According to a March 5 article by the Financial Times, ICL researchers have published “at least five studies with figures from organizations at the heart of China’s military-industrial complex” since 2023.
The joint ICL–China research of concern includes “material limits of a class of advanced high-strength steel ... high-powered batteries ... how heat treatment could strengthen a common titanium alloy, Ti-6Al-4V ... ‘electromagnetic interference shielding’ of a new type of carbon-fibre-reinforced polymer (CFRP) composite ... [and] how thermoplastic fibre-metal laminate (FML) panels responded to blasts within a confined space.”
All have potential military applications, according to the Financial Times. One of the coauthors from China has “published nine papers that examine either warheads or protecting naval ships from explosions,” the Financial Times noted.
The roots of the threat from ICL could be from 2015 when the university hosted a high-level visit that included Chinese leader Xi Jinping and UK Chancellor George Osborne. By 2022, the ICL was under scrutiny for links to China’s military. It subsequently closed four labs.
ICL reportedly pays Ph.D. students from China, knowing they are ideologically vetted by China’s regime before selection, according to its 2023 program guidelines. The ICL student newspaper reports that the Chinese regime requires a “rigorous review of the applicant’s political ideology” prior to acceptance, registration at the Chinese Embassy in the UK upon arrival, and voluntary acceptance of the regime’s “guidance and management” while in the UK, according to the guidelines.
Any failure to follow program requirements results in a student’s termination and return to China, where he must repay fees. After graduation, student recipients must, in any case, return to China for at least two years. ICL reportedly pays between 500,000 pounds and 1 million pounds (between $642,000 and $1.2 million) annually for all 15 scholars from China, plus one return flight each.
Some British politicians take a position against academics working with China’s military, though their shy commentary is too little, too late. U.S. politicians are a little better.
What really is needed is a cessation of nearly all military, economic, scientific, technology, engineering, and mathematical collaboration with countries engaged in genocide or military aggression against U.S. allies. This should include a ban on professors, scientists, graduate students, and undergraduates from adversary nations who could take research from democracies back to their autocratic nations and use it against our freedoms and human rights.
Academic leadership, which often claims to have the highest of ethics, has not policed itself sufficiently to completely end collaboration with genocidal regimes. New laws are required to mandate what is right, even when not as profitable as the alternative. Stronger export restrictions on military-use science and technology that emerge from universities and laboratories, including “pure science” and “basic scientific research,” would be a good first step.
