House Committee Wants NSF to Pull $67 Million From Universities Playing Footsie With Beijing

There’s something almost darkly comic about the federal government handing $67 million to universities so they can develop systems to protect American research from foreign threats while those same universities are actively partnering with Chinese military institutions. It’s like hiring an arsonist to design your fire alarm system.

Chairman John Moolenaar and the House Select Committee on China aren’t laughing. They’ve sent a letter to the National Science Foundation demanding an immediate pause on funding for something called the SECURE initiative. That’s “Safeguarding the Entire Community of the U.S. Research Ecosystem” if you’re keeping score of government acronyms. The problem? Two of the universities getting the biggest checks have been cozying up to entities directly linked to the Chinese Communist Party’s military apparatus.

The University of Washington stands to receive $50 million from this grant. Texas A&M is in line for $17 million. Both institutions, according to the committee’s findings, have been collaborating with organizations that appear on U.S. government watchlists. We’re talking about the People’s Liberation Army’s Academy of Military Medical Sciences and universities known as the “Seven Sons of National Defense.” These aren’t innocent academic exchanges about Shakespeare or marine biology.

The research topics should raise every alarm bell we’ve got. Artificial intelligence, advanced materials, dual-use technologies. You know what dual-use means? It’s the polite term for stuff that works just as well in a weapons system as it does in civilian applications. And American taxpayers have been funding some of these collaborations without even knowing it.

Texas A&M’s partnerships include work with the PLA’s National University of Defense Technology and Harbin Institute of Technology. These aren’t fringe connections or accidental overlaps discovered in some footnote. These are documented, ongoing relationships that potentially violate U.S. research security protocols and export control laws. The kind of laws that exist precisely because we learned the hard way what happens when sensitive technology ends up in the wrong hands.

Here’s what gets me about this whole mess. The entire point of the SECURE initiative is to build infrastructure that protects American research from exactly the kind of exploitation these universities are enabling. It’s not just ironic. It’s insulting. The NSF is essentially paying institutions to guard the henhouse while they’re leaving the back door wide open for the foxes.

Moolenaar’s letter doesn’t mince words. “Institutions entrusted with U.S. taxpayer dollars to safeguard the nation’s research enterprise should not simultaneously enable foreign adversaries to access and exploit sensitive research and taxpayer-funded scientific advances.” It’s a straightforward principle that shouldn’t require explanation, yet here we are.

The broader context matters too. This isn’t happening in a vacuum. We’ve seen report after report about foreign money flooding into American universities, often with minimal transparency or oversight. We’ve watched as academic institutions prioritize international partnerships and revenue streams while downplaying legitimate national security concerns. The word “collaboration” gets thrown around like it’s automatically virtuous, but collaboration with entities actively working against American interests isn’t academic freedom. It’s negligence at best.

What really sticks in the craw is the pattern. These aren’t isolated incidents or honest mistakes. Faculty members at these institutions have published joint research with PLA-linked organizations. They’ve worked on projects involving technologies that could strengthen China’s military capabilities. And now those same institutions want federal money to develop systems that would theoretically prevent exactly what they’ve been doing.

The committee is right to demand a comprehensive review before another dollar goes out the door. We need answers about how these partnerships were approved, who knew what and when, and what safeguards existed that clearly didn’t work. We need to know whether other universities in the SECURE program have similar problematic ties. And we need accountability for institutions that treated national security like an afterthought while chasing research prestige and Chinese funding.

This isn’t about shutting down international academic cooperation wholesale. Nobody’s arguing for that. But there’s a vast difference between legitimate scholarly exchange and giving military-linked foreign entities access to cutting-edge American research funded by American taxpayers. That line should be bright and clear. Instead, it’s been blurred beyond recognition.

The NSF needs to hit pause, conduct the review, and figure out whether the universities involved can be trusted with this responsibility. Because right now, the evidence suggests they can’t. And if we’re going to spend $67 million protecting American research, maybe we should start by not funding the very institutions that have shown they’re willing to compromise it.