The U.S. Congress is pressuring U.S. universities and the Department of Defense (DOD) to shutter billions of dollars’ worth of joint dual-use military-scientific programs with China.
A Sept. 19 report by the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party found hundreds of academics from China linked to institutions with close ties to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). More than 400 of these academics were funded by U.S. taxpayer dollars.
On Sept. 5, the committee released a report that showed how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) “exploits U.S. universities—and gains access to U.S. government-funded research—to fuel its military and technological rise.” The committee discovered more than 1,400 DOD research publications with Chinese partners that cost taxpayers over $2.5 billion and likely did more harm than good to U.S. national security.
U.S. universities are incentivized to maximize revenues, so they typically do not pay attention to the way in which their science could bite back if the regime in Beijing uses it for malign purposes. Professors often focus on discovering the next big scientific breakthrough and think of science as a good in itself without considering the effects of that science if the PLA uses it to invade Taiwan, for example.
A professor might get a prize and tenure after a joint discovery with a military colleague in China. Still, if that discovery leads the PLA to end academic freedom at more than 120 universities in Taiwan, the professor has done far more harm than good.
Thinking about that bigger picture is where Congress steps in. The House Select Committee on the CCP is planning to pressure 13 U.S. colleges and universities to end their joint programs with universities in China. These 13 programs typically focus on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) rather than the values of democracy and liberty that U.S. universities ought to be teaching in China.
The Sept. 5 report reviewed DOD research projects that involved PLA connections, revealing “a pervasive and deeply troubling pattern of U.S. taxpayer-funded research being conducted in collaboration with Chinese entities that are directly tied to China’s defense research and industrial base—many of which appear on various U.S. government entity lists.”
“These collaborations involved research in sensitive technical domains such as hypersonics, quantum sensing, semiconductors, artificial intelligence, advanced materials, cyber warfare, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) systems, and next-generation propulsion—many with clear military applications,” the report reads.
That U.S. tax money is going to pay for technological developments that would assist the PLA in defeating U.S. soldiers is galling. The U.S.–China “joint institutes” that the committee is targeting, according to the second report, are defined as those that operate in China, under Chinese law, with majority-Chinese boards, and aligned with CCP goals.
Astonishingly, there are more than 150 such joint programs. According to the second report, they include programs sponsored by New York University, Duke University, Utah State University, and Bryant University. Laws should be passed to shut them all down before the next critical piece of scientific information is leaked to the PLA.
These universities cannot claim that they were not forewarned. In a May 14, 2025, letter, for example, the House chairmen of the Select Committee on the CCP and the Committee on Education and Workforce wrote to Duke University about the Duke Kushan University (DKU) joint program in Wushan, which they said “is advancing China’s military and technological ambitions at the expense of the American taxpayer.”
“DKU, launched in 2018 in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), now enrolls over 3,000 students across undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral programs and specializes in high-technology fields with direct military applications, including data science, artificial intelligence, and materials science,” the letter reads.
The letter notes that these programs facilitate DKU students to visit Duke University, where they can directly access U.S. taxpayer-funded research to the advantage of the PLA and China’s defense companies. The letter also points out that the DKU website shows students in military uniforms drilling in hand-to-hand combat and shooting. “That Duke would lend its name to military training for the PRC is appalling,” it states.
Although closing these 150 joint programs is critical, and the Select Committee on the CCP should be applauded for their tip-of-the-spear efforts in this regard, the 150 should be considered low-hanging fruit. There are even more such programs, using a less restrictive definition and located all over the world, that should also be closed.
Any joint program with China that includes STEM, in any country, should be shut down. Americans should not want China’s STEM academics to switch from the United States to partnerships in other places, including the United Kingdom, Europe, Australia, Canada, and Japan.
That is exactly what will happen when the United States passes laws against U.S.–China programs.
So the new legislation should be global. While legislating against China’s joint programs globally would be more complicated and likely entail elements of extraterritoriality, the threat is not solved by simply ending U.S.–China programs. A U.S. law could be passed, for example, that increases tariffs or sanctions on any country that does not at least match U.S. laws against sharing dual-use science with China and other adversarial countries.
Defending the free world against the CCP, its military, and its allies, therefore, requires global solutions that apply to our allies and adversaries alike, not just those fixes that are, nevertheless, necessary stopgaps between the United States and China.
