House report finds Pentagon research partnerships are exploited by Beijing, used to strengthen China's military
Sensitive research funded by the Department of Defense is being funneled to Beijing through university partnerships, a House report has found.
Many of the technologies lawmakers highlighted concern advanced fields that could give the People's Liberation Army an advantage against the United States military.
A new House investigation has revealed that U.S. taxpayer dollars are helping Beijing build its military advantage through Pentagon-funded research projects at American universities.
The Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party released an 80-page report, Fox in the Henhouse, showing that the Defense Department has poured billions into research partnerships that ended up strengthening Beijing’s military edge. The investigation tracked more than 1,400 Pentagon-backed research papers published between mid-2023 and mid-2025. Over half were co-authored with Chinese universities and labs connected to China’s defense industry.
Research funded by the Pentagon has touched on some of the most sensitive areas of national defense, including nuclear science, hypersonic propulsion, semiconductors, and artificial intelligence. In many cases, Chinese researchers on these projects held dual appointments at state-run laboratories that serve China’s defense industry, raising red flags about direct technology transfer from U.S. campuses to Beijing’s military.
Hypersonic technology, which Beijing uses in the development of advanced high-speed missiles, poses a significant challenge to U.S. force projection in the waters surrounding China.
Some of these hypersonic missiles, dubbed “carrier killers,” are seen as a direct threat to the United States’ aircraft carrier-centered fleets.
The committee argues this research pipeline has provided Beijing with direct leverage over cutting-edge technologies that the Pentagon itself has labeled critical to future warfighting. Far from benign scientific cooperation, the report concludes, these projects have improved the Chinese military’s ability to compete with the United States.
The report also places accountability on American universities, many of which have accepted billions in Pentagon funds while continuing to partner with Chinese schools and institutes flagged by the U.S. government for security concerns.
By failing to vet these collaborations, universities have created pathways for sensitive knowledge and research to flow directly into China’s military-industrial base.
[RELATED: Education Department warns universities of ‘foreign threats’ in new bulletin alert]
To check the threat of espionage, the committee recommends ending all Defense Department funding for projects involving Chinese partners and imposing stricter disclosure requirements on U.S. universities. It also backs new legislation that would prohibit any future DoD grant money from supporting collaborations with Chinese entities tied to the People’s Liberation Army.
The report’s bottom line is blunt: unless these partnerships are shut down, U.S. universities risk becoming unwitting research arms of the CCP’s military apparatus.
