Intellectual property theft and economic espionage by foreign governments have become major problems at U.S. colleges and universities. That’s why federal law requires colleges to report foreign-sourced gifts and contracts worth at least $250,000 in a calendar year. The Education Department in 2019 launched an investigation into foreign funding at several prominent American institutions of higher learning. Among the targets was Texas A&M, a network of 11 universities and eight state agencies with a $7.2 billion annual budget.
Texas A&M has reported receiving more than $700 million from foreign countries between 1995 and 2022, with the largest amounts coming from Qatar and China. The Education Department closed its investigation in January 2021, and Texas A&M appeared to be in compliance with federal requirements, even claiming to have overreported the amount of foreign funds it received by more than $2 million. But my analysis of publicly available documents and data reveals that Texas A&M continues not to report more than $100 million in research funds originating in Russia and Qatar.
These unreported funds have paid for research at the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station, or TEES. Headquartered in College Station, TEES specifically focuses on the commercialization of engineering and technology research on cybersecurity, nuclear nonproliferation and artificial intelligence. Under Texas’ education law, TEES “is a part of The Texas A&M University System under the management and control of the board of regents of The Texas A&M University System.”
Russian entities have funded projects at TEES on hydrocarbon reservoir modeling. Qatar-backed research has been wider in scope, generally focusing on advancing technical capabilities for the small Gulf state. Projects have ranged from cybersecurity enhancements to medical advancements to better oil-recovery practices.
According to the Education Department’s College Foreign Gift Reporting database, Texas A&M has never received any funding from Russian entities. But TEES and Russian university Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, or Skoltech, crafted a deal worth roughly $4 million (211,635,000 Russian rubles) in November 2014, only months after Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula in Ukraine.
This wasn’t the only deal with Skoltech at the time: Petroleum engineering professor
John…
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