Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on October 23 that the Pentagon has designated Confucius Institutes, the Beijing-funded Chinese language and culture centers once common on American campuses, a threat to national security, along with successor programs that he said "came back disguised in new forms." "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 in a video posted on X, adding that over the past two months the department had "systematically dismantled every single one of these organizations." In the excerpts published, he said only that this was done "using the leverage that we have here at the War Department"; the department has not released a list of the programs or evidence of the intellectual-property theft he described. China's foreign ministry said on October 26 that it opposes "the targeted smearing and stigmatisation of Confucius Institutes."
What the 80 refers to
Hegseth's numbers match a research-security audit the department ran this fall. On August 17 it told 30 universities to review, within two weeks, their ties to foreign entities on the department's Section 1286 list, named for a section of the 2019 defense authorization act, and to "organizations associated with rebranded Confucius Institutes." On October 19 the department announced that the audits had produced "more than 80 termination-related actions," including "precautionary terminations involving entities not specifically identified on the list," and that all 30 schools had "fully mitigated" the relationships. Inside Higher Ed reported that Hegseth's video described those terminated programs as Confucius Institute "propaganda cells" and "sleeper organizations." The department has not shown that the two counts are the same: its own tally was of termination-related actions, some precautionary and some involving entities not on its list, and it has not said how many of them involved former Confucius Institutes.
The department praised seven schools for going "above and beyond": Oklahoma State, Penn State, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of South Carolina, the University of Southern California, the University of Texas at Austin and Virginia Tech. DefenseScoop's list of the 30 includes Harvard, MIT, Johns Hopkins, Georgetown, Duke, Cornell and three University of California campuses. Inside Higher Ed, summarizing a Washington Post analysis of 17 universities' response letters, reported that many had already planned to end the programs in question, that some of the partnerships did not involve sensitive technology, and that six of the 17 intended to keep at least some ties to Chinese institutions.
The list and the law
Hegseth said the institutes had been added to the department's "list of institutions that threaten our national security," which The Washington Times identified as the Section 1286 list. Since fiscal 2026, the department has been barred from funding fundamental research that involves collaboration with entities on that list. As of October 26, the version posted on the department's research and engineering website was still the July 2026 list, which does not mention Confucius Institutes. Congress first restricted Pentagon money tied to Confucius Institutes in the defense authorization acts for fiscal 2019 and 2021; the 2021 law bars Defense Department funding for colleges that host one. The Government Accountability Office reported in 2023 that the number of institutes in the U.S. had fallen from about 100 in 2019 to fewer than five, with more than 60 percent of the schools it surveyed saying the risk of losing federal funding contributed "to a great extent" to their closing. GAO also found that after closing, nine schools relied on their former Chinese partner institution for language support. A 2022 report by the National Association of Scholars, a group that had called for closing all Confucius Institutes, counted at least 28 universities that had replaced a closed institute with a similar program and about 58 that kept close ties with their former Chinese partner, University World News reported; that count predates the Pentagon's audit by four years.
Responses
Pentagon officials presented the audit as protecting defense-funded research. "Institutions that fail to meet research security standards are on notice," said Emil Michael, the under secretary for research and engineering, who added that "taxpayer dollars will not support institutions whose partnerships put the American warfighter" at risk. Hegseth also warned universities: "Stay vigilant. Don't allow these influences to come back in."
China rejects the premise. Foreign ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun said that "China-US educational exchanges and cooperation are beneficial to enhancing mutual understanding" and should not be interfered with or undermined. AFP noted that the institutes are presented as China's counterpart to Germany's Goethe-Institut or the British Council. The state-run Global Times quoted Chen Hong, a professor at East China Normal University, saying the U.S. rhetoric "reflects a deep insecurity and anxiety about America's own cultural influence and ideological appeal." The Chinese embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment, and none of the reports reviewed included comment from the universities involved.
This article reflects reporting through the afternoon of Monday, October 26, 2026. Sources: Reuters via Yahoo News, October 23; Hegseth on X; Inside Higher Ed, October 26; DefenseScoop, October 19; Military Times, August 17; The Federalist; CDM; Section 1286 list; GAO-24-105981; University World News, June 30, 2022; AFP via Hong Kong Free Press, October 26; Global Times.
