A congressional report found researchers at two University of Texas campuses collaborated with academics linked with the Chinese military on U.S. Department of Defense projects. This follows troubling reports about research security at UT’s MD Anderson Cancer Center.
The U.S. Congress’ Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party released a 79-page report on research security in U.S. Department of Defense-backed projects. The report includes case studies on projects involving researchers from multiple American universities.
UT-Austin
The first case study was a 2025 research paper. The committee found researchers at the University of Texas at Austin and Arizona State University collaborated with others from Shanghai Jiao Tong and Beihang Universities, both of which are linked to the Chinese military-industrial complex.
Beihang University is part of a group of higher-education institutions closely tied to the Chinese Army known as the “Seven Sons of National Defense.” Beihang was added to the U.S. export control list—Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) Entity List—in 2001.
Shanghai Jiao Tong is co-run by SASTIND, the Chinese government’s main authority overseeing national defense, science, technology, and industrial activities.
The U.S. Navy funded the paper, which purported to investigate frameworks “designed to optimize sequential decision-making under uncertainty.”
“These frameworks have direct defense applications, including autonomous systems, electronic warfare and spectrum management, cyber defense and network security, and ISR tasking, where dynamic, high-stakes decisions must be made rapidly and adaptively in contested or uncertain environments,” the committee wrote.
It found that federal law may have been violated, stating, “The fact that this collaboration proceeded suggests that key institutions either lacked the training to identify legal violations or willfully ignored their compliance obligations.”
UT-Dallas
In 2023, researchers from UT-Dallas and North Carolina State University co-authored a research paper on microlaser research with a visiting scholar from the State Key Laboratory of Information Photonics and Optical Communication (IPOC) at Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications (BUPT).
The committee report noted that the U.S. government placed BUPT on the BIS Entity List in 2020 due to its direct participation “in the research and development, and production, of advanced weapons and advanced weapons systems in support of People’s Liberation Army modernization, which poses a direct threat to U.S. national security.”
National and State
The select committee found a nationwide trend in DOD-backed research projects involving American university researchers, and the University of Texas-Austin and Dallas campuses are part of it.
The report found “long-standing shortcomings in DOD policies and practices to safeguard taxpayer-funded research” from the CCP’s military apparatus. From June 2023 to June 2025, the U.S. Dept. of Defense sent taxpayer money to fund research projects producing roughly 1,400 papers co-authored by U.S. and Chinese entities. Over half of these collaborations were with institutions tied to China’s defense research and industrial base.
The committee warned that its findings just “begin to reveal the scope of the issue” and only examined research papers published within the last two years.
According to the report, despite not being classified research, the committee found that these “collaborations span sensitive DOD research areas … which have clear military applications.” These include optical and photonic devices, high-strength alloys, and ballistic impact research.
Allen Phelps of the research security firm IPTalons has warned of this problem.
He stated that foreign adversaries like the CCP exploit academic research institutions to access intellectual property, trade secrets, and inventions, targeting both classified and unclassified research. The latter, known as basic fundamental research, is where most of America’s critical security technology originates.
Committee members said the covered examples “reveal a pervasive and deeply troubling pattern of U.S. taxpayer-funded research being conducted in collaboration with Chinese entities that are directly tied to China’s defense research and industrial base,” including those sanctioned by the U.S. government.
The committee warned these research papers do not show collaborative efforts for science alone:
Repeated patterns of co-authorship with researchers embedded in the PRC defense ecosystem—particularly those affiliated with PLA-linked universities, SASTIND [State Administration for Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense] co-administered institutions, and state-owned defense conglomerates—underscore the extent to which adversarial entities are gaining access to sensitive U.S. technology development, methodologies, modeling techniques, and system level design insights. These collaborations serve as conduits for the transfer of emerging defense-relevant capabilities, providing Chinese military institutions with early visibility into the trajectory of U.S. research and development.
The select committee report raised ethical issues about collaborating with researchers linked to the Chinese government.
“China’s publicly documented record of using technology, companies, and state institutions to carry out mass surveillance and systemic human rights abuses demands that the United States scrutinize not just the strategic implications, but also the moral consequences of our research partnerships,” it wrote.
The report criticized the DOD for lax security protocols and pointed to committee chairman John Moolenar’s (R–MI) proposed congressional legislation—Securing American Funding and Expertise from Adversarial Research Exploitation Act of 2025 (SAFE Research Act)—as a necessary security step.
Observers have raised concerns about research security in Texas-based higher education.
In 2025, state lawmakers passed research security law House Bill 127, effective as of September 1. The law creates a Texas Higher Education Research Security Council to oversee university systems’ protection.
As September approached, research security issues emerged at another University of Texas campus.
Last month, a Chinese national and former UT-MD Anderson Cancer Center researcher was charged with stealing sensitive data. Days later, an IPTalons analysis raised questions about research collaborations at UT-MD Anderson.
Phelps warned that universities are taking “an academic approach” to research security, writing papers but not taking preventive measures. “Research security is not an academic exercise,” he said.
The University of Texas System has a research security policy. Neither the University of Texas System, UT-Austin, nor UT-Dallas responded to requests for comment in time for publication.
Texas Scorecard will continue to examine research security within Texas’ higher education institutions. If you or anyone you know has relevant information, please contact our tip line: [email protected].
