At least at the academic level, the campaign against Chinese espionage is moving forward with yet another academic arrest.

 The University of Arkansas has suspended an electrical engineering professor without pay after he was arrested on an allegation that he failed to disclose that he had close ties with the Chinese government and Chinese businesses. 

Simon S. Ang, 63, of Fayetteville, Arkansas, was arrested Friday on a wire fraud count after failing to make the disclosure on an application for a NASA grant, according to a statement Monday from the FBI and U.S. Attorney’s Office in Little Rock, Arkansas.

A federal complaint says such materially false representations to NASA and to the university led to numerous wire messages that facilitated a scheme to defraud. A university spokeswoman said the school suspended Ang and is cooperating with federal investigators.

Ang has had quite a run at NASA. 

According to NASA Shared Services Center, the University of Arkansas made at least four grant applications and three were by Ang — February 2017, March 2018, May 2019 with a research end date of May 4, 2019, and two on May 31, 2020, respectively. All three grants were awarded, however, the amount was not disclosed on the website.

The applications state the research is for 500° C Capable weather resistant electronics packaging for extreme environment exploration.

Here’s Tom Cotton’s response.

“For years, the Chinese Communist Party has bribed some of our top researchers and stolen from our best labs and universities. Yet China’s campaign of economic espionage is largely permissible under our laws, so spies like Simon Ang at University of Arkansas and Charles Lieber at Harvard typically face process crimes like wire fraud or misrepresentations on federal forms. This has to change. I will introduce legislation to prohibit federally funded researchers from accepting Chinese money. We must protect our great universities and our national security from Chinese espionage.”

This is a start.