A letter was sent from Rep. Mike Gallagher, of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin on Wednesday evening seeking an answer. The simple question in it: Why is New York’s Alfred University receiving a $13.5 million grant to conduct hypersonic weapons research when they have close ties to China? “One university in particular – Alfred – was hosting a Confucius Institute and partnering with a Chinese university ‘actively engaged in defense research’ on behalf of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA),” Gallagher wrote. “To put it plainly, DOD is funding advanced, hypersonic weapons-related research at an American university that actively partners with a Chinese university that performs similar research for the PLA. We seek additional information regarding this alarming matter and the DOD’s efforts to safeguard sensitive U.S. military research.”
Recently, Rep. Jim Banks sent the Secretary of Defense a letter asking another “simple” question… Why are colleges seeking waivers to grant Confucius Institutes allowed to do so when they are known avenues China uses for spying and still receiving federal funding from DOD to conduct military research. So far, American taxpayer dollars have provided over $17 million to fund advanced research at Alfred University although the Biden Administration is aware that the school actively partners with a Chinese research institution working closely with the Chinese military.
Rep. Gallagher is calling for the US Government to put “hard power” in the path of China’s President Xi Jinping. Gallagher told Fox News Digital that “It is not a secret that the CCP uses Confucius Institutes to project ‘soft power,’ but it’s time to shed light on how the CCP also uses these institutes to build Chinese ‘hard power’ weapons that could be used against Americans in a future conflict.” The research grant will be in violation of the law as of October 1, 2023,” per Section 1062 of the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which prohibits DOD from administering funds to “institution[s] of higher education that hosts a Confucius Institute’ after October 1, 2023.” The question remains as to why there is no immediate action by Alfred University now.
Rep. Gallagher’s letter, which comes a month after Rep. Bank’s request, asks for “additional information regarding DOD’s efforts to protect sensitive national security and American taxpayer-funded research from theft or compromise,” given the university’s Confucius Institute in conjunction with its “research agreement with China University of Geosciences in Wuhan,” which currently maintains a research center whose research area is “closely related” to that of Alfred University’s. It appears that the Biden Administration is allowing American taxpayers to fund Chinese military research in areas that threaten US national security. Intelligence analysts in Washington are puzzled about why this has not been halted immediately and funding rescinded from these programs.
This is not a new issue for the Biden Administration. The President’s own political appointee to head the CIA, Nick Burns, in a Congressional hearing on February 24, 2021, stated that American universities and colleges should “cut ties” to China’s Confucius Institutes after calling them propaganda tools. In the hearing he added: “I think what the Confucius Institutes do, and I’m no expert on them, is to promote a narrative of Xi Jinping’s China, which is designed to build sympathy for what is, in my view, a quite aggressive leadership, which is engaged in conduct and conducted an adversarial approach to relations with the United States… that particular dimension of foreign influence operations constitutes a genuine risk… my advice for any institutions in the United States, including academic institutions, is to be extraordinarily careful of what the motives are for a variety of institutions like that and to be very careful in engaging them.” Analysts are asking if anyone in the Biden White House was listening to its own appointee? The miscalculations and misinterpretation of Chinese of Chinese actions are emerging as a greater threat than in the past as agents of the CCP infiltrate more and more American institutions, draining our competitive advantage and increasing the threat to US national security.
Daria Novak served in the U.S. State Dept.
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