical taxpayer-funded research.”
Full text of the bill may be found here.
Background:
In FY2023, 40,000 foreign scientists visited our national labs and approximately 8,000 of those were Chinese or Russian. That means that 1 out of every 5 scientists visiting our labs are from our most dangerous foreign adversaries. We are not talking about individuals with green cards or dual citizenship. These are simply foreign scientists.
The CCP forces scientists to report this information back to the Chinese government.
This legislation passed out of SSCI last Congress by a vote of 17-0 but was blocked by Democrats from being included in the NDAA