Aff - China Theft - CNDI 2024

China Theft Aff
1AC
1AC – Inherency
China continues to engage in industrial IP theft in commercial and military sectors.
Cullen 2023 [Frank previously served as Vice President of U.S. Policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, where he led the Chamber's domestic intellectual property policy work. He began his career in Los Angeles, working as a consultant and later vice president for FCA Company, a full-service public affairs and government relations firm.] Opinion Contributor, 2-23-2023, "Congress should investigate Chinese IP theft", Hill, https://thehill.com/opinion/congress-blog/3871875-congress-should-investigate-chinese-ip-theft/
The House of Representatives recently formed a bipartisan select committee to “investigate and submit policy recommendations” on ways to counter the threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The move is welcome — and long overdue. For decades, China has sought to weaken America, and enrich itself, by stealing cutting-edge technologies critical to our national security and economic well-being. Lawmakers would be wise to make this intellectual property theft the foundation of their investigation. Consider China’s ongoing campaign to appropriate U.S. companies’ trade secrets — the proprietary know-how that enables American firms to make everything from lifesaving medicines to next-generation alloys used in spacecraft. U.S. officials have estimated that China steals up to $600 billion of American intellectual property annually. This theft endangers the jobs of more than 45 million Americans who work in IP-intensive industries, which account for more than $6.5 trillion in economic output. China sometimes tries to obtain this intellectual property through bullying — essentially, requiring American companies that want to sell their goods to the Middle Kingdom’s 1.4 billion consumers to partner with Chinese firms. For example, until last year, China mandated that foreign car companies partner with local auto manufacturers. China has required wind turbine and solar panel producers to make a certain percentage of their products in the country. Those local “partners” frequently use this access to sensitive information to learn American secrets and, eventually, reproduce the technology without any need for a U.S. partner. Other times, Chinese nationals — often working formally or informally for the CCP — have outright pilfered trade secrets. In November 2022, a U.S. court sentenced Chinese national Xu Yanjun to 20 years in prison for planning to steal trade secrets from multiple U.S. aeronautical companies. In 2018, Chinese company Sinovel Wind Group was convicted in a Wisconsin federal court for stealing technology from its American partner. A recent report by Boston company Cybereason revealed a Chinese campaign called “Operation CuckooBees” that stole the blueprints for hundreds of gigabytes of advanced technology. Unfortunately, this espionage campaign has borne fruit. According to experts at Harvard’s Kennedy School, China is on track to overtake the United States’ technological dominance within the next decade. And the CCP shows no signs of abandoning its goals. Just the opposite. President Xi has been elevating “technocrats” specializing in science and technology to positions of authority. In fact, nearly 40 percent of China’s national policy-making body is now composed of technocrats determined to accelerate their nation’s economic progress — by hook or by crook. For decades, China has sought to surpass the United States in high-tech fields by stealing Americans’ best ideas. It’s up to Congress to put a stop to this theft.
And Chinese targeting of U.S. scientific and business is a multi-pronged attack, targeting business and science.
