US House panel reviewing university with Pentagon contract for ties to Chinese programmes
- House select committee on China requests information from Defence Department and Alfred University of upstate New York
- Committee chairman says Alfred hosts a Confucius Institute and has a partnership with China University of Geosciences, which allegedly does research for PLA
A university in upstate New York receiving millions of dollars in federal funds for hypersonic missile research has come under congressional scrutiny for hosting a Confucius Institute and partnering with a Chinese university that allegedly conducts classified research for the Chinese military.
“You are funding advanced hypersonic weapons-related research at an American university that actively partners with a Chinese university that performs similar research for the PLA,” Representative Mike Gallagher, the chairman of the House select committee on China, said in a letter to US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin on May 31.
Gallagher sought more information from the Defence Department regarding the “alarming matter” and “efforts to safeguard sensitive US military research”.
A department spokesperson said on Thursday that the Pentagon would respond to Gallagher as “appropriate”.
Located in upstate New York, Alfred University features a leading school in ceramics, which helped it secure a five-year research contract last year with the US Army Capabilities Development Command and the Army Research Laboratory. Under the agreement, the school is scheduled to receive $13.5 million in federal grants through 2027.
The research focuses on “improving the performance of ceramic materials used in weapons (i.e., cruise missiles), which must be able to withstand the extreme temperatures that result from travelling at hypersonic speeds”, Alfred’s president Mark Zupan wrote in a blog post in May 2022.