Pentagon Designates Confucius Institutes a National Security Threat, Hegseth Says 80 Campus Programs Dismantled

The Pentagon has designated Chinese-funded Confucius Institutes a threat to U.S. national security, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Friday in a video posted on social media.

In the video, Hegseth said 80 programs had resurfaced at 30 universities under different names and charters, and that the department had dismantled each one over the past two months. “It turns out that 80 new propaganda cells across 30 universities had popped up using different names and different charters, but with the same mission: to steal intellectual property and to infiltrate the minds of American students,” Hegseth said.

Hegseth called the programs “Chinese government-backed propaganda cultural programs” and said the department added them to its list of institutions that threaten national security. He did not name the universities involved, according to the Washington Examiner’s report on the video.

Programs Congress already restricted

Confucius Institutes are Chinese-funded language and cultural centers hosted on U.S. campuses. After Congress restricted federal funding for schools with the programs in 2018, almost all of them closed, according to the Government Accountability Office, as cited by the Washington Examiner.

Hegseth said the programs returned under new names after that crackdown. He tied the action to his drive to remove diversity, equity and inclusion programs from the Pentagon, describing his department as “gender-neutral, colorblind, and merit-based.”

No response yet from Beijing

The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment, Reuters reported.

Hegseth closed the video with a warning to universities: “stay vigilant. Don’t allow these influences to come back in.”

Reporting based on coverage by Reuters and the Washington Examiner.