Confucius Institutes Designated a National Security Threat by US War Department

The US Department of War has formally designated China’s Confucius Institutes as a threat to American national security, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced on his official X account on October 23, 2026. The short statement, posted alongside a video, marks the latest step in a months-long Pentagon campaign to cut what it calls risky foreign ties at US universities that receive defence research money.

What the War Department announced

“The War Department has designated Confucius Institutes as a threat to our national security,” Hegseth wrote. The post did not set out the legal mechanism behind the designation or list specific institutions affected, and the department had not published further details at the time of writing. Reuters, which reported the move, said the Chinese embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Part of a wider campus research-security drive

The designation builds on an August 17 directive in which the department ordered 30 academic institutions to carry out immediate reviews of their academic, financial and research links with foreign entities of concern. According to the department, organisations associated with rebranded Confucius Institutes were among the relationships under review. Emil Michael, Under Secretary of War for Research and Engineering, said at the time that the department had “zero tolerance for academic partnerships that compromise our national security.”

On October 19 the department said all 30 universities had addressed the relationships it identified, reporting more than 80 termination-related actions, and signalled that a second wave of reviews would extend to other federally funded research universities. The Pentagon’s Section 1286 list of foreign institutions of concern, updated in July 2026, contains 130 entities, most of them in mainland China, with the rest in Russia and Iran.

Why Confucius Institutes are under scrutiny

US lawmakers have for years described Confucius Institutes as potential channels for Chinese government influence and espionage on campuses, allegations Beijing rejects. Congress has already restricted Defense Department funding for universities that host the institutes, and many US schools have closed their centres over the past decade. Officials have argued that some successor programmes and partner-to-partner agreements preserved the underlying relationships.

What comes next

The practical effect of the new designation will depend on how the department applies it to research grants, contracts and university partnerships. Universities and faculty groups will be looking for formal guidance. Beijing has previously criticised US research-security measures targeting Chinese institutions as discriminatory.

Featured image: DoD photo by Master Sgt. Ken Hammond, U.S. Air Force / Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons