Higher education drives some conservatives and even some leftists crazy, but conservatives should support universities’ historic role in advancing national security interests.
Republican leadership’s ongoing investigations into national security risks involving institutions of higher education are both praiseworthy and, from a national security point of view, absolutely necessary.
But maintaining universities’ role in national security—while adding safeguards—is also necessary.
Concerns over intellectual property theft as well as ideological radicalism, which have eroded many Americans’ confidence in these educational institutions, require a full hearing and bold policy action. Particularly under a potential second Trump administration, likely actions would include some combination of new disclosure requirements and prohibitions as a condition of access to federal aid.
Existing law, which prevents nonprofit entities from providing material support for terrorism, may be strengthened. Also likely are many more conditions surrounding foreign funding and foreign students. Such safeguards are critical, especially in research fields critical to strategic security, such as quantum computing, artificial intelligence, semiconductors, autonomous systems, robotics, rocketry, and nuclear power.
However, conservatives in Congress need to be careful not to overreach accidentally. Federal funding of both basic and advanced research is crucial to maintaining the U.S. military’s technological supremacy. Until military institutions are able to conduct this research on their own, these vital public-private partnerships must continue.
This system was built up explicitly for national security purposes as the U.S. mobilized for World War II. Our university system remains the world’s leader, and conservatives should remember the decisive role it has played time and again to advance innovations critical to defending Americans and our allies.
Currently, the Defense Department supports 10 federally funded research and development centers and 15 university-affiliated research center laboratories, which the Pentagon says “are established and funded to meet special long-term engineering, research, development, or other analytic needs that cannot be met as effectively by government or other private-sector resources.”
Liberals tend to hate these relationships and long have fought to end them. Conservatives must protect them, while reinforcing some real control and common sense.
Taken as a whole, this network of labs has kept America and its allies at the forefront of the race to control and master military technologies. Three examples demonstrate their value.
First, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology hosts both the MIT Lincoln Laboratory, which conducts research directly for the Defense Department’s Research and Engineering Office, and the MIT Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies, which specifically serves the Army.
Lincoln Lab was founded in 1951 to establish the first American air defense systems for the new postwar nuclear era. It since has contributed hundreds of innovations over more than seven decades to the Defense Department. Many of these innovations—such as more effective air traffic control—have had significant consumer “spillover effects” for everyday Americans.
The Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies was established in 2002 to build a “team of MIT, Army, industry, and other partners working together to discover and field technologies that dramatically improve the protection, survivability, and mission capabilities of the warfighter and of warfighter-supporting platforms and systems.”
In 2023, professor Moungi Bawendi, a researcher at the institute, won the Nobel Prize in chemistry for his work on techniques to generate quantum dots of uniform size and color for use in digital displays, especially in biomedical imaging.
Second, the Georgia Institute of Technology hosts the Georgia Tech Research Institute, primarily sponsored by the Army. Founded in 1995, it has grown to include laboratories “on and off the main campus with more than 20 field offices around the nation.”
The Georgia institute has a long track record of contributions to national defense, including development of integrated defensive avionics software, or IDAS, and digital crystal video receivers, as well as critical work on upgrades to special operations helicopters.
Finally, the National Strategic Research Institute at the University of Nebraska primarily serves U.S. Strategic Command and is the only university-affiliated research center lab “sponsored by a unified combatant command.”
Although these partnerships continue to be critical for national security, new laws and regulations must strengthen the universities’ own security.
Georgia Tech currently is under congressional investigation for its links to China’s Tianjin University, which in turn has ties to the People’s Liberation Army. And in September 2020, the University of Nebraska wisely closed down a Confucius Institute that was part of China’s broader networked effort to distribute pro-Chinese Communist Party propaganda and spy on sensitive research.
The Chinese Communist Party also has successfully exploited both federally funded research and development centers and university-affiliated research centers, as well as influenced the roles of the federally funded R&D centers and the National Institutes of Health in COVID-19 pandemic response.
China’s aggressiveness and success in these cases further demonstrate the pressing national security need to add layers of protection.
Clearly, proactive efforts by universities have been far from enough. Besides, many schools flout state or federal requirements to report foreign funding and relationships, and the Biden-Harris administration isn’t taking disclosure requirements seriously.
At minimum, federal policy should require that, as a condition of maintaining a critical research center at a civilian university, the school must have zero relationship or funding with a “country of concern” such as China. The university also must exclude citizens of those countries from participating in federally funded or university-affiliated research centers as well as other clearly defined, critical research.
China’s history of spying and influence is too great to be more deferential to the communist regime.
The prospect of losing all federal funding for a research center should continue to be a major incentive for compliance. If a university loses funding for a center because it refuses to sufficiently safeguard its research, this outcome is correct. Another institution will pick up the lucrative grant—and likely include faculty members from the first institution that lost it.
Directing an end to cooperation with America’s antagonists and enemies, and their agents and likely agents, doesn’t mean ending valid and secure programs altogether. The programs must continue, but lax universities shouldn’t expect the federal gravy train to last forever without accountability for security.
Indeed, the effectiveness of American universities is the core reason the schools are targeted by spies for China and elsewhere. The rekindling of great power competition requires America’s sharpest minds to pull their weight once again.
As congressional Republicans conduct their investigations and propose reforms, they should place greater focus on creating strong incentives for universities to protect their programs as they provide for the national defense.
With so much at stake, the answer isn’t to end the federal programs, but to reinstitute and strengthen information security and control.