Pentagon declares Confucius Institutes a US security threat

Key takeaways

• The Pentagon has formally designated China-funded Confucius Institutes a threat to US national security, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in a video posted on X on Friday, 23 October 2026.
• Hegseth said "80 new propaganda cells across 30 universities" had appeared under different names and charters, and that the department dismantled all of them over the past two months.
• The announcement follows a 19 October report on research security audits at 30 US universities that produced more than 80 termination-related actions.
• Congress first cut Pentagon funding tied to Confucius Institutes in the fiscal 2019 defence bill; the number of institutes fell from about 100 in 2019 to fewer than five by 2023, according to the GAO.
• The Chinese embassy in Washington did not respond to a Reuters request for comment, and no official reaction from Beijing had been reported at the time of writing.

Pentagon designates Confucius Institutes a national security threat

The Pentagon has designated China-funded Confucius Institutes a threat to US national security. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in a video on Friday that 80 renamed successor groups appeared at 30 universities and that the department dismantled them all over the past two months.

In a post on X, Hegseth wrote that the department "has designated Confucius Institutes as a threat to our national security." The Trump administration uses the secondary title "Department of War" for the Defense Department, and Hegseth's account appears as Secretary of War.

Hegseth described the groups as "sleeper organisations" and said their mission was to "steal intellectual property and to infiltrate the minds of American students," according to Al Jazeera. He said the department had "systematically dismantled every single one of these organisations" over the past two months. These are the secretary's own characterisations; neither the department nor the outlets that reported the announcement have published a list of the 80 groups or evidence for each case.

The numbers Hegseth gave, and what they match

The figures in the video line up closely with a research security exercise the department completed earlier in October. On 19 October, the Pentagon said security reviews it had ordered at 30 universities resulted in more than 80 actions to end or limit research partnerships flagged as potential risks, DefenseScoop and The Epoch Times reported.

The Epoch Times said those reviews covered entities on the restricted list maintained under Section 1286 of the fiscal 2019 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), plus groups linked to rebranded Confucius Institutes. It noted, however, that the department's 19 October report spoke of "more than 80 actions" on research partnerships, while Hegseth spoke of "80 new propaganda cells". The two framings have not been formally reconciled by the department.

Which universities were audited

The department has not said which campuses hosted the 80 groups Hegseth described. The 30 institutions in the August audit round, as listed by DefenseScoop, included Harvard, MIT, Georgetown, Duke, Cornell, Johns Hopkins, UC Berkeley, UCLA, NYU and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, among others. Being audited does not mean an institution hosted a successor group or broke the law; the Pentagon said all 30 "have fully mitigated identified relationships with foreign entities of concern."

The department singled out seven institutions, including Penn State, UT Austin and Virginia Tech, for going "above and beyond" minimum compliance. Emil Michael, the Pentagon's under secretary for research and engineering, warned that institutions failing to meet research security standards "are on notice", signalling a possible second wave of audits.

What the designation means for US universities

For universities, the practical effect runs through federal research money. Three layers of law and policy already apply:

• FY2019 NDAA, Section 1091. The act (Public Law 115-232, H.R. 5515) bars Pentagon funds for Chinese language instruction provided by a Confucius Institute and, separately, for Chinese language programmes at institutions that host one, unless a waiver is granted.
• FY2021 NDAA, Section 1062. A broader bar on Pentagon funding to universities hosting Confucius Institutes, again with a waiver process. Department guidance from March 2023 says schools cleared under the Section 1062 waiver may still face the Section 1091 prohibition.
• Section 1286 list. The Pentagon may not fund fundamental research that involves collaboration with entities on this list, which covers grants, contracts and other assistance to universities, according to DefenseScoop.

The new designation targets the renamed programmes that, in Hegseth's account, sidestepped those rules. Universities that keep ties to such groups risk losing access to Defense Department research funding, according to the department's statements reported by DefenseScoop. The Pentagon has not published the legal text of the designation itself or explained how it differs from the existing restricted list.

Beijing's response

The Chinese embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment from Reuters, and no response from China's foreign ministry had been reported at the time of writing. Dimsum Daily likewise reported that Chinese officials had not immediately responded.

Any reaction to this week's step would arrive amid wider friction over US curbs on Chinese technology, including the FCC move to block devices with Chinese surveillance chips and a Treasury rule restricting US investment in Chinese AI firms.

History of Confucius Institute closures since 2019

Confucius Institutes first appeared on US campuses in 2004. They were funded and run through Hanban, an office under China's Ministry of Education, The Epoch Times reported, and their US count peaked at 118 in 2017.

The decline accelerated after the 2018 defence bill. In August 2020, then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo designated the Confucius Institute US Center a foreign mission under the Foreign Missions Act. By October 2023, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that the number of institutes at US colleges had fallen from about 100 in 2019 to fewer than five.

In a GAO survey of 74 schools, more than 60% said the potential loss of, or ineligibility for, federal funding contributed "to a great extent" to their decision to close. After closing, 43 schools said they supported Chinese language teaching through their own academic departments, 16 through US government-sponsored programmes, and 12 through Taiwanese entities, according to the GAO.

Critics in Congress argued that some programmes later reappeared under new names. Representative John Moolenaar, chair of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, welcomed the October audit results, saying US taxpayer dollars "should never subsidize China's military ambitions."

What it means

The designation is mainly a political and administrative signal: the classic Confucius Institute model had already almost vanished from US campuses by 2023. Its real target is the successor programmes, and its main lever is the threat to cut Pentagon research money.

Several questions remain open. The department has not named the 80 groups or the universities that hosted them, has not explained the legal mechanism behind the designation, and has not said whether any university will lose funding. Universities with Chinese partnerships, including language programmes run with other partners, can expect closer scrutiny if the promised second round of audits goes ahead.

For US-China relations, the step adds an education front to a long list of tech and investment restrictions. How Beijing answers, and whether other agencies follow the Pentagon, will show whether this stays a campus compliance issue or becomes a wider diplomatic dispute. More coverage is in our World section.

Sources

• Al Jazeera (with Reuters, AFP): Pentagon designates Confucius Institutes a national security threat
• Reuters via US News: Pentagon designates Confucius Institutes in US a national security threat
• Pete Hegseth (@SecWar) on X: designation announcement
• The Epoch Times: Pentagon designates Confucius Institutes a national security threat
• DefenseScoop: Pentagon research security audits of 30 universities (19 Oct 2026)
• Dimsum Daily: Pentagon brands China-funded Confucius Institutes a national security threat
• US Department of Defense, Office of the CTO: Section 1286 list
• Congress.gov: H.R. 5515, John S. McCain NDAA for Fiscal Year 2019
• US Department of Defense: Confucius Institute Waiver Program Guidance (March 2023)
• GAO-24-105981: With nearly all US Confucius Institutes closed, some schools sought alternative language support