This piece originally appeared in the National Security Institute's The SCIF.
For at least five years, Congress has warned that the Chinese Communist Party is stealing cutting edge research to bolster Beijing’s military and technology programs. With recent revelations that research funded by the Pentagon and Intelligence Community is being stolen, Congress and the White House must take action to strengthen the security of the federal research enterprise.
A new congressional investigation has revealed alarming weaknesses in federally funded research activities, that “hundreds of millions” of government research dollars have contributed to the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) military and technology initiatives. These include advancements in “hypersonic weapons, artificial intelligence, fourth generation nuclear weapons technology, and semiconductor technology.” The review, which examined research programs within the Intelligence Community and Defense Department, warned that “the very foreign adversary nation whose aggression these capabilities are meant to defense against” has been gaining backdoor access to critical information.
The investigation — led by the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party and the House Committee on Education and the Workforce — attributed the issue to lack of safeguards for federally-funded research programs and weak enforcement of existing law to expose malign foreign influence in American higher education.
The new congressional investigations partly echo the findings of a series of 2019 bipartisan Senate investigations. These investigations found that the Department of Education had failed to enforce federal laws requiring the disclosure of foreign payments to American colleges, and that the PRC had exploited weaknesses in U.S. research and development programs since launching a 2008 initiative to recruit top overseas researchers. The Senate findings showed that American colleges neglected to disclose payments from China, despite a federal law requiring reporting such gifts and contracts to the Department of Education.
Following these investigations, the Department of Education took steps to enforce Section 117 of the Higher Education Act, which requires colleges and universities to disclose payment of $250,000 or more. Increased enforcement by the Trump Administration uncovered over $6 billion in previously unreported contributions.
The House committees’ investigation specifically highlighted the failure of the Georgia Institute of Technology and the University of California, Berkeley to disclose foreign contributions and noted that the current administration has taken no action to enforce the law. The investigation stated, “these undisclosed foreign gifts — likely hundreds of millions, if not billions in total — give PRC entities troubling influence without transparency and contribute to building the research relationships that pose risks to U.S. national security.”
The latest evidence of the PRC exploiting weaknesses in the research enterprise should bolster support for legislative and executive branch reforms aimed at strengthening oversight of enforcement federal laws intended to protect against malign foreign influence in higher education and improve research security.
Last December, the House of Representatives passed the DETERRENT Act, which would make changes to the Higher Education Act aied at strengthening oversight of foreign payments to colleges and universities. The legislation would lower the current reporting threshold from $250,000 to $50,000 and create new restrictions on financial contributions from countries of concern. Despite passing the House with bipartisan support, the Senate HELP Committee has not been taken up the legislation.
With few legislative days remaining in 2024, the DETERRENT Act is unlikely to pass the Senate unless it is included in a must-pass measure like the National Defense Authorization Act or year-end spending package. While not as far reaching in effect if enacted, the House Appropriations Committee included report language in their funding bill requiring the Department of Education to update Congress about Section 117 enforcement, including resources available for such efforts. The Committee also urged the Department to improve its website to make foreign payments to colleges and universities more accessible to the public.
With the support of the Appropriations Committee, the Department of Education should strengthen its enforcement of existing laws and work to make currently disclosed information — last posted in February — more accessible. (The Foundation for American Innovation created a “minimum viable product” dashboard as an example of what such a usable website could look like.)
The White House should take the lead in addressing the research security threats identified in the congressional investigation. For example, the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office reported in January that federal agencies were not doing enough to vet applicants of federally funded research to identify potential links to terrorist organizations or countries of concern. GAO recommended that the White House mandate improvement in informational sharing and vetting processes among federal agencies that award R&D funding to expose foreign influence. This recommendation has not been implemented.
The United States cannot afford to allow the PRC and other foreign adversaries to steal cutting-edge research funded by American taxpayers. This threat has been clear for at least five years, and it is time for the White House and Congress to act with sufficient urgency and force to meet the threat.
