New Delhi: In a jaw-dropping irony that has echoes of the infamous adage – show you one set of teeth while biting with another – a stunning US congressional report reveals that America’s Defence Department (DoD) is unwittingly funnelling billions in taxpayer cash to Chinese entities heavily linked to Beijing’s armed forces.
Between chilly trade spats and tariff tussles, this is a portrait of policy paradoxes ripped from the pages of a geopolitical thriller.
The searing probe, by the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), reveals 1,400-plus between 2023 and 2025 research papers — supported with over $2.5 billion in DoD grants — were co-written with scientists from China’s military-endorsed publicly run outfits. And shockingly, many of these partners — the likes of the ‘Seven Sons of National Defence’ gaggle of universities and blacklisted entities like Beihang University — appear on Washington’s own sanction lists, if official links are forbidden. But bureaucratic slip-ups and weak enforcement allowed the money to flow unchecked.
Titled “Fox in the Henhouse,” a reference to predators that pose their menace out in the open, the report criticises poor inter-agency co-ordination in US bureaucracy. There are rules preventing PLA (People’s Liberation Army) access, but they’re gathering dust. Sceptics claim joint papers do more than just share findings; they leak methodologies, raw data and experimental tricks — treasure for China’s cyber defences, drone swarms and hypersonic weapons.
Consider a US Navy-funded project on swarm mission planning circa 2025: It had been doing work with the University of Texas (and since 2001 with a blacklisted Chinese university) and delivered to Beijing not only the results but blueprints from an insider too, for AI-driven drones and electronic warfare. As one lawmaker put it, “American ingenuity shouldn’t be arming our adversaries.” And with cries to create stronger blacklists and legislation like the SAFE Research Act, the uproar feels like a call for answers: Is this naivety or neglect? As the rivalry between the United States and China rattles onward, hidden pipelines like these could upend the balance in ways no tariff can touch.
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