Pentagon Wants To Curb CCP Infiltration In America’s Universities, But There’s A Problem

The Pentagon is cracking down on Chinese-linked research ties at 30 U.S. universities even as President Donald Trump has publicly embraced allowing hundreds of thousands of Chinese students to study at American colleges.

Trump said in August 2025 that the U.S. would allow 600,000 Chinese students to study at American universities over two years, even as his administration was increasing scrutiny of Chinese student visas, The Associated Press reported. At the same time, the Pentagon is requiring 30 schools to review academic, financial and research ties with foreign entities of concern, assess whether sensitive or export-controlled research has been exposed and take corrective action that can include terminating problematic partnerships, according to the Department of War (DOW).

Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Johns Hopkins University, Georgetown University, Cornell University, Duke University and New York University are among the 30 schools notified, according to a U.S. official who confirmed the full list to the Daily Caller News Foundation.

“We are acting decisively to safeguard U.S. universities and research from foreign exploitation in a way that will have long-term consequences for U.S. national security,” a State Department spokesperson told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “The Trump Administration is protecting our nation and our citizens by upholding the highest standards of national security and public safety through our visa process.”

The White House referred to the State Department.

China is frequently the main benefactor of leaked information and technology from U.S. universities, analysts told the DCNF.

“The movement of shared U.S.-funded research to the People’s Liberation Army and military industrial complex is certain,” Nicholas Eftimiades, assistant teaching professor in the iMPS Homeland Security Program at Penn State Harrisburg, told the DCNF. “Unlike the United States, there is no separation between Chinese academic institutions, industry, the military, and the Chinese Communist Party. American policy makers and government bureaucrats really need to learn this.”

China’s military-civil fusion strategy is designed to erase barriers between civilian research and China’s defense sector, allowing the People’s Liberation Army to acquire advanced technologies and expertise developed by Chinese companies, universities and research programs that may appear civilian, according to the DOW.

“Every visa adjudication is a national security decision,” the State Department told the DCNF. “In every visa case, we will take the time necessary to ensure an applicant does not pose a risk to the safety and security of the United States and that he or she has credibly established his or her eligibility for the visa sought.”

Under the Biden administration, nearly 300,000 Chinese students were already studying in the U.S. in 2024, a level the administration said it “very much” supported.

“President Biden, President Xi are determined to strengthen our people-to-people ties, including the educational exchanges,” then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken said during an April 24, 2024 discussion with students at NYU Shanghai in Shanghai, China. “We have about – almost 300,000 Chinese students in the United States, and that’s something we very much support,” according to the State Department.

‘National Security Risks’

During his May trip to Beijing, Trump brushed aside concerns about Chinese students posing national security risks, arguing that excluding them would damage American universities.

“It’s a very insulting thing to tell a country, ‘We don’t want your people in our schools,’” Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity during an interview in Beijing, according to a transcript.

Foreign students are a significant source of enrollment and tuition revenue for some of the universities targeted by the Pentagon.

The University of Southern California (USC), one of the 30 schools, enrolled 11,959 international students in fall 2025, representing 26.1% of its student body, including 5,760 students from China, according to USC.

To maintain eligibility for future federal research funding, the schools must complete the required audits and mitigation measures by the DOW’s Aug. 31 deadline.

Beijing wants to acquire and divert cutting-edge foreign technology for military purposes, including technology developed through academic and commercial research, according to the State Department.

“It is difficult to overstate the severity of national security risks posed by collaborations between US universities and PRC [People’s Republic of China] entities that support its defense research and industrial base,” Jeffrey Stoff, founder and president of the Center for Research Security & Integrity, told the DCNF. “China aggressively pursues formal and informal partnerships with US researchers who work on federally funded research. The PRC government has publicly recognized the valuable contributions these international research collaborations have made to modernizing the PLA.”

U.S. counterintelligence officials have also warned that some students and researchers can become avenues for transferring sensitive American research to China, according to the FBI.

Concerns about undisclosed foreign university relationships have also produced criminal cases, including the prosecution of former Harvard chemistry department chair Charles Lieber, who was convicted in 2021 of lying to federal authorities about his affiliation with the Wuhan University of Technology and participation in China’s Thousand Talents Program, according to the Department of Justice (DOJ).

Lieber’s Harvard research group received more than $15 million in federal grants while his agreement with Wuhan University of Technology provided for a salary of up to $50,000 per month and more than $1.5 million to establish a research laboratory in China, according to the report.

Jing Chen, a Chinese national living in Florida on an F-1 student visa, was charged in November 2025 with participating in a conspiracy to illegally export advanced Nvidia artificial intelligence chips to China through Malaysia and Thailand, according to the DOJ. His case has yet to conclude, according to the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida.

Wentong Cai, a Chinese national studying microbiology at Iowa State University on a student visa, pleaded guilty to conspiring to illegally export military-grade sensors from the U.S. to China on Dec. 16, 2014, after prosecutors said his cousin enlisted him to obtain the sensors under the false pretense that they would be used for university research, according to the DOJ. The sensors were primarily manufactured for the Defense Department and used in applications including precision motion control and line-of-sight stabilization for military-grade optics.

