Report: Chinese Military Exploiting U.S. Nuclear Research Partnerships

A report released Wednesday by the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party and the House Committee on Education and the Workforce warned that China is exploiting joint nuclear research partnerships financed by the Department of Energy (DOE) and some of the sensitive technology China stole has found its way into the hands of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

The report examined over 4,300 academic papers published between June 2023 and June 2024 produced by collaborations between Chinese researchers — about half of them affiliated with China’s military-industrial complex — and American scientists who received funding from the DOE.

Some of the Chinese collaborators turned out to be state-owned laboratories and university research projects that worked directly with the PLA, as documented by the Pentagon’s database of Chinese military contractors. Other Chinese research partners were entities that have been accused of human rights violations in China and cyberattacks against targets around the world.

The report faulted DOE for not doing enough to protect sensitive information from exploitation by the Chinese military, and for not consulting with the Pentagon and other U.S. government agencies to ensure Chinese partners for nuclear research projects were not security risks.

“These longstanding policy failures and inaction have left taxpayer-funded research vulnerable to exploitation by China’s defense research and industrial base and state-directed technology transfer activities,” the report concluded.

Rep. John Moolenaar (R-MI), chairman of the select committee on the Chinese Communist Party and a longtime advocate for tighter security precautions on joint projects with China, said his committee’s investigators uncovered a “deeply alarming problem.”

“The Department of Energy failed to ensure the security of its research and it put American taxpayers on the hook for funding the military rise of our nation’s foremost adversary,” he said.

Moolenaar has pushed for tighter controls over collaborations between American researchers and entities controlled by foreign adversaries, but his initiatives were opposed by scientists who feared such legislation could prevent the U.S. from forming important research partnerships to the detriment of American leadership in science and technology.

The report on DOE’s security practices was dismayingly similar to previous investigations from the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party that found the Department of Defense (DOD) was not doing enough to protect U.S. taxpayer-funded research from exploitation by the Chinese military. Some of those partnerships involved research into cutting-edge military fields such as hypersonic missiles, nuclear weapons, and nanotechnology.