According to Fox News, Committee Chairman Rep. John Moolenaar, R-Mich., on Tuesday sent a letter to NSF Interim Director Brian Stone urging the agency to suspend funding for the "Safeguarding the Entire Community of the U.S. Research Ecosystem" (SECURE) initiative and to launch a thorough review of the universities involved. The SECURE program is designed to strengthen protections around federally funded research, but lawmakers now argue that some of the very institutions tasked with building those safeguards have maintained troubling ties to entities aligned with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its defense apparatus.
Moolenaar’s letter singles out the University of Washington (UW) and Texas A&M University (TAMU), both slated to receive tens of millions of dollars through the SECURE initiative. His concern is that these schools, while benefiting from taxpayer-funded research security grants, have simultaneously engaged in collaborations with Chinese military and defense-linked organizations that appear on U.S. government national security lists.
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"The program is intended to develop tools, data infrastructure, and analytic capabilities for assessing research-security risks," Moolenaar wrote, underscoring the contradiction he sees in the current awards structure. "Faculty from UW and TAMU – the same institutions now charged with designing systems and processes to protect taxpayer-funded research – have been collaborating with People’s Republic of China (PRC) defense research and industrial base entities, many of which are on various U.S. government national security entity lists, as detailed in this letter."
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The committee alleges that the University of Washington has co-authored research with Chinese institutions tied to the CCP’s military and defense sector, including organizations already flagged by Washington. Lawmakers point to joint publications with People’s Liberation Army (PLA)-linked entities, China’s Academy of Military Medical Sciences, and universities known collectively as the "Seven Sons of National Defense," involving work in artificial intelligence, advanced materials and other dual-use technologies that can be leveraged for both civilian and military purposes.
In the letter, the committee characterizes these ties as "high-risk research relationships with PRC military- and defense-linked institutions." Despite those concerns, the University of Washington is designated to receive $50 million from the SECURE grant, making it the largest beneficiary of the initiative.
Texas A&M, meanwhile, is accused of partnering with Chinese defense-affiliated institutions, including the PLA’s National University of Defense Technology and the Harbin Institute of Technology. The committee argues that some of these collaborations, which reportedly involve federally funded research, raise serious national security red flags and may run afoul of U.S. research security and export control laws designed to prevent sensitive technologies from flowing to foreign adversaries.
Texas A&M is slated to receive $17 million under the SECURE program, a substantial sum that critics say could effectively reward institutions that have not adequately insulated their research from Beijing’s influence. For conservatives who have long warned about the CCP’s infiltration of American academia, the notion that such universities would now be entrusted to design national research security frameworks is particularly alarming.
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"Institutions entrusted with U.S. taxpayer dollars to safeguard the nation’s research enterprise should not simultaneously enable foreign adversaries to access and exploit sensitive research and taxpayer-funded scientific advances," Moolenaar wrote, framing the issue as a matter of basic stewardship and national defense.
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"These joint research projects detailed above raise serious concerns about allocating taxpayer dollars for research security initiatives to institutions like TAMU and UW—institutions with documented and ongoing failures in safeguarding U.S. research from PRC defense entities," he continued, adding that it is "troubling that U.S. institutions that collaborate with China’s defense research and industrial base, its nuclear weapons programs, its mass surveillance infrastructure, and institutions on U.S. government national security lists are being entrusted to co-lead the development of national research security frameworks."
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Moolenaar’s letter calls on NSF to determine whether the participating institutions are fully complying with a range of federal requirements, including National Security Presidential Memorandum 33 (NSPM-33), Section 117 of the Higher Education Act, and U.S. export control regulations. These frameworks were put in place precisely to counter foreign influence and technology transfer, yet lawmakers fear they are being treated as box-checking exercises rather than serious guardrails.
The Michigan Republican also raises the possibility of violations of the Wolf Amendment, an appropriations restriction in effect since 2012 that bars NASA from engaging in bilateral cooperation with the Chinese government or Chinese government-affiliated organizations in NASA-funded research without explicit certification. If universities are using federal dollars in ways that indirectly circumvent such restrictions, conservatives argue, then Congress has a duty to intervene before more sensitive research is exposed.
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Moolenaar concludes his letter with four specific requests for NSF to answer by March 31, signaling that the committee intends to keep pressure on the agency. First, he asks whether NSF will pause its SECURE contract funding to conduct a "full review" of the participating institutions and to provide the committee with the results of that review.
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The letter further requests that NSF "provide the award and contract details for the SECURE Initiative" so lawmakers can scrutinize how the funds are being allocated. It also presses NSF to state whether it believes "it is appropriate for universities to use U.S. taxpayer funds to conduct research in collaboration with known Chinese defense research and industrial base entities or entities implicated in human rights violations?"
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"Will NSF update its terms and conditions to expressly prohibit the use of award funds to conduct research with, or for the benefit of, any entity that appears on a publicly available U.S. government entity list?" the final question asks. "If not, please explain why."
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Fox News Digital reported that it reached out to Texas A&M University for comment, as well as Stanford University, which is also mentioned in the letter as a participant in the SECURE program. Neither institution’s detailed response was included in the initial reporting.
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"NSF will respond directly to the Committee’s letter," an NSF spokesperson told Fox News Digital, declining to address the specific allegations in public. That restrained response leaves open whether the agency will defend its current awards or move to tighten conditions in line with congressional concerns.
In a statement to Fox News Digital, a University of Washington spokesperson defended the institution’s approach to research safeguards and emphasized the flexibility of the SECURE program. "SECURE is a dynamic program that is not prescriptive but can assist universities of all sizes and other research entities to address research security concerns. The University of Washington takes research security and integrity very seriously. The UW directs significant effort and resources toward being leaders in research security and integrity, and goes above and beyond SECURE’s guidance and recommendations. Given the evolving landscape, we are regularly reviewing our guidelines and protocols."
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Fox News Digital has previously documented a broader pattern of CCP-linked influence operations in American higher education, including a sweeping report last year that found top U.S. universities quietly partnering with Chinese artificial intelligence labs embedded in Beijing’s surveillance and security state.
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In some cases, those collaborations involved co-authoring thousands of papers with entities tied to oppressive campaigns against Uyghur Muslims, underscoring why many on the right now argue that federal agencies must stop treating elite universities as inherently trustworthy stewards of national security and start demanding strict accountability for how taxpayer-funded research is shared, published and potentially weaponized abroad.
