China’s ‘Thousand Talents’ plan key to seizing US expertise, intelligence officials say
Pentagon tells House Armed Services Committee programme is an aggressive, 10-part ‘toolkit for foreign technology acquisition’
China’s “Thousand Talents” programme to tap into its citizens educated or employed in the US is a key part of multi-pronged efforts to transfer, replicate and eventually overtake US military and commercial technology, according to US intelligence officials.
The programme, begun in 2008, is far from secret. But its unadvertised goal is “to facilitate the legal and illicit transfer of US technology, intellectual property and know-how” to China, according to an unclassified analysis by the National Intelligence Council, the branch of US intelligence that assesses long-term trends.
The programme was highlighted on Thursday to House Armed Services Committee members as Pentagon and intelligence officials outlined what they said was an aggressive, 10-part Chinese “toolkit for foreign technology acquisition”.
The National Intelligence Council’s analysis, produced in April, described the talent plan as “China’s flagship talent programme and probably the largest in terms of funding”. It was also cited in a combative White House report posted on Tuesday titled “How China’s Economic Aggression Threatens the Technologies and Intellectual Property of the United States and the World”.