Yong 23 [Nicholas Yong, Famous journalist who writes about politics, author, 1/16/2023, “Industrial espionage: How China sneaks out America's technology secrets https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-64206950]
In the DOJ statement on Zheng, the FBI's Alan Kohler Jr said China was targeting "American ingenuity" and seeking to "topple our status" as global leader. Zheng was an engineer specialising in turbine sealing technology and worked on various leakage containment technologies in steam turbine engineering. Such seals optimise turbine performance "whether by increasing power or efficiency or extending the usable life of the engine", the DOJ said. Gas turbines that power aircraft are central to the development of China's aviation industry. Aerospace and aviation equipment are among 10 sectors that the Chinese authorities are targeting for rapid development to reduce the country's dependence on foreign technology and eventually surpass it. But Chinese industrial espionage is targeting a wide range of other sectors too. According to Ray Wang, founder and CEO of Silicon Valley-based consultancy Constellation Research, they include pharmaceutical development and nanotechnology - engineering and technology conducted at the nanoscale for use in areas such as medicine, textiles and fabrics and automobiles. A nanometre is a billionth of a meter. It also includes pharmaceuticals, bioengineering - mimicking biological processes for purposes such as the development of biocompatible prostheses and regenerative tissue growth. Mr Wang cited an anecdote by a former head of research and development for a Fortune 100 company, who told him that "the person he entrusted the most" - someone so close that their children grew up together - was eventually found to be on the payroll of the Chinese Communist Party. "He kindly explained to me that the spies are everywhere," he said. In the past industrial espionage from countries such as Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore was a concern, Mr Marro said. However once indigenous firms emerge as innovative market leaders in their own right - and so start to want to protect their own intellectual property - then their governments start passing legislation to take the issue more seriously. "As Chinese firms have become more innovative over the past decade, we've seen a marked strengthening of domestic intellectual property rights protection in tandem," Mr Marro said. There have been attempts to rein in hacking specifically. In 2015 the US and China struck a deal in which both sides pledged not to carry out "cyber-enabled theft of intellectual property, including trade secrets or other confidential business information for commercial advantage". By the following year, the US National Security Agency had accused the Chinese of violating the agreement, although it did acknowledge that the quantity of attempts to hack government and corporate data had dropped "dramatically". But observers say the deal's overall impact has been minimal. Mr Wang said it was a "joke" due to a lack of enforcement. Chinese cyber-espionage in the US has been "pervasive" and extends to academic labs. "It has been going on in every aspect of Western businesses," he told the BBC. However Lim Tai Wei from the National University of Singapore noted that there were no "definitive uncontested studies" on the extent of the phenomenon. "Some believe that there was a short dip in Chinese cyber espionage against the US, but resumed its former level thereafter. Others believe it failed due to the overall breakdown in US-China relations," he said. Meanwhile the US is now directly trying to block China's progress in the key semiconductor industry - vital for everything from smartphones to weapons of war - saying China's use of the technology poses a national security threat. In October, Washington announced some of the broadest export controls yet, requiring licences for companies exporting chips to China using US tools or software, no matter where they are made in the world. Washington's measures also prevent US citizens and green card holders from working for certain Chinese chip companies. Green card holders are US permanent residents who have the right to work in the country. The US is beating China in the battle for chips Mr Marro says that while these measures will slow China's technological advance, they will also accelerate China's efforts to remove US and other foreign products from its tech supply chains. "China has been trying to do this for years, with muted success, but these policy goals now command greater urgency as a result of the recent US controls," he said. With China also invoking its own national security, the scramble for a technological edge between the world's two biggest economies is only likely to intensify further. But Mr Wang reckons that the US still holds the advantage. "My cyber-security friends tell me when they hack Chinese sites, the only worthwhile tech [they can find there] is US intellectual property," he said.
1AC – Plan
Plan: The United States federal government should significantly strengthen its protection of domestic intellectual property rights in patents by amending Section 337 of the 1930 Tariff Act to include digital assets of U.S. based companies, their forced transfer, and to apply a standard of rebuttable presumption to ITC cases involving disputes with defendants based in China.