A “deemed export” occurs when classified U.S. tech is illegally shared with a foreign national inside the U.S.

For Chinese students and researchers, a “deemed export” means that giving a Chinese national access to controlled U.S. technology in an American lab can legally count as exporting that technology to China, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

“The problem cannot be reduced to how many PRC nationals are let into the country,” Stoff told the DCNF. “Regardless, the focus should primarily be on vetting individuals entering PhD programs, or as postdocs or visiting researchers. Also, export controls rarely apply to fundamental research, which is why the DoW recently and the National Science Foundation (soon) issued new rules that prohibit collaborations with entities on all of the various U.S. government-restricted lists.”

The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) and Penn State independently confirmed their interactions with the Pentagon.

“The University takes seriously its responsibility to safeguard the U.S. research enterprise, protect sensitive and export-controlled research, and comply with applicable federal research security requirements while also supporting appropriate and transparent academic engagement,” Patrick Wade, the director of executive communications at UIUC told the DCNF. “We have initiated a coordinated review involving appropriate campus offices and will work with DoW to provide a response to their requests. Transparent and secure international collaborations create perspectives that deepen our understanding of global challenges, promote scientific discovery, and strengthen U.S. innovation.”

“Penn State received notice from the Department of War to conduct a research security audit and has communicated to the department that that work is under way,” Wyatt DuBois, the senior director of public relations at Penn State, told the DCNF. “The University greatly values its relationship with the Department of War and shares its commitment to maintaining the highest standards in national security, research security and scientific integrity.”

The federal government has previously used the threat of losing Pentagon funding to push universities away from partnerships linked to Beijing, according to the GAO. Provisions in the 2019 and 2021 National Defense Authorization Acts restricted Defense Department funding for universities that hosted the institutes.

The number of Confucius Institutes at U.S. colleges and universities subsequently fell from about 100 in 2019 to fewer than five by 2023, according to the GAO. More than 60% of surveyed universities that had closed a Confucius Institute said federal funding contributed “to a great extent” to their decision, according to the report.

Bipartisan support for restrictions on Chinese interests in U.S. universities has echoed throughout the Senate.

A bipartisan Senate investigation found in 2019 that Beijing had provided more than $158 million to over 100 U.S. schools for Confucius Institutes, according to the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Nearly 70% of schools with Confucius Institutes that received more than $250,000 in one year failed to properly report that money to the federal government, according to the subcommittee.

Congress is not alone in its crusade against CCP spies in U.S. universities. The State Department and the Department of Education (DOE) have joined in the mission to purge foreign espionage.

In August 2020, the State Department designated the Confucius Institute U.S. Center, which it described as the de facto headquarters of the U.S. Confucius Institute network, as a foreign mission of the People’s Republic of China.

The DOE has opened foreign-funding compliance reviews involving universities including Georgetown, Cornell, MIT, the University of Texas, Harvard and UC Berkeley since 2019, according to the DOE.

Harvard was ordered in April 2025 to provide records concerning foreign gifts, grants, contracts, foreign government relationships and visiting researchers after federal officials said they discovered incomplete and inaccurate foreign financial disclosures, according to a DOE press release. UC Berkeley was subjected to a separate foreign-funding investigation days later after federal officials said its disclosures could also be incomplete or inaccurate.

“China has been quite adept at exploiting and diverting research that may have been intended for civilian applications by the US partners,” Stoff told the DCNF. “China has applied these research disciplines to submarine warfare, advanced radars and signal processing, and satellite imagery for military operations.”

Congressional pressure has also resulted in universities severing longstanding Chinese partnerships, with the University of Michigan ending its two-decade relationship with Shanghai Jiao Tong University in January 2025, according to the DOE.

Recent moves by the Pentagon shone a spotlight on specific weak points susceptible to this intellectual theft.

The Pentagon formalized a broader research-security regime in 2023 by publishing a list of foreign entities associated with activities that increased the risk of military technology leaks, later expanding that list in July 2026 to 130 academic and research institutions in China, Russia and Iran, according to the DOW.

Critics of the new initiative argued that colleges and universities were already taking the necessary steps to mitigate this risk.

The American Council on Education has pushed back on suggestions that the targeted schools necessarily engaged in wrongdoing and said most of its members had already moved away from research partnerships with institutions on the Pentagon’s list, the Associated Press reported.

While these moves from the DOW will close the gaps in the security of U.S. technology, analysts told the DCNF that more needs to be done.

“Paradigmatic shifts are needed, requiring whole-of-nation efforts to address these challenges,” Stoff told the DCNF. “I have repeatedly called for a centralized consolidation and professionalization of research security and integrity within the government to identify and mitigate these threats. To date, these recommendations have not been adopted.”

“The Pentagon’s recent directive it is just a start,” Eftimiades told the DCNF. “U.S. universities do not act in the interests of national security, and many are still actively collaborating on research with Chinese military institutions on the Department of Commerce entities list. Even, the ODNI has inadvertently engaged and funded researchers in China on Intelligence Community research projects … A more coordinated government approach is still needed.”