Universities warn researchers of ‘brutal blackmail’

Hostile intelligence services will stop at nothing in the hunt for sensitive knowledge, experts tell Dutch public broadcaster NOS. They can exert pressure on researchers and even blackmail them.

Scientists travelling to conferences abroad can get arrested because drugs suddenly 'appear' in their luggage, or they get involved in a traffic accident and are blamed for it.

Such things can also happen in the Netherlands. Universities requested security advisors to provide information to researchers, and their main piece of advice is to ring the alarm as soon as they find themselves in a situation that could get them into trouble.

Screening
Knowledge security is a sensitive subject in academia and politics. The previous cabinet was working on a screening programme for researchers working in sensitive fields, and the current cabinet is taking over the baton.

Some 10,000 Master's students and researchers will be subject to screening each year because they are interested in sensitive fields. However, since the government is forbidden by law to discriminate, the screening can't only target countries such as China and North Korea. It must also target European and Dutch people studying and working at Dutch universities.

Defining which fields of expertise should be targeted is proving to be a problem. How does one make a sensible distinction to not have to check everyone, yet still stop dangerous people from causing any damage? Institutions like the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) fear that the screening will become too strict and that international cooperation will suffer as a result.

Knowledge Security Desk
In 2022, the government opened a special Knowledge Security Office where universities and universities of applied sciences can go if they have any questions, which happens about 150 times a year. Universities have also set up their own committees and procedures to improve knowledge security.

The NOS report starts by saying that hundreds of international collaborations have been stopped short due to concerns about knowledge security. It is difficult to judge whether that is too much. After all, there is no way to know which of the cancelled partnerships were, indeed, dangerous; neither can we know how many dangerous collaborations were allowed to proceed after all.