Japanese startup Fronteo is fighting against technology leakage. The new AI tool is already working
The system analyzes their funding sources and scientific connections, and then assigns a numerical threat rating, reports the Nikkei news agency.
The system was created in cooperation with the Japan Institute of Public Health. Fronteo intends to donate it to several dozen Japanese research institutes by the end of the year. The tool's operation is based on the analysis of approximately 300 million scientific publications using artificial intelligence. The system detects connections between co-authors and their institutions, and compares them with the Japanese Ministry of Economy's suspicious entity lists and the U.S. Department of State's sanctions lists, in particular regarding Iran and Russia.
A researcher is considered high-risk if he or she received funding from military sources in “countries of concern” – primarily China and North Korea – or conducted joint work with specialists affiliated with these countries.
Tests have shown that for the average Japanese biomedical scientist, the risk of leakage is about 1 percent. In the case of the researcher sentenced last year for the illegal transfer abroad of data on research on fluorine compounds from the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Technologies, the system indicated an indicator of up to 43%.
The development of the tool coincided with tightening state regulations. In March, the Japanese government included a “research security” requirement in its science policy guidelines for the first time – universities and state research institutes are obliged to monitor the cooperation of individual scientists that could lead to unauthorized technology transfers. Violations may result in exclusion from competitions for state financing. Similar actions are also being taken in the USA – a Harvard specialist dealing with nanoparticles was recently convicted of concealing Chinese financing of his project.
In 2024, Russian engineer Gierman Aksionov was detained in the Netherlands for industrial espionage in the microelectronics sector – for several years he had stolen documents from ASML and NXP and transferred them to Russia, receiving tens of thousands of euros in remuneration.
