The US Department of Defense (DoD) has given 30 US research universities until the end of the month to audit, and potentially cease, their partnerships with universities and military training institutions in “foreign entities of concern”.
If the institutions do not comply with the order, they risk losing funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Office of Naval Research, and the Air Force Research Laboratory – losses that could potentially close entire academic research groups or departments.
The order does not specify the foreign entities it targets. But a list that the DoD published last month identified 130 universities and research institutes in China, Russia and Iran that it claimed to be wrongly appropriating US-funded technologies.
The DoD, which the Trump administration calls the Department of War, also noted that its order applies to “organizations associated with rebranded Confucius Institutes” – cultural programmes associated with US universities that began in 2004.
The DoD asserts that the audit process is designed “to protect American taxpayer-funded research investments from unauthorized technology transfer, intellectual property theft and adversarial exploitation” adding that it will allow the department to “better anticipate emerging threats, adapt to evolving adversarial tactics and maintain America’s position as a global leader in innovation”.
“The Department of War has zero tolerance for academic partnerships that compromise our national security,” notes Emil Michael, the DoD’s undersecretary of war for research and engineering. “Institutions that receive funding from American taxpayers must uphold the highest standards of research security, and these mandated audits will ensure accountability across the board.”
China tension
Those affected by the order include Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cornell University and Johns Hopkins University.
The DoD has not indicated why it has chosen the 30 targets for audit. However, since it took office last year the second Trump administration has criticized prominent universities over issues such as antisemitism and their use of diversity, equity and inclusion.
Harvard has received particular ire from the administration, which has cut or delayed government grants to its departments while fighting the university in court.
A Republican majority House of Representatives committee issued a report on 13 August claiming that Harvard received over $630m from Chinese sources. The report also noted that the university had created a nonprofit organization, Harvard Global, to accept overseas grants that the university itself is not legally permitted to receive. Critics deride US administration’s ‘golden age of science’ report
The DoD’s audit comes as the Trump administration prepares to welcome President Xi Jinping to the US late next month.
Reacting to the order, a statement by China’s embassy in Washington notes that it opposes what it calls the politicization of normal scientific, educational, and academic exchanges. “The US side should abandon the Cold War mentality and foster an open, fair, and non-discriminatory environment for educational, scientific, and people-to-people exchanges between China and the United States,” it declared.
Physics World contacted some of the universities affected by the order but did not receive a response.
