The Trump Administration ordered 30 universities to audit their foreign research partnerships or risk losing funding. The order, issued Monday by the Defense Department, instructs universities to review their ties to 130 foreign institutions, mainly Chinese, that “engage in activities that increase the likelihood of U.S. government-funded research and development efforts being misappropriated.” Schools that fail to terminate any “problematic” partnerships within two weeks may lose their eligibility for future federal research funding. The order is intended to protect taxpayer-funded research from “unauthorized technology transfer, intellectual property theft and adversarial exploitation,” the Pentagon said in the announcement.
The announcement did not identify which schools had received the order or how they were selected, but a U.S. official told the on Tuesday that they include Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Johns Hopkins University. The order is the latest effort to clamp down on alleged Chinese influence in the U.S., including in higher education. The Trump Administration and several lawmakers from both parties have argued that China exploits U.S.-funded research to obtain sensitive technology and intellectual property.
U.S. concerns about Chinese intellectual property theft and espionage have grown in recent years. Last year, a federal jury convicted former Corning scientist Ji Wang of stealing files containing trade secrets from a Pentagon-funded project. Prosecutors said he planned to use the technology in a Chinese business backed by government entities.
In May, Eileen Wang, the mayor of Arcadia, Calif., resigned after admitting to acting as an unregistered Chinese government agent before taking office. But some observers have warned that the crackdown unfairly politicizes academic collaboration, stigmatizes Chinese academics, and could weaken American scientific competitiveness. The Chinese embassy in Washington said in a statement to news outlets that it opposed “the overstretching of the concept of national security and the politicisation or instrumentalisation of normal scientific, educational and academic exchanges.” “The U.S. side should abandon the Cold War mentality and foster an open, fair and non-discriminatory environment for educational, scientific and people-to-people exchanges between China and the United States,” it added.
Here’s what to know about the raft of policies aimed at curbing institutional ties to China. The foreign institutions the U.S. seeks to blacklist were identified by the Pentagon last month. Eighty-eight of the 130 institutions are in mainland China, while the remaining institutions are in Russia and Iran.
The list has been updated annually since an earlier version was first released in 2023. It was established under Section 1286 of the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act, which was enacted during President Donald Trump’s first term. While some Chinese universities on the list have more explicit ties to the military, others are prominent civilian institutions with extensive international research partnerships.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
