Business Insider: China is offering US tech workers and startups millions of dollars in game show-style events…
By: Jeff Elder | Published in Business Insider
In new online tech conferences that look like game shows, the Chinese government is recruiting recession-hit US tech workers with million-dollar housing stipends, and dangling $3 million prizes in front of cash-hungry startups.
Experts say China – which is several months ahead of the US in emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic – has ramped up aggressive online tech recruiting, seeing a limited window of opportunity to outpace American companies struggling in the recession.
“They are absolutely turning up the gas while we are still in the grips of the pandemic,” says Greg Levesque, CEO of Strider Technologies. The espionage analysis firm released research Tuesday that Levesque says shows “formation of entire online recruitment structure” designed to engage American workers who find their jobs at risk. “The lure is absolutely money at a time when people here are vulnerable. You’re a sitting duck at this point.”
In just seven weeks, more than 33 million Americans have filed for unemployment insurance. Prominent Silicon Valley companies have been hit hard, with Airbnb laying off 1,900 employees, and Lyft laying off 1,000. Enterprise tech is not immune, with VMWare freezing salaries, and Glassdoor cutting 300 jobs. In this atmosphere, the cash-splashed online events stand out.
Jim Lewis, a longtime analyst of Chinese recruitment and espionage at Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington, DC, think tank, says: “China’s biggest attraction is its money, and they’re willing to spend. And that creates a tech transfer that’s not in America’s interest.” Lewis says he sees China pushing to take advantage of the current opportunity to recruit tech and talent. “It’s really intense right now.”
China views the global turmoil caused by the COVID-19 pandemic as an opportunity to accelerate overseas talent recruitment and rapidly improve China’s place in the global tech economy, Levesque says. “There’s a real sense of urgency in China right now at the leadership level. They see there’s a window of opportunity for them that’s closing.”
Six thousand companies recruited talent at the Gathering Global Talents online recruiting conference in March, seeking to fill 100,000 positions in Shanghai, Strider says. At the opening ceremony, multiple overseas “sub-venues” located in New York, San Francisco, Tokyo, and other cities joined via videoconferencing.
A startup competition called Fight the Pandemic, Attract Talent offered tech workers who moved to Hangzhou housing stipends of up to $1.1 million, Strider says, and is giving the winning startups up to $700,000 in prizes. The competition requires entrants to send scans of their diplomas and passports, which the competition says “will be publicly released to all major enterprises and institutions in Hangzhou.”
The LinkedIn connection
Microsoft-owned LinkedIn, the only major Western social media site allowed in China – with censorship – is a favored platform for recruiting, which often promotes certain cities as destinations for US talent. “Shanghai has advantages in institutions, economy, business environment, talent and culture,” reads one post from late April.
Levesque said Strider has seen increased online recruiting since March that is an effort to aid China’s economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. “I view this as a by-any-means-necessary strategy.”
That includes espionage cases in which biotech employees are paid by the Chinese to stay at US companies and provide confidential information. “Some of the recruits are interviewed by government officials who want them to provide tech expertise and intellectual property. We have seen cases of individuals who are asked to stay in place, and they are in place now,” Levesque said.
“LinkedIn, owned by Microsoft, is both another vehicle for potential disinformation and, more important, an ideal one for espionage recruitment, American officials say,” The New York Times reported in September. The Times said Western intelligence agencies have issued warnings about foreign, especially Chinese, agents approaching thousands of users on the site.
Foreign intelligence agencies have documented how Chinese agents approach Western workers with direct messages on LinkedIn, offer expertise in finding new opportunities in China, engage a correspondence, offer a paid trip to China, pay in advance for intellectual property, and commence an ongoing relationship with the worker.
China’s corporate espionage has led to high-profile prosecutions. Prosecutors allege two former Apple engineers stole more than 2,000 files containing “manuals, schematics, diagrams and photographs of computer screens showing pages in Apple’s secure databases.” One of the engineers was arrested in January on his way to San Francisco International Airport for a trip to China. Prosecutors say the other engineer was in possession of a Patriot missile plan from Raytheon, the $27 billion defense contractor.
The FBI noted the increase in Chinese government espionage in February. “The Chinese are using an expanding set of non-traditional methods, both lawful and unlawful, blending things like foreign investments and corporate acquisitions with things like cyber intrusions and espionage by corporate insiders,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a speech.
Whether it is aggressive online recruitment of tech talent or private LinkedIn approaches that cross the line into corporate espionage, the new online push by China can be remarkably effective. A March 30 press release promoting an online competition for American tech workers to pitch 5G entrepreneurial projects somehow made its way onto the website for the CBS TV affiliate in Charlottesville, Virginia. Winning startups can receive up to 10 million yuan, with 10 million more in funding. That’s $2.8 million, and a housing stipend.
Charlottesville is home of the University of Virginia, home to a 5G research center that has struggled with foreign powers approaching researchers.
Levesque, the CEO of Strider, said the press release was probably not intentionally placed by members of a dark conspiracy – but neither did it land there accidentally. Rather, it’s a sign of how effective a ramped-up online pitch by China’s government is right now, when recession-hit American workers are vulnerable.
“China’s government-sponsored ads and other media like this promoting talent recruitment platforms are going out all over the world. This placement shows the scope and scale. It’s quite sophisticated and targeted.”
