Pentagon Designates Confucius Institutes as a Threat to U.S. National Security
U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on October 23, 2026, that the Defense Department had designated Confucius Institutes as a threat to U.S. national security. He announced the decision in a video posted on social media, according to The Guardian.
Confucius Institutes are programs based at universities that receive Beijing-based funding. The People's Republic of China has established and helped fund hundreds of them on campuses around the world since 2004.
Hegseth said the Pentagon had added Confucius Institutes to its list of institutions that threaten U.S. national security. He alleged that the institutes were operating under disguise at American universities in order to steal intellectual property and infiltrate the minds of American students.
He also claimed that 80 new organizations across 30 universities had appeared under different names and charters while pursuing the same mission as Confucius Institutes. According to Hegseth, the Defense Department had over the past two months systematically dismantled every one of these organizations.
Internal Revenue Service filings indicate that the Confucius Institute U.S. Center is directly funded by Hanban, a Chinese organization that has supported the institutes. The U.S. State Department has previously documented that funding.
The Pentagon's designation concerns the institutes and the organizations Hegseth described as their successors. His claims about disguised operations and the stolen intellectual property have not been presented in the Defense Department's own published documents.
