A congressman says he’s alarmed that President Obama’s science “czar,” John Holdren, apparently has been collaborating with the Chinese even though Congress specifically prohibited that activity in a bill signed into law by his boss, Obama.
The accusations from U.S. Rep. Frank Wolf. R-Va., came this week in a hearing of the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations.
The committee was listening to testimony about China’s espionage in the United States and “the violation of the law by the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy.”
Wolf noted he opposed the idea that the U.S. should work with China in any way regarding that nation’s space program.
“The Chinese space program is being led by the People’s Liberation Army, and to state the obvious, the PLA is not our friend as evidenced by their recent military posture and aggressive espionage against U.S. agencies and firms,” Wolf said.
His concern was raised because NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden had scheduled a trip to China to talk about cooperation between NASA and the Chinese army, and Holdren made multiple trips to China for weeks of meetings.
Hiding? Many many things would be my guess, including payoffs, collusion with foreign governments, and many other things that many presidents of many stripes have been guilty of for decades. You know I have no trust in our government and least of all at the top level.
Space is just one part of our relationship with China. Sometimes the other part of the relationship overrides space, which is too bad. It'd be nice if we could try and do something to create an atmosphere of cooperation. I think that by not cooperating with China on space issues, that limits us for ways in which we can try to have an effect on other Chinese policies and programs.
http://www.space.com/13492-china-united-states-space-cooperation-nasa.html
This is rather condescending to the professionals at NASA and OSTP, who have decades of experience in how to handle sensitive technology when it comes to foreign governments and are perfectly aware of intellectual property infringement, government-backed espionage, and other dangers. These guys are the experts; they know more than Frank Wolf about technology transfer and how to compartmentalize information.
I also wonder if Wolf realizes that if current trends continue, perhaps 50 years from now, it might be the U.S. that is desperate to open up these sorts of channels with China, which is spending a lot more on R&D and is moving forward rapidly with its own space program. You’d think that this week’s events, which included an orbital docking between the Shenzhou spacecraft and the Tiangong lab module, would be a wake-up call to U.S. lawmakers, but apparently they are busy with other priorities (In God we trust?).
