Cox Report Will Backfire on U.S.

by George Koo

Some "patriots" may even rejoice at this development because it creates vacancies to be filled by born-in-the-US-of-A Americans. There is one flaw with this scenario. It presumes that there will be enough qualified Americans to fill the void. In reality, not enough American children want to pursue careers in science and technology and those that do are getting a mediocre education.

In a recent internationally administered test involving 500,000 students from 50 countries, 12th graders from the United States came in next to last in math and science. Comparing only the best and brightest from each country, the U.S. still came in next to last. If we bar the door to foreigners, this nation's laboratories will be taken over by mediocre scientists.

Mediocrity does not mean American kids are not as intelligent as kids elsewhere. It is simply a reflection of the shift of American values. We build new prisons, not new schools. Installing metal detectors at the school entrances has become a higher priority than putting computers in the classroom. Jarvis and Gann have become folk heroes who released taxpayers from any obligation to invest in education -- in America's future.

It's been said that more than fifty percent of the members of Congress do not hold a passport, yet they hold forth as experts on American foreign policy. Since most are lawyers by training, it is likely that few have been near a math, chemistry or physics textbook. The Cox report shows that this has not prevented them from becoming experts on technology's secrets.

Cox and members of the select committee seem to see this nation's top secrets as little black boxes, easily pilfered by unsavory spies from China. The committee suggests an imaginative but plausible scenario whereby 1970s technology comes back to America in warheads of the next millennium. Technologists working at their lab benches, who know that technology changes at an ever-accelerating rate, may find this scenario baffling -- but they do not know the way Washington thinks.

The Cox committee even came up with a new form of espionage known as "mosaic" spying -- a horde of Asians patiently collecting tidbits of information from everywhere which are then assembled, possibly with the help of the supercomputer used for weather forecasting, with devastating effects. In the private sector, skillful collection of information in the public domain is called "good market research." But then we don't understand how Washington thinks either.

Ostensibly, the Cox report concerns the porous nature of security measures at the national labs. Its "worst case scenario" gives the committee a chance to demonize China. Indeed, China has become a way for each political party to club the other.

The "technologists" in Washington may have forgotten that the U.S. became a super technological power thanks to the fact that Hitler chased away some of the most brilliant minds in Germany to America -- including Theodore von Karman who, with his protege Tsien Hsue-shen (Qian Xue Sen) made major contributions to America's missile technology.

Karman considered Tsien the most brilliant of all those he mentored. No telling how much more Tsien could have contributed had he been permitted to remain in the United States -- but in 1950, in the midst of the hysteria stirred by Sen. Joseph McCarthy, Tsien was put under house arrest, held for nearly five years and then, when authorities decided they did not have the evidence to indict him for spying, deported to China, where he helped develop the Silkworm missile.

The Cox Committee portrayed Tsien as an early master spy from China through rereading of a recently published biography -- over the strenuous objections of Iris Chang, author of the book. The Cox Committee's willingness to sacrifice truth for the sake of filling out their picture of China deserves nothing but contempt.

It's time for genuine leaders to speak out. China is no threat to America's future. A lack of concern and action on quality education of our young is the real threat. Of course, taking corrective action will be much more challenging than simply depicting China as the enemy of the next Cold War.