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Biden Administration International Affairs Personnel Tracker

John Demers

Assistant Attorney General

John Demers became Assistant Attorney General for National Security on February 22, 2018, he is currently the Acting Attorney General as Judge Merrick Garland’s confirmation vote is pending. Demers leads the Department of Justice’s efforts to combat national security related cyber-crime, terrorism, and espionage, to enforce export control, and sanctions law, to use the authorities of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and to conduct national security review of foreign investments. Demers is also leading the Department of Justice’s China Initiative, which was launched in November 2018 to counter the perceived economic espionage, trade secret theft, hacking and other related crimes specifically from China.

On China

Demers has been vocal criticizing the perceived China threat to American intellectual property, government secrets, and academic information. In December 2020, in an NPR interview, Demers warned the seriousness of the perceived China threat to the U.S., “We do see some other countries engaging episodically in economic espionage, but none of them on the scale and sophistication and persistence of the Chinese government.” As leader of the Department of Justice’s China Initiative, Demers spoke highly about the work in “educating the public” in terms of “economic espionage, theft of intellectual property and the university side.” Demers believes that the China Initiative still needs to educate the American public about Chinese foreign influence. Demers spoke about the hope that the Biden administration would support the effort to pursue the goal of “confronting malign Chinese behavior here in the U.S.” As Demers remains in his current position, it would be of interest to continue to track the work of the China Initiative under Demers.

Page Last Updated: March 10, 2021

*None of the personnel in this tracker are associated with the Institute for China-America Studies. All images used on this page are sourced from the official Biden-Harris transition website buildbackbetter.gov or the public domain.*