FBI wishes it had acted quicker as China stole intellectual property

The FBI wished it had taken swifter action as Beijing recruited U.S.-based researchers to transfer intellectual property from American laboratories, a senior official at the agency said on Tuesday during Senate testimony. The admission by John Brown, assistant director of the Counterintelligence Division at the FBI, backed up a Senate subcommittee report that found federal agencies had responded too slowly as China recruited the researchers, leaving U.S. taxpayers unwittingly funding the rise of China’s economy and military. Despite China’s announcement in 2008 of the Thousand Talents Plan – for which China had originally hoped to recruit 2,000 people but ended up recruiting more than 7,000 by 2017 – the FBI did not respond strongly until last year, the report released on Monday by the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations found.

Source: yahoo.com/news