Pentagon Funded Former Chinese Government Employee, CCP Member’s Nuclear Warfare Research

The Department of Defense (DOD) spent nearly $400,000 funding nuclear warfare research that was conducted by former Chinese government employees — one of whom the Daily Caller News Foundation previously identified as a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) member.

Li Bin and Zhao Tong — two nuclear policy experts who previously served as Chinese government employees — were both fellows at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace when conducting the DOD-funded research, according to the think tank’s records. Li is also among at least 20 Carnegie staffers the DCNF previously identified as CCP members. These undisclosed CCP members worked at the think tank while current Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns served as Carnegie’s president.

The findings raise serious national security concerns, Brandon Weichert, a national security expert, told the DCNF. 

“This is a cartoonish level of penetration,” Weichert said. “[Carnegie is] planting the seeds of doubt about Chinese intentions and capabilities in the minds of men and women who during a crisis would have to make decisions based on the intelligence that they received over the years.”