Pentagon designates Confucius Institutes a national security threat

What the report says

The US Department of Defense has formally designated Confucius Institutes, Chinese-funded cultural centres on American university campuses, as a threat to US national security, according to Al Jazeera. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced the decision in a social media video on Friday, saying the Pentagon added the organisations to its national-security threat list.

Al Jazeera reports that Washington has for years accused the centres of acting as tools of Chinese propaganda and has already moved to restrict them. In his remarks, Hegseth said the institutes had continued operating under different names after earlier congressional limits, describing them as “sleeper” organisations. He claimed that 80 similar programmes had reappeared at 30 universities and were being used to spread propaganda and gather intellectual property.

Hegseth also said the Pentagon had spent the previous two months dismantling what he described as every one of these organisations. The report says the Chinese embassy in Washington did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.

The move fits into broader US-China tensions over influence operations, higher education partnerships and concerns about foreign state-backed activity on campuses. Because the source is based on a Pentagon announcement, the key development is the policy designation itself rather than any independently verified findings about the institutes' operations.