Between September 2021 and August 2024, nearly 30,000 foreign nationals from three of America's top adversaries walked into laboratories run by the Department of Energy. Some stayed for hours. Some stayed for months. Some didn't even have to show up in person; they were given remote access.
The figures, provided by the office of Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), draw from the Department of Energy's own Foreign Access Central Tracking System. The numbers: 28,028 Chinese nationals, 1,608 Russians, and 304 Iranians visited the department's 17 federally funded laboratories across America during the Biden administration.
Those aren't allies. Those are the governments running the most aggressive espionage programs on the planet.
According to the New York Post, Ernst did not mince words about what these numbers represent. In a statement accompanying the data release, she drew a direct line between the Biden administration's posture and the access granted to hostile foreign nationals:
"While Iran's regime chanted 'Death to America,' the Biden administration rolled out the red carpet for Iranian foreign nationals to enter our National Labs."
"They also gave entry to thousands of Chinese nationals and hundreds of Russians, who could then access and potentially steal American research."
Ernst first sought this data in 2024. The Biden administration never responded. She had to follow up with the Trump administration to finally get answers. The silence from Biden's team is its own kind of admission. When you don't want to answer a question, the answer is usually bad.
This wasn't an unknown problem. A Senate Intelligence Committee report found that in fiscal year 2023 alone, approximately 40,000 citizens of foreign countries, including more than 8,000 from China and Russia, "were granted access to … premises, information, or technology" at these facilities. The scale is staggering, and the trend line only moved in one direction under Biden: up.
Some estimates put the annual cost of Chinese espionage at $600 billion in stolen intellectual property. That figure dwarfs most federal programs. It is not a rounding error. It is a strategic hemorrhage.
Ernst pointed to the obvious lesson that was apparently lost on the previous administration:
"After COVID-19, we should have learned our lesson about trusting Communist China's scientists."
"We know our adversaries run sophisticated espionage programs to steal research, we do not need to invite them in."
Energy Secretary Chris Wright, in a letter to Ernst, outlined the existing counterintelligence framework. Under the Unclassified Foreign National Access Program, foreigners from adversarial countries are subject to vetting before gaining access. Wright described a process that includes intelligence indices checks, with additional scrutiny triggered by the facility, visit duration, and the technology involved.
On Iran specifically, Wright noted that every Iranian citizen undergoes an enhanced counterintelligence review before access approval, a requirement under DOE order given Iran's designation as a State Sponsor of Terrorism.
"The Department of Energy remains steadfast in its mission to protect our national security, economic competitiveness, and scientific leadership."
That commitment is welcome. But the question remains: if vetting was happening all along, what exactly were 28,000 Chinese nationals doing in our labs for three years? Counterintelligence checks are only as useful as the decisions they inform. A process that waves through tens of thousands of nationals from hostile states is a process that exists on paper more than in practice.
Critical details remain unclear. There is no public breakdown of which labs were visited, which projects were accessed, or how many of these visits involved remote connections versus physical presence. The visits ranged from hours to months, but the DOE data don't specify the distribution by country or facility.
That ambiguity is the point. When you don't track it tightly enough to answer basic questions, you cannot credibly claim you managed the risk. Ernst framed the accountability gap bluntly:
"We need to know exactly how this was allowed to happen, what our adversaries learned or obtained, and make sure we establish stronger safeguards."
Ernst has been pushing on this front for years. She previously drafted legislation to safeguard American trade secrets and backed a 2022 bill aimed at blocking Chinese and Russian firms from extracting sensitive technology through Small Business Administration programs. She has also supported legislation to bar research funds from flowing to adversarial nations.
None of it came soon enough. The Biden years were a masterclass in leaving the front door open while publicly worrying about national security. The same administration that talked endlessly about "competing with China" allowed nearly 30,000 Chinese nationals to visit the laboratories where America's most advanced research takes place.
President Trump, meanwhile, launched Operation Epic Fury against Iran over the weekend, a signal that the current administration views Iranian threats with the seriousness they deserve. The contrast between that posture and the one that welcomed 304 Iranian nationals into DOE facilities while Tehran's leaders chanted for America's destruction could not be sharper.
National laboratories are not university campuses. They are where the United States develops nuclear weapons technology, advances energy research, and conducts work that directly underpins American military and economic superiority. Every visit from a foreign national affiliated with an adversarial government carries risk. Nearly 30,000 of those visits in three years carry something closer to certainty.
Ernst put it plainly:
"As our adversaries seek any potential advantage over us, we cannot give them a single foothold to undermine the United States of America."
For three years, we gave them roughly 30,000.