(RoyalPatriot.com )- Nearly $400,000 was spent by the Department of Defense (DOD) to support nuclear weapons research carried out by former Chinese government officials.
According to the records of the think tank, Li Bin and Zhao Tong, two nuclear policy experts who had previously worked for the Chinese government, were both fellows when they carried out the DOD-funded study. Li is one of at least 20 employees of Carnegie, who the DCNF had previously named as CCP members. While William Burns, the current director of the Central Intelligence Agency, was Carnegie’s president, these unnamed CCP members were employed there.
Brandon Weichert, a national security expert, told the DCNF that the findings are extremely concerning for national security.
Weichert remarked that this is a comical degree of penetration. Carnegie is sowing doubt about Chinese capabilities and intentions in the minds of men and women who would have to make judgments in a crisis based on the intelligence they have gathered over the years.
Annual reports indicate that Carnegie accepted over $10 million in donations from federal organizations between February 2015 and November 2021, yet public records suggest that Carnegie also received over $1 million in federal grants during that time. Reps. Mike Rogers of Alabama and Lance Gooden of Texas have urged the Pentagon to halt funding and look into Carnegie in light of its connections to the CCP.
A $75,000 DOD funding was used to support the “Nuclear Policy Conference” that Burns’ think tank hosted in March 2015, one month after his tenure as president of Carnegie began. The event’s opening remarks were given by Burns, while a discussion titled “Why is China Modernizing its Nuclear Arsenal?” was conducted by Li.
According to his Tsinghua University faculty biography, Li worked in China’s Foreign Affairs bureau before joining Carnegie in 2011 and finished a Ph.D. thesis on the “clandestine development” and “control of powerful laser weapons for missile defense and anti-satellites.” Li is also a member of the U.S.-China People’s Friendship Association’s board of directors. This organization collaborates with another Chinese organization that the State Department identified in 2020 as a “foreign mission” with the goal of “malignly influencing” American policy.
Li, who moderated the 2015 event, dismissed Beijing’s chances of using nuclear weapons against the United States, even joking that China lacks nuclear missiles.
Li declared, “China possesses nuclear warheads, but no nuclear missiles.”
According to a Pentagon assessment of its military in 2021, China has roughly 100 nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles, including some that could strike the United States. In June, when satellite imagery showed more than 100 missile silo building sites, Beijing’s defense minister recognized China’s buildup.
Weichert said that China had ballistic missiles that could reach the United States. “The person making the allegation is either ignorant or lying.”
The study cast Washington’s worries about Beijing’s expanding nuclear arsenal as a result of its refusal to recognize China’s demand for a nuclear deterrent. Charitable advisor Doug White says that Carnegie ought to have been more forthcoming about how tax dollars were used.
The DCNF discovered that Li co-authored a “Nuclear Dialogue” publication for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory that the Department of Energy funding.