1AC – Space Race Advantage
US is losing monopoly on long range and military satellite capabilities to a rapidly advancing China – maintaining lead over space tech is key to preventing Taiwan Invasion
Decker 5/2 [Audrey; Audrey Decker is the air warfare reporter for Defense One. She previously reported for Inside Defense, where she reported on the Navy and emerging defense technology. She's a graduate of the University of Maryland; “Chinese satellites are breaking the US 'monopoly' on long-range targeting”, MAY 2, 2024; https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2024/05/new-chinese-satellites-ending-us-monopoly-ability-track-and-hit-long-distance-targets/396272/] E.H
The U.S. military has long held a key advantage over China's: it can hit mobile targets at extremely long distances. But that “monopoly is over,” the Space Force’s intel chief said Thursday. China is building a massive architecture of remote-sensing satellites to help target U.S. forces if they move to defend Taiwan in a conflict, said Maj. Gen. Greg Gagnon, deputy chief of space operations for intelligence. “It’s to provide indications and warnings of sailors, Marines, airmen, trying to move west, if directed, to defend freedom. They will now—in a way that we’re not comfortable talking about in America—they will be inside a rapidly expanding weapons engagement zone,” Gagnon said Thursday at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. China has launched more than 400 satellites over the past two years, more than half of which are designed to track things on Earth, Gagnon said. These are “remote-sensing satellites that are purpose-built to survey and do reconnaissance in the Western Pacific and globally. Satellites that are designed with a proliferated architecture, with many numbers, so that they are resilient against attack. An architecture that isn’t designed for efficiency and cost effectiveness, an architecture that’s designed to go to war and sustain in war. And the purpose of reconnaissance and surveillance, from the ultimate high ground, is of course to inform decisions about fire control for militaries,” he said. Since the inception of China’s military space arm in 2015, the country has seen an 550 percent increase in on-orbit assets, Gagnon said. “The PLA has rapidly advanced in space in a way that few people can appreciate,” Gagnon said. Gagnon also discussed Chinese surveillance capability in geosynchronous orbit, an orbit further out in space where satellites generally hover over the same part of Earth. China launched the world’s first—and so far only—GEO satellite with a synthetic-aperture radar payload into space last year, called Ludi Tance-4 (Land Exploration-4 in English). The advantage of this kind of radar in GEO is that it provides constant coverage and imagery, even through clouds and during night hours. China has said the satellite is for purely civilian purposes—a claim Gagnon refutes. “They recently put a radar imager in GEO in August. It’s designed to look at the Western Pacific, even though they say it’s about agriculture. The Western Pacific that it’s looking at is over the ocean. We kind of know what the purpose is,” Gagnon said.
Industrial espionage distinctly allows China to get the edge in digital and military technology.
Chang 24 [Gordan G., 25 June 2024, “Why Is the Pentagon Enabling China's Theft of America's Tech?”, https://www.newsweek.com/why-pentagon-enabling-chinas-theft-americas-tech-opinion-1862894 Gordon G. Chang is the author of The Coming Collapse of China and The Great U.S.-China Tech War. He has spoken at Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, Penn, Princeton, Yale, and other universities and at The Brookings Institution, The Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, RAND, the American Enterprise Institute, the Council on Foreign Relations, and other institutions. He has served two terms as a trustee of Cornell University.]
So what does the United States do in the interim?
As an initial matter, America needs to continue to attract the world's brightest. According to a 2021 report from the Institute for Defense Analyses, foreign-born workers account for 28 percent to 30 percent of America's STEM workforce. "This in and of itself is not a bad thing, because the United States has long benefitted in attracting foreign talent to augment its innovation and industrial bases," Weichert says. "The only problem is that the U.S. is increasingly relying on scientists from countries with hostile regimes—notable the People's Republic of China. Some Chinese scientists coming here are, in fact, members of the People's Liberation Army, and they are coming to conduct espionage."
Industrial-scale espionage, Weichert points out, "is one of the primary reasons why in critical technologies—such as biotech, artificial intelligence, quantum computing science, and hypersonics—China is both able to compete with the U.S. and, at times, leapfrog Americans."
Goldman argues that Washington should not cut off the flow of Chinese students and researchers into America. "The idea of quarantining China gets easy applause, but we won't reverse our long-term productivity decline without Chinese talent, data, and technology," he writes.
The truth, unfortunately, is that Chinese law codifies an obligation to commit espionage and, more important, no Chinese national or entity may disobey an order from the Communist Party of China. The Party, which has identified the United States as its enemy, demands "absolute" obedience. Moreover, the Chinese central government and the Party often coerce Chinese people in the U.S., both nationals of the People's Republic and those who aren't, to do its bidding, including committing espionage.
