“International students” are the biggest industrial spy program there is – after the fake H-1B skilled worker visa in which foreign workers with no skills are brought in and trained by Americans, whom they replace.
“When most Americans think of espionage, we think of debonair foreign spies sneaking around military compounds—or bespectacled hackers hammering away at keyboards to steal top-secret information from foreign adversaries.
But there is an entire world of espionage happening right under our noses—at American colleges and universities.
Foreign intelligence services routinely probe computer systems at U.S. higher education institutions—and they also enlist (or implant) students and professors as assets to pass important research and findings to their spy agencies
…
The main goal isn’t typically to learn any classified state secrets (not in academic espionage anyway). Foreign actors want to steal the important technological advancements, research and innovations being created by our nation’s best and brightest researchers and scientists.”.