Ranking Member Khanna and Select Committee Democrats Question Witnesses During Hearing on China’s Economic Espionage and Subnational Influence in the United States

WASHINGTON – Today, Representative Ro Khanna (CA-17), Ranking Member of the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, alongside Democratic Members Representative Kathy Castor (FL-14), Representative André Carson (IN-07), Representative Jill Tokuda (HI-02), and Representative Greg Stanton (AZ-04), questioned witnesses at a Select Committee hearing on China’s economic espionage and subnational influence in the United States.

Ranking Member Khanna pressed Mr. Michael Lucci, Founder & CEO of State Armor, about past social media posts calling for the denaturalization of Chinese Americans who obtained U.S. citizenship through birthright.

“Do you believe these people should be denaturalized? It's U.S. law that anyone born in a U.S. territory is an American citizen. Do you believe that 1.5 million [people] should be denaturalized?” Ranking Member Khanna asked.

“I think that if they have practically zero nexus to the United States of America, other than they were born in a territory, I think it's worth considering that, yes,” Mr. Lucci replied. 

Rep. Castor’s questioning underscored concerns that scaling back the Office of the Director of National Intelligence's Foreign Malign Influence Center could weaken the United States' ability to detect and counter the Chinese Communist Party's malign influence operations.

“What is your view on scaling back the Foreign Malign Influence Center that was intended to take on these threats?” Rep. Castor asked Mr. David Shedd, Former Acting Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.

“Clearly on the surface of scaling it back is a mistake,” said Mr. Shedd. “Not only has that malign influence continued, it has continued to grow.”

Rep. Carson then proceeded to emphasize the importance of protecting U.S. research institutions from CCP infiltration while protecting the civil rights of Chinese American students, faculty, and researchers.

“Do you believe that there is a way to aggressively target genuine CCP infiltration of university research…while fully protecting Chinese American students and faculty from being treated as suspects?” Rep. Carson questioned Mr. John C. Yang, President and Executive Director of Asian Americans Advancing Justice.

“I think there is a way,” Mr. Yang responded. He recommended implementing stronger conflict-of-interest disclosure requirements, improving guidance for universities on sensitive research areas, and providing law enforcement with better training to distinguish legitimate academic collaboration from genuine national security threats.

“Most of them come here because they want to be here [and] have the means of doing so,” Mr. Yang continued. “One area I think that there is agreement is to reform our immigration laws to make it easier for them to become citizens here, reform of our immigration laws, so they could bring their family members here so that they would not be subject to that transnational repression.”

Rep. Tokuda stressed that the CCP recruits individuals based on their access to sensitive information, expertise, or positions of trust rather than race or ethnicity, adding that focusing counterintelligence efforts on evidence-based risk factors, instead of ethnic background, would strengthen national security by directing resources toward genuine threats while avoiding unnecessary division that foreign adversaries could exploit.

“If we're focusing so much of our suspicion on people with a particular ethnic background, aren't we effectively looking in the wrong places while creating the very kind of fear and distraction and division that our adversaries and their propaganda seek to exploit?” Rep. Tokuda asked.

“I think both things can be right at the same time; both things being that there is this imperative by the Chinese Communist Party to use ethnic Chinese in terms of access that they may have,” said Mr. Shedd.

He continued: “That is not to say that they're all spies by any means or any stretch of the imagination. However, there's clearly non-Chinese who have spied on behalf – including from my former agency, the CIA.”

Rep. Stanton addressed America's global leadership, which has been strengthened by attracting talented international students, researchers, and entrepreneurs who contribute to U.S. innovation and economic growth.

“How do we ensure that while being attentive to real national security concerns, we continue to make sure our country is a place where talent from all over the world continues to come to study and work?” Rep. Stanton asked Mr. Yang.

“I think there's two things that are important: one is just rhetoric. I'm very concerned when I hear categorizations of an entire group of people as foreign adversaries,” said Mr. Yang. “Yes, the Chinese government is a foreign adversary, no question about that. But when we say that the people are foreign adversaries, or that is how it is defined in legislation, that becomes a problem even with respect to Chinese companies.”

Mr. Yang continued: “The second thing is making sure that we have policy that is narrowly tailored. We should use a scalpel, not a sledgehammer, and not engage in broad categorizations, but engage in that type of nuance that is necessary.”

Throughout the hearing, Members emphasized that the United States can confront the CCP’s espionage and influence operations while protecting the rights of Chinese American researchers, students, and faculty who contribute to America's scientific and technological leadership. That principle was echoed by advocates from the Asian American and Pacific Islander community, who stressed the importance of pursuing evidence-based national security policies that reject discrimination.

"Protecting researchers from discrimination and protecting our innovation edge are not competing goals but the same goal," said Gisela Perez Kusakawa, Esq., Executive Director of the Asian American Scholar Forum. "Our competition with the PRC and other countries is, at its core, a competition for talent, and overly broad and misguided investigations drive that talent away without making us any safer. Immigrants have founded or cofounded 59% of America's privately held billion-dollar companies, and nearly one in four was started by someone who first came here as an international student.  America wins by growing talent at home and attracting it from abroad, sustained by clear rules, due process, a robust research enterprise, and our fundamental American values, not unjust suspicion."  

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