Caroline Nowak and Ryan Fedasiuk
A recent report by the House Select Committee on the CCP issued a startling warning: U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) funding has routinely sponsored research conducted by institutions with deep links to China’s defense industrial base. More than 700 publications supported by DoD funding between 2023-2025 involved collaboration with Chinese defense-affiliated institutions – including some that had been at least nominally blacklisted from receiving U.S. equipment.
The report – aptly titled “Fox in the Henhouse” – highlights how a breakdown in interagency communication has led the U.S. government to systematically fail to enforce laws barring Chinese defense institutions from receiving material support.
Defenders of open science are quick to claim that coauthoring research papers is inconsequential. After all, if Chinese researchers can read published articles in Nature, what makes coauthorship such a threat? The important difference is that active research collaboration may provide Chinese defense-linked researchers with tacit knowledge, sensitive data, and experimental designs – insights that never make it into printed research, but that are immensely valuable to accelerating China’s military modernization.
For example, a 2025 U.S. Navy-funded study on swarm mission planning was co-authored by the University of Texas and a “Seven Sons of National Defense” school that had been on the U.S. Entity List since 2001. That collaboration gave Chinese defense-linked institutions access not just to results with direct military applications, but to the research process (such as choosing a decision-making model) in areas directly applicable to autonomous systems, cyber defense, and electronic warfare.
There is no reason U.S. taxpayer dollars should support research partnerships with foreign institutions that are building weapons for the People’s Liberation Army. The United States already prohibits companies identified on its 1260H list of Chinese military-affiliated companies from contracting with the Department of Defense, while the Commerce Department’s Entity List blocks exports of sensitive U.S. technology to named institutions. But these prohibitions are limited to restricting government procurement and equipment sales, not the allocation of research grants. This has allowed certain Chinese defense labs to benefit from U.S. funding, even while they are formally recognized as national security risks.
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