In 2020, the U.S. government accused the chairman of Harvard’s Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Charles Lieber, of lying to American agencies about his dealings with China.
The next year, Lieber (shown above) was convicted of lying about his involvement in China’s Thousand Talents program to recruit foreign researchers and his receipt of money from the Chinese government to conduct research at Wuhan University. In a videotaped interview with the FBI, he admitted traveling from Wuhan to Boston “with bags of cash he was paid, totaling between $50,000 and $100,000, money he admitted he never declared to the Internal Revenue Service.”
The taking of money from the Chinese Communist Party to pursue enemy-supporting research was not illegal, just the lying to the feds about it. In 2023, the Justice Department reported that Professor Lieber had been “sentenced by U.S. Senior District Court Judge Rya W. Zobel to time served (two days) in prison; two years of supervised release with six months of home confinement; a fine of $50,000; and $33,600 in restitution to the IRS.” The government had sought penalties of 90 days in prison and a fine of $150,000.
Where is Charles Lieber now?
Lieber is now working in a lab in Shenzhen, China, Reuters reported in April 2026.
“Lieber, through an assistant, declined an interview request, citing ‘current commitments.’ He didn’t respond to written questions from Reuters.”
Some analysts, says Reuters, “say Lieber’s ability to reconstitute his laboratory after a federal criminal conviction for lying about his ties to China shows how U.S. safeguards on technology with potential military uses haven’t kept pace with Chinese government efforts to acquire it. That concern is amplified because of Beijing’s military-civil fusion strategy, whereby civilian scientific resources and research are shared with the military.”
And for some reason this guy doesn’t want to answer questions from American reporters about what he is doing in the People’s Republic of China?
Lieber is working on brain-computer interfaces—that’s all. Jung Min Lee, a former colleague at Harvard, is among those who have joined him. Reuters couldn’t get any statements from Jung Min Lee either.
Biotech and semiconductors
A former U.S. official, Glenn Gerstell, says Lieber’s case shows the inadequacy of our government’s legal means of dealing with cases like this. “This is a guy who was convicted of precisely the thing that we want him to be convicted of in this context, and yet the minute he’s released from house arrest, he’s off in China.”
Many top American scientists are off to China. The New York Post recently reported that “at least 105 of the best and brightest [have defected] to the communist nation since 2024” (July 25, 2026). Many of are focusing on biotechnology and medicine, but others specialize in “space science, climate change, computers and semiconductors….
“They’ve all left US universities—or major corporations—to join what are in most cases Chinese Communist Party-funded institutions—lured by cash, with some like turncoat Harvard professor Charles Lieber promised a salary of $750,000 plus $150,000 in living expenses—and often their own sprawling research laboratories.”
Also see:
CSET: “Chinese Talent Program Tracker”
