Moolenaar Demands the National Science Foundation Suspend Award Funding for Texas A&M and the University of Washington

March 10, 2026
Press Release

Today, Select Committee on China Chairman John Moolenaar sent a letter to the National Science Foundation (NSF) demanding it pause funding and conduct an investigation into the research security practices of the University of Washington and Texas A&M University. In the letter, Moolenaar documents how the universities receive funding for NSF’s SECURE research security initiative, but researchers at each university collaborated with researchers affiliated with the Chinese military.

"NSF’s SECURE initiative is a five-year, $67 million program. The program includes awards of $50 million to the University of Washington (UW) and $17 million to Texas A&M University (TAMU). Stanford University’s Hoover Institution is also participating in the initiative, along with several university co–principal investigators. The program is intended to develop tools, data infrastructure, and analytic capabilities for assessing research-security risks. Faculty from UW and TAMU – the same institutions now charged with designing systems and processes to protect taxpayer-funded research – have been collaborating with People’s Republic of China (PRC) defense research and industrial base entities, many of which are on various U.S. government national security entity lists," Moolenaar writes in the letter.

The letter outlines several alarming examples of these high-risk research partnerships, including:

  1. A 2024 infectious disease study involved collaboration between the University of Washington and the PRC’s Academy of Military Medical Sciences (AMMS) State Key Laboratory of Pathogen and Biosecurity. AMMS is on the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) Entity List due to its role in developing brain warfare and militarized biotechnology.
  2. A 2024 publication on deep learning and data fusion between the University of Washington and Beihang University, one of the PRC's "Seven Sons of National Defense" and a part of the Entity List since 2001.
  3. A 2025 publication on the use of GPS data between Texas A&M University and the People's Liberation Army's National University of Defense Technology, the Chinese military's premier scientific research university.
  4. A 2023 publication on nanostructures between Texas A&M University and the Beijing Computational Science and Research Center (CSRC). The CSRC is under the supervision of China's primary nuclear weapons research and development complex.
  5. A 2024 publication on imaging technology with military applications between Texas A&M University, the Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT), a Seven Sons of National Defense university, and the Wuhan Institute of Technology's intelligent robotics laboratory.

The letter marks Moolenaar's second investigation into the NSF's research security failures. This January, he sent a letter demanding NSF revoke Chinese entities’ access to U.S. supercomputing infrastructure.

Read the most recent letter to NSF here.