Texas A&M’s semiconductor push fuels state’s American-made production ambitions<\/a><\/p>\nMoolenaar\u00a0did not accuse Texas A&M or the University of Washington of breaking the law as they work with SECURE, which stemmed from the CHIPS and Science Act under the Biden administration. In a letter to the\u00a0NSF in March, he said\u00a0he worried that the universities advancing the country’s research security frameworks allegedly “collaborate with China\u2019s defense research and industrial base, its nuclear weapons programs, its mass surveillance infrastructure, and institutions on U.S. government national security lists.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
A&M officials defended their research practices in a statement to the Houston Chronicle after Moolenaar urged the NSF to pause funding in March. They then submitted letters to the\u00a0NSF and NASA, describing their policies in more detail and stating that A&M currently has no agreements or contracts with Chinese entities.<\/p>\n
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Moolenaar, who previously described a vision to remake SECURE into a new national research security center, reaffirmed his belief that A&M has had “multiple research security failures where it published research with Chinese entities the U.S. government has designated as national security risks.”<\/p>\n
“The university\u2019s many patriotic donors and prominent graduates should be horrified by these repeated lapses and demand more from Aggie leadership to secure our nation\u2019s most important research and innovation,\u201d\u00a0Moolenaar said. \u201cA university that is serious about research security would never employ a previous member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, who received an award from China for helping it advance its defense weapons and equipment.\u201d<\/p>\n
Texas A&M University System officials did not immediately provide comment or additional information on the faculty member.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A focus in Washington\u00a0<\/p>\n
Moolenaar’s concerns echo\u00a0a broader push in Washington to increase oversight of U.S. research with ties to Chinese entities.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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While such collaborations are generally legal, some national security officials argue they should be curtailed. They say the People\u2019s Republic of China has previously stolen U.S. secrets and intellectual property in an attempt to build the world’s most technologically advanced military.<\/p>\n
In Texas,\u00a0Gov. Greg Abbott already targeted the issue by ordering Texas public universities to cut existing ties with the Chinese government and other “foreign adversaries” in 2024.<\/p>\n
Moolenaar’s letter to the NSF identified several research contracts that he found “troubling,” allegedly indicating that faculty had \u201csustained research relationships with China\u2019s defense research and industrial base.” He pointed to one on nonlinear dynamics research, which he said posed a potential violation of the Wolf Amendment that bans NASA from bilateral collaborations with the Chinese government without prior approval.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In its letter to NASA, A&M System leaders\u00a0disputed three instances that they said were identified in a May 14 report from the select committee on China, including one that they said erroneously listed Texas A&M and Prairie View A&M University as\u00a0co-authors on a publication linked to the\u00a0PRC.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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\u201cThe Texas A&M University System (A&M System) values its partnership with NASA and is committed to safeguarding our research from undue foreign influence,\u201d A&M leaders wrote in their response to NASA. \u201cSince 2022, we have pro-actively reviewed all engagements between our employees and countries of concern as detailed in our system policy. Our prohibitions go beyond federal and state laws and regulations. Furthermore, we have no agreements with any entity in a country of concern.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Texas A&M cleared a National Science Foundation review of its $17 million SECURE contract despite congressional concerns over…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":352152,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-352151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=352151"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352151\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/352152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=352151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=352151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=352151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}