The Department of Defense last week said the 30 institutions it ordered to audit their partnerships with foreign entities of concern have “fully mitigated” those partnerships.
On Monday, Oct. 19, the Pentagon said the audits resulted in more than 80 “termination-related” actions across the 30 universities with institutions on the Section 1286 list of foreign entities of concern, “as well as precautionary terminations involving entities not specifically identified on the list.”
The department also called out seven institutions—Oklahoma State University, Pennsylvania State University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of South Carolina, the University of Southern California, the University of Texas at Austin and Virginia Tech—for going “above and beyond by quickly terminating problematic relationships” with blacklisted institutions.
“Rather than settling for minimum compliance, these institutions took bold, self-initiated steps to protect their labs, faculty, and intellectual property from foreign exploitation,” Joseph Jewell, assistant secretary for science and technology, said in the release. “Their proactive commitment ensures that groundbreaking research directly empowers the American warfighter and strengthens our Nation’s technological edge.”
In July the department published an updated Section 1286 list and on Aug. 17 told the universities they had two weeks to do an “immediate and comprehensive” audit of any partnerships with those entities, the majority of which are based in China.
In a video posted to X on Friday, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth referred to the 80 terminated programs as “propaganda cells” and “sleeper organizations” of Chinese government–backed Confucius Institutes. In 2021, Congress passed a law that barred any college with a Confucius Institute from receiving Defense Department money.
“It turns out that 80 new propaganda cells across 30 universities had popped up using different names and different charters, but with the same mission—to steal intellectual property and to infiltrate the minds of American students,” Hegseth said. “So, at the Department of War, within the last two months, we have systematically dismantled every single one of these organizations using the leverage that we have here at the War Department.”
However, an analysis by The Washington Post of 17 university response letters found that many had already planned to end the foreign programs or that the partnerships didn’t involve sensitive technology. Six of the 17 universities indicated they planned to maintain at least some of the ties to Chinese institutions.