Last week the U.S. House of Representatives passed a defense policy bill that would prohibit the Department of Defense (DOD) from funding any U.S. university that has a research collaboration with China.
Science advocates vehemently oppose the provision, the latest in a series of legislative proposals by congressional Republicans designed to block China from acquiring U.S.-funded technology. But they are largely holding their fire and hoping the language will be removed from the final version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) after negotiations with the Senate, which is expected to take up its version of the annual bill next month.
It could be a risky strategy. Congress is under increasing pressure to take punitive steps against China, and universities have been accused of being naïve to the threat. “The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) will use any point of leverage against the United States, and that includes all sorts of research, even the seemingly innocuous,” says a spokesperson for the House Select Committee on the CCP, which has spent the past 18 months trying to document that threat.
The House bill would focus on U.S. academic ties to four nations—China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea—labeled “a country of concern” by the Department of State because they are seen as a threat to U.S. national security. U.S. universities with such ties could not receive funding from DOD, although they could presumably use non-DOD funding for such collaborations.
The bill would also bar DOD from awarding a grant to any individual scientist who is collaborating with a Chinese institution that appears on a DOD “watch list.” Joint projects with such institutions now require DOD to conduct an additional review of potentially “problematic activities.”
The NDAA language, inserted by Representative Jim Banks (R–IN), covers all fundamental research, on any topic. The definition of such collaborations includes the use of any institutional “resources,” wording that would presumably also bar a DOD-funded U.S. university from hosting students or visiting scientists from any of those countries.
“We can no longer sit back and allow the Chinese Communist Party to subvert our institutions, influence American students, and steal the crown jewels of American innovation,” Banks said when the provisions were added to the overall bill during a committee vote last month. Universities could apply for a waiver on a case-by-case basis, but science lobbyists say that process would be cumbersome and likely a dead end.
Though few, if any, U.S. universities currently have ties to North Korea or Russia, many depend heavily on Chinese graduate students and, in certain fields, on trainees from Iran. In 2021, DOD spent $5.3 billion on research at U.S. universities, ranking third among all federal agencies.
Many House Democrats think Banks’s language goes too far. Representative Zoe Lofgren (D–CA), the top Democrat on the House science committee, calls it “a blunt instrument that risks closing our doors to global talent and stunting our competitiveness. … Fundamental science has and should continue to be open.”
In a statement opposing the bill, the White House said the language “would harm DoD’s ability to keep pace with technology by limiting the pool of scientists that the Department engages to conduct national security-related research.” DOD already has safeguards in place “that prevent inappropriate collaboration on projects the Department deems sensitive,” it adds.
The annual NDAA, which provides a detailed spending blueprint for DOD as well as policy guidance, has historically been a bipartisan measure. But in the past 2 years the Republican-controlled House has tacked on provisions relating to reproductive rights, diversity, climate change, and other hot-button issues that are anathema to Democrats. That’s why this year’s legislation, initially approved by a 57-to-1 vote in the authorizing committee, passed on a largely party-line vote of 217 to 199 tally when it reached the House floor on 14 June.
Science lobbyists have fought previous efforts by Banks and other Republicans aimed at stopping all research collaboration with China. But they didn’t push for a separate vote on those provisions during last week’s House debate on the overall defense bill for fear that they could lose. Such a public show of support, they worry, could make it harder for the Democratic-controlled Senate to get those provisions removed during negotiations later this year to reconcile the two bills before final passage.
“A lot of Democrats think that universities need to be more careful,” one lobbyist says. “But they aren’t in favor of a blanket prohibition. So it might be a difficult vote for them.”
