WASHINGTON — Two GOP senators are raising grave concerns about Chinese access to America’s National Laboratories, warning that Beijing could secretly be collecting sensitive national security information.
In a letter to Energy Secretary Chris Wright, Sens. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) cited data showing that Chinese nationals made roughly 1,900 short-term visits and undertook 1,300 long-term research assignments at the 17 federally funded national laboratories during fiscal year 2025.
Another 2,100 Chinese nationals were employed by the department over the same period.
“These facts reflect severe vulnerabilities at our nation’s premier and most sensitive scientific environments,” Cotton and Lee wrote.
“China is our main competitor in research and development and the race for emerging tech, where it seeks to surpass the United States by stealing American intellectual property and technologies.”
Wright has previously stated that under the Energy Department’s (DOE) Unclassified Foreign National Access Program (UFNAP), citizens of adversarial countries must undergo counterintelligence assessments and other vetting in order to access the labs.
During fiscal year 2025, Chinese nationals remotely accessed facilities at America’s National Laboratories more than 5,000 times, per DOE data.
Back in March, The Post reported that during the Biden administration, citizens of adversarial countries like China, Iran, and Russia made close to 30,000 trips to those sensitive research installations.
“[F]or decades we continue to give Chinese national scientists access to our National Laboratories,” added Cotton, the chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and Lee, head of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
“These numbers are not small, nor are they incidental. They represent a systemic exposure of our National Labs, including the American scientists who work there and topics they are working on, to an adversary determined to defeat the United States.”
The two senators noted that China’s National Intelligence Law requires citizens to cooperate with Beijing’s intelligence services, regardless of where they live.
Cotton and Lee demanded answers about how the DOE accounts for that Beijing policy, why the department allows Chinese nationals into the labs in the first place, how sensitive the technology those foreigners get access to is, and what kinds of restrictions are in place.
“The Department’s mission is to advance American scientific leadership, protect national security, and safeguard critical technologies,” they concluded. “This mission can’t be achieved when it’s undermined by thousands of Chinese nationals infiltrating the National Labs each year.”
Cotton and Lee previously wrote to Wright in January urging him to bar Chinese nationals from American laboratories.
In March of 2025, they also introduced the Guarding American Technology from Exploitation (GATE) Act, to bar Chinese, Cuban, Iranian, North Korean and Russian nationals from National Labs.