Thirty U.S. academic institutions have until Aug. 31 to examine specified foreign research ties or risk losing eligibility for future federal research funding.
Seven days after the Pentagon ordered the reviews, an Air Force-affiliated institute published a study cataloging 204 interactions involving U.S. institutions and laboratories at the center of China’s defense research system.
The Aug. 24 study by the China Aerospace Studies Institute (CASI) found more U.S. institution-level interactions with China’s Defense Science and Technology Key Laboratories than those involving institutions from any other country.
CASI describes the Defense Science and Technology Key Laboratories as China’s highest level national laboratory network for military research. The contacts it identified ranged from academic visits and conferences to coauthored technical research and formal joint laboratories in fields including aero-engines, underwater sensing, hyperspectral target detection, advanced communications, and aerospace materials.
CASI described interactions between Western researchers and Chinese military laboratories as “at the very least problematic,” saying even seemingly benign exchanges could give Chinese defense researchers access to knowledge and technology useful to the People’s Liberation Army.
CASI Director Brendan Mulvaney told The Epoch Times that institutional collaborations-including joint laboratories, long-term partnerships, and mutual study or training agreements-were the most concerning because they represented sustained cooperation rather than one-off encounters.
The Pentagon’s Aug. 17 order directs 30 U.S. institutions to review academic, financial, and research relationships with foreign entities of concern and report what action they have taken by Aug. 31.
The Pentagon did not publicly identify the schools. According to a list DefenseScoop obtained from a U.S. official, Harvard University, MIT, the University of California-Berkeley, Duke University, Penn State, the University of Texas at Austin, New York University, and the University of Southern California are among institutions on that list that also appear in CASI’s records.
The Pentagon has not said that the relationships identified by CASI prompted the Aug. 17 notices.
Purdue and Beihang Built Joint Research Labs
In 2011, Purdue and Beihang formally established the BUAA-Purdue Joint Laboratory on Energy Systems and the BUAA-Purdue Joint Laboratory on Low Emissions Combustion.
Then-Purdue President France Córdova and Beihang President Huai Jinpeng signed the agreements.
The energy laboratory paired Purdue’s computational modeling with Beihang’s experimental capabilities. The combustion laboratory focused on low emission gas turbine combustors used in aircraft and power generation.
Beihang records also describe the two laboratories as formal joint research arrangements and say the universities discussed broader scientific research, teaching, and faculty and student exchanges.
Beihang later described the combustion laboratory within a research program that also undertook Chinese National Defense 973 projects, a state-backed basic research program supporting its defense science and technology.
CASI identified Beihang’s thermal engineering department-which oversees a Defense Science and Technology Key Laboratory for aero-engine aerodynamics and thermodynamics-as having established a joint combustion research team with Purdue.
Beihang is now on the Pentagon’s Section 1286 list of foreign institutions subject to tighter research security restrictions.
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