Pentagon Orders 30 U.S. Universities to Audit Foreign Partnerships on National Security Grounds
Key Takeaways
- •The Defense Department says the universities must complete audits of their foreign partnerships within two weeks or face potential funding cuts.
- •The Pentagon says the review is aimed at protecting federally funded research from theft or exploitation.
- •A U.S. official said Harvard, MIT and Johns Hopkins are among the schools covered by the order.
- •The Pentagon recently updated a list of 130 foreign institutions it says pose a risk to U.S.-funded research, with most of them located in China.
- •The Chinese embassy criticized the U.S. approach as politicizing academic exchanges and urged an open environment for scientific cooperation.
The Department of Defense has directed 30 U.S. universities to audit their partnerships with foreign universities and military training institutions — most of them Chinese — as the Trump administration intensifies its scrutiny of China's expanding global influence.
Schools that fail to complete the review and terminate any arrangements deemed problematic within the next two weeks risk losing funding. The Pentagon said Monday that the goal is to protect taxpayer-funded research from theft and exploitation. For major research universities, that leverage is considerable: federal agencies finance a substantial share of the science and engineering research conducted on U.S. campuses, making even the threat of withheld funding a significant institutional risk.
"The Department of War has zero tolerance for academic partnerships that compromise our national security," Emil Michael, the Pentagon's chief technology officer, said in a news release.
The release did not name the schools, but a U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters, said they include Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Johns Hopkins University. The schools did not immediately respond to emails from The Associated Press seeking comment.
Sarah Spreitzer, vice president at the American Council on Education, which represents college and university presidents, raised concerns that the announcement suggests — without any evidence — that the schools are engaged in wrongdoing.
The order follows the Pentagon's release last month of an updated list of 130 foreign institutions it accused of engaging in "activities that increase the likelihood of U.S. government-funded research and development efforts being misappropriated." While the vast majority were Chinese, such as the University of Science and Technology of China and the country's Academy of Military Medical Sciences, several Iranian and Russian institutions also appeared on the list.
The first version of the list was developed during Trump's first term with the help of the American Council on Education, Spreitzer said. Most of the council's member institutions moved away from research partnerships with those institutions in the years that followed, she said, adding that she worries U.S. schools will be held liable for partnerships that predate the creation of the list.
"We don't appreciate the implication that we are not good partners on research security, given that we helped create this list, and given that we've always partnered with the federal government when there has been national security concerns," she said.
The scrutiny echoes an earlier chapter from Trump's first term, when the Justice Department's "China Initiative" brought criminal cases against academics over undisclosed ties to Chinese institutions before being abandoned in 2022 amid criticism that it chilled legitimate international collaboration and disproportionately targeted researchers of Chinese descent.
The audit comes as the Trump administration continues to express deep concern about China's activities in the Americas — pushing back on Chinese ownership of ports at either end of the Panama Canal, infrastructure projects funded by China's Belt and Road initiative in the region, and Chinese investment in the telecommunications sector.
Separately, the Justice Department is investigating whether Harvard University is allowing Chinese donors to create scholarships that exclude American students, adding to the barrage of federal inquiries the Trump administration has opened in its battle against the Ivy League school. The inquiry also extends a long-running push over foreign money in higher education: federal law already requires universities to disclose large foreign gifts and contracts, and the Education Department during Trump's first term opened investigations into several prominent schools over undisclosed foreign funding.
A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy said in a statement that the country opposes what it described as the politicization of "normal scientific, educational, and academic exchanges."
"The U.S. side," the statement continued, "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."
With the two-week clock now running, the open questions include whether the affected universities complete their reviews in time, whether any of them lose Pentagon funding as a result, and whether the audit expands beyond the 30 institutions now under order.
Associated Press writer Collin Binkley contributed to this report. The Associated Press' education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations; AP is solely responsible for all content. This story was originally published by Fortune: https://fortune.com/2026/08/19/pentagon-audit-foreign-university-partnerships-national-security/
