Georgia Tech Cut Ties with China, Now Hold People Accountable

The Chinese Communist Party’s efforts to appropriate American know-how suffered a setback this month when the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) announced that it is ending its “partnership” with a Chinese university over “national security concerns.”

This is a story that deserves far wider attention than it has received.

In January, China announced it had created a revolutionary new graphene semiconductor. The breakthrough came from Tianjin University (TJU), an institution closely tied to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA). The European Defence Agency describes the semiconductor as having extensive defense applications. How did China achieve this?

With extensive help from Georgia Tech. As it happens, Georgia Tech was working precisely on this graphene technology with extensive funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Most work on advanced semiconductors is off-limits to export and foreign collaboration, but the use of a novel substance—graphene—created a loophole. Four years ago, the US Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) flagged Tianjin University due to espionage and added it to its “Entity List.”

In effect, the DARPA subsidized the development of a new strategic technology for America’s leading adversary. It is not clear why this happened during the Biden administration, but clearly the safeguards against such leakage failed.

When Georgia Tech announced that it was severing its links to TJU, the Chairman of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, John Moolenar (R-MI) commended the move and added, “It is my hope that other American institutions of higher learning who have similar arrangements with Chinese institutions will pay close attention here and likewise think hard about the impact their pursuits in China are having on America’s long-term national security.”

One dangerous door to China may have closed, but it was too late to stop the hemorrhaging of additional critical technology. The deeper problem is that Georgia Tech is only one of many American universities with both an incentive and the opportunity to sell access to America’s national security for promises of foreign tuition dollars, gifts, research collaboration, and prestige.

We need steps to hold universities and administrators accountable for selling out American security. “Sell out” might sound like intemperate language. But speak to the actual scientists at many of these universities and you will find that they come under intense pressure from their deans, provosts, and presidents to cooperate with arrangements such as the one between Georgia Tech and TJU. Individual faculty members can be corrupted too. After all, the rewards of working with China can be substantial. And the relationship can be rationalized as a wholesome international exchange.

At the National Association of Scholars (NAS), we have worked to counter the influence of US adversaries in higher education for years. Since we drew attention to China’s Confucius Institutes back in 2017, we have uncovered the influence of Qatari funds in universities, the relationships that empower the anti-Semitic “boycott, divest, and sanction” movement, and China’s strategy behind China’s Confucius Classrooms at the K-12 level. Once we came across Georgia Tech’s collaboration with TJU in January of this year, we quickly sounded the alarm and shared our findings with the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party.

We highlighted that Georgia Tech was working with TJU despite the Chinese university sitting on the blacklist of the US Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security. Last year, the BIS flagged over 13 different entities and aliases of TJU due to its national security risks. TJU was blacklisted in 2020, the same year that China’s Ministry of Education approved the creation of the Georgia Tech Shenzhen Institute as a partnership between the two universities. Given the timing, Georgia Tech either knowingly endangered national security in its dalliance with TJU or simply didn’t care. This is not a one-off episode of negligence but a problematic pattern in American higher education.

Last year, New York’s Alfred University closed its Confucius Institute after a congressional investigation discovered that the school received a $17 million grant from the Department of Defense for research on hypersonic missile technology while also accepting payments from China to operate a Confucius Institute on campus. Beijing’s language programs are a Trojan horse for Chinese interests not explicitly devoted to the appropriation of research and technology.

The case of Georgia Tech is more egregious. In 2023, the university was awarded $65 million to conduct semiconductor research while working with China’s “Silicon Valley.” The Biden administration put export controls on advanced semiconductors in 2022. As it turns out, banning China from getting top-of-the-line semiconductors matters little when a school like Georgia Tech works with China to invent cutting-edge semiconductors. Such a move is creative, nefarious, and can cost American lives. As it is, Russia is importing most of its semiconductors from China. In May, Forbes noted that China was the source of 90% of the “microelectronics vital for advanced armaments” Russia is using for its war in Ukraine. How long before a Chinese graphene semiconductor is used in a Russian missile to kill Ukrainians is only a question of time.

When Chairman Moolenaar of the House’s Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party expressed his gratification that Georgia Tech was cutting ties with TJU, he left unsaid that the committee had exerted considerable pressure to achieve this. My experience with the Committee is that it proceeded cautiously. Even “China hawks” are wary of the CCP’s immense web of influence.

Ending the risk of American universities becoming entangled with China’s subversive aims requires changing the incentives for universities, and ultimately holding people and institutions accountable. Achieving this requires penalties like fines and criminal charges for administrators and professors alike. Until there is accountability, national security interests will continue to be jeopardized by America’s “best and brightest.”