DOE Research Security Provisions on Table for Intelligence Policy Bill

The Senate Intelligence Committee is advancing legislation to broadly update policy for intelligence agencies that includes research security measures specific to the Department of Energy.

The legislation would require that any foreign national from a “sensitive country” seeking to visit a DOE national lab be screened by DOE’s counterintelligence office. The office would then recommend whether the lab should admit the individual, with a requirement that the lab disclose to Congress whether it followed the recommendation.

The legislation would also explicitly add DOE national lab sites to the types of real estate for which nearby purchases of property by foreign entities would trigger a review from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., which recommends transactions for the president to block on national security grounds.

In addition to the DOE-specific proposals, the legislation includes a section dedicated to “economic and emerging technology competition with United States adversaries.” Among its provisions is a requirement that the president create an “Office of Global Competition Analysis” to benchmark U.S. standing in critical technologies relative to that of other countries.

In the past, Congress has sometimes passed intelligence policy updates by attaching them to the National Defense Authorization Act.