Oops, I read PLO rather than PLA. In any case, the Chinese are actually they're pretty open about their intentions. They are now encouraging their ex-pat scientists and grad students to go back home and are providing incentives to do so. We get much more from importing bright people in anycase. I would prefer to get more of them to stay. The family friend I wrote about in my earlier post was recruited by Chinese agents and offered $1 million dollars to disclose what he knew about lasers and high speed semi-conductors. They even threatened to confiscate his new factory in Shanghai. He refused and reported this contact to the FBI as per his post employment contract terms and post security clearance requirements. Of course he's ethnic Chinese from Vietnam like myself, so he hates Communists as much as I do.
I'm not going to sit here and deny that there are spies and moles. There are and I hate them worse than anyone because it casts apsersions on myself and other loyal immigrant-citizens. But I'm going to stand by what I said about corporate security. If it's valuable, it's probably closely guarded and if it's not then it is not worth sweating over.
So are you saying that you knowingly hired PRC spies and covert military through your H1B program? Or was it just paranoia?
The people I hired were likely not spies, although I cannot know for certain. The characteristics of the security check were such that, a nominal effort on the part of any operatives to falsify their actual status vis a vis active duty in the PLA or intel ops combined with their "legend" (e.g. public career profile) would likely not have been detected by the screen. With the exception of direct DoD contractors under tighter controls, the vast majority of US corporations do not, as a goal, seek to prevent hostile military or intel ops from being hired. They have not even considered the threat, let alone taken action against it. Therefore, at corporations who are themselves often non-DoD controlled suppliers to DoD primes, or, are simple commercial firms, the opportunity for hostile operatives to have been embedded is immense. Benes to the Communist powers are not only industrial epsionage of prescribed, export controlled dual use items, but also, placement of ops who now have access to key financial data systems and IT systems, and who can effect massive economic or cyber attack on command. War by other means - classic Sun Tzu thought.