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Alan W. Dowd is a Senior Fellow with the American Security Council Foundation, where he writes on the full range of topics relating to national defense, foreign policy and international security. Dowd’s commentaries and essays have appeared in Policy Review, Parameters, Military Officer, The American Legion Magazine, The Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations, The Claremont Review of Books, World Politics Review, The Wall Street Journal Europe, The Jerusalem Post, The Financial Times Deutschland, The Washington Times, The Baltimore Sun, The Washington Examiner, The Detroit News, The Sacramento Bee, The Vancouver Sun, The National Post, The Landing Zone, Current, The World & I, The American Enterprise, Fraser Forum, American Outlook, The American and the online editions of Weekly Standard, National Review and American Interest. Beyond his work in opinion journalism, Dowd has served as an adjunct professor and university lecturer; congressional aide; and administrator, researcher and writer at leading think tanks, including the Hudson Institute, Sagamore Institute and Fraser Institute. An award-winning writer, Dowd has been interviewed by Fox News Channel, Cox News Service, The Washington Times, The National Post, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and numerous radio programs across North America. In addition, his work has been quoted by and/or reprinted in The Guardian, CBS News, BBC News and the Council on Foreign Relations. Dowd holds degrees from Butler University and Indiana University. Follow him at twitter.com/alanwdowd.

ASCF News

Scott Tilley is a Senior Fellow at the American Security Council Foundation, where he writes the “Technical Power” column, focusing on the societal and national security implications of advanced technology in cybersecurity, space, and foreign relations.

He is an emeritus professor at the Florida Institute of Technology. Previously, he was with the University of California, Riverside, Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute, and IBM. His research and teaching were in the areas of computer science, software & systems engineering, educational technology, the design of communication, and business information systems.

He is president and founder of the Center for Technology & Society, president and co-founder of Big Data Florida, past president of INCOSE Space Coast, and a Space Coast Writers’ Guild Fellow.

He has authored over 150 academic papers and has published 28 books (technical and non-technical), most recently Systems Analysis & Design (Cengage, 2020), SPACE (Anthology Alliance, 2019), and Technical Justice (CTS Press, 2019). He wrote the “Technology Today” column for FLORIDA TODAY from 2010 to 2018.

He is a popular public speaker, having delivered numerous keynote presentations and “Tech Talks” for a general audience. Recent examples include the role of big data in the space program, a four-part series on machine learning, and a four-part series on fake news.

He holds a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Victoria (1995).

Contact him at stilley@cts.today.

US Dismisses Visa Fraud Charges Against Chinese Scientists

Monday, July 26, 2021

Categories: ASCF News Cyber Security

Comments: 0

Source: https://www.voanews.com/usa/us-dismisses-visa-fraud-charges-against-chinese-scientists

The U.S. Department of Justice headquarters building in Washington.

A U.S. Justice Department program aimed at protecting American technology from China dropped five prosecutions of Chinese scientists after a draft of an internal FBI analysis questioned a main premise for the investigations, according to court documents.

The “China Initiative” had been criticized by civil liberties advocates as racially biased, and judges in several court proceedings had expressed skepticism about the FBI’s tactics in interrogating the scientists.

On Thursday and Friday, the U.S. government filed motions in federal courts to dismiss charges in five cases of Chinese researchers arrested on visa fraud charges last year. All pleaded not guilty of falsifying visa applications to conceal military ties as well as other charges.

The motions to dismiss the cases coincide with the visit of U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman to China on Sunday and Monday.

Shift in political climate

All five arrests occurred about a year ago when U.S.-China relations were at a nadir, and now the world's two largest economies are seeking to navigate a troubled relationship.

The Justice Department said in a statement that it was dismissing the cases in the “interest of justice.”

U.S.-based Chinese officials could not immediately be reached for comment on the development.

“Recent developments in a handful of cases involving defendants with alleged, undisclosed ties to the People’s Liberation Army of the People’s Republic of China have prompted the department to re-evaluate these prosecutions," a statement by Justice Department spokesperson Wyn Hornbuckle said, without detailing what those developments were.

Court documents filed this month in two cases included FBI draft analysis that questioned how useful the investigation was in safeguarding technology developed in the United States. The report said that the visa application question about military service that ensnared the scientists was unclear.

The analysis was written in reaction to the China Tech Transfer Analysis Unit at the FBI being nominated in February for an award based on the “high impact” of the “arrests of the PLA students.” PLA refers to the Chinese military. The FBI unit leader disagreed on the impact of the arrests and removed the unit from the award nominations, according to the court documents.

Trial was near

Asked about the court filing, a Justice Department official answered by email that the “draft analysis prompted follow-up questions and requests from defense counsel that we could not resolve" ahead of trial. One of the cases was scheduled to go to trial Monday.

The official said that in most of the cases the sentences would be a year or less and that the defendants have had their liberty restricted for that time, whether in jail or out on bail.

Defense lawyers have said their clients’ only crime is running afoul of U.S.-China politics.

John Hemann, a lawyer for Chinese brain researcher Song Chen, said they were “grateful and relieved” the case against her had been dismissed and “the government has done the right thing.”

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