Pentagon designates Confucius Institutes a national security threat

The Pentagon has designated Chinese-funded cultural centers known as Confucius Institutes a threat to U.S. national security, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Friday, alleging that the programs had continued operating on university campuses under new names.

In a video posted on social media, Hegseth said the Defense Department had added the institutes to its list of organizations that threaten national security. He accused them of disguising their operations at U.S. universities after, he said, Congress banned them. He called the programs “sleeper organisations.”

“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 said the Pentagon had “systematically dismantled every single one of these organisations” over the past two months. Neither account provided details of how the Defense Department dismantled them.

Washington has long accused Confucius Institutes of serving as Chinese propaganda tools and has taken steps to crack down on them. The Chinese embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.