"No, we should not exclude ethnic Chinese from tech development, but, yes, we must vet them very, very, very carefully," said Blaine Holt, technology entrepreneur and retired Air Force brigadier general, to me.
The U.S. and China are locked in a "cold tech war," and the winner will end up dominating the 21st century. America cannot, therefore, allow China to steal what it wants because then it would not matter how many scientists, engineers, and mathematicians America graduated.
Chinese theft is a national emergency requiring immediate and extraordinary measures.
And Space primacy is key to maintaining U.S. credible deterrence.
Ikenson 21 [Daniel J. Ikenson, 2/10/21, “China’s Technological Predation Threatens U.S. Security”, https://www.cato.org/commentary/chinas-technological-predation-threatens-us-security, Dan Ikenson was director of Cato’s Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies, where he coordinated and conducted research on all manner of international trade and investment policy. Ikenson has authored dozens of papers on various aspects of trade policy, focusing his research on U.S.-China trade relations; bilateral and multilateral trade agreements and institutions; globalization; U.S. manufacturing issues; trade politics; and trade remedies, such as the antidumping regime.]
With broad, bipartisan support from Congress, the Biden administration is expected to commence an all-of-government effort to confront the profound and rapidly multiplying challenges presented by China’s rise. Exactly what the program will entail remains unclear, but neutralizing Beijing’s web of predatory technology policies should be a priority. For many years, China has been funneling hundreds of billions of dollars annually into technology research, development and production. It has been underwriting technology theft on a grand scale. And it has been extorting technological knowhow and other assets from U.S. businesses, as the price of entry into the Chinese market. These practices have made a mockery of the rules-based international trading system and have subverted the proper functioning of markets. But what compels a firm and committed policy response from Biden is that Beijing’s pursuit of technological supremacy presents an intolerable threat to U.S. security. The U.S. government restricts the export of fissile materials as a matter of national security. Lockheed Martin is prohibited from selling F‑35 fighter jets to China. Advanced technology is essential to national defense, and in the wrong hands, could be used against Americans—to spy, extort, sabotage and conduct warfare. Technology is already employed in the service of repression in China and there is a clear case for restricting its flow. Economic protectionism is never a solution. But no less sacred than the rights of individuals to exchange freely the fruits of their labor is the obligation of government to protect its citizens from threats foreign and domestic. The obligation to conceive and execute appropriate measures to restrict the flow of technology has been summoned by Beijing’s technological predation. Tightening export controls, expanding the list of entities with which U.S. companies are prohibited from transacting, instituting investment restrictions and sealing off other conduits for theft of intellectual property are among the ways the Trump administration tried to keep cutting edge U.S. technology—and the advantages it bestows—out of the wrong hands. More recently, Congress began to appropriate funding for semiconductor research and development, as well as for export finance agencies to influence the sourcing of technology in communications infrastructure abroad. The case for prudence is obvious, but the measures that have been taken are not optimal or especially effective. Overly broad restrictions can become exceedingly costly without even purchasing any security. Restrictions on exports of U.S. technology that is available from other countries buys no security and at great expense to U.S. suppliers. Haphazard subsidies are distortionary and a recipe for waste and abuse. Surely, security measures can be made more surgical, less distortionary and more effective. They can be debated, transparently, among experts. They can be subject to cost-benefit analyses. And they can be designed and implemented to minimize collateral damage and encourage the support and cooperation of allies. This is the task before the Biden administration. In fairness, it’s hard to fault Beijing for its technology power play. After all, what government wouldn’t pursue technological preeminence if it were considered realistic and essential to national security? Being king of the technological hill confers all sorts of strategic advantages—commercial, cybersecurity, intelligence and military—including, perhaps most importantly, a head start in the race to develop the next generation of technology. For the same reasons, Washington shouldn’t be faulted for trying to thwart Beijing’s progress. Staying ahead of China in the technology race—or getting ahead as the case may be with respect to 5G—is simply a U.S. national security i

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