The United States Department of Defense designated Confucius Institutes, Chinese-funded cultural centers at universities, as a threat to national security, according to Al Jazeera.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said 80 new “propaganda cells” had appeared across 30 universities under different names and charters with “the same mission: to steal intellectual property and to infiltrate the minds of American students,” and that the Pentagon had systematically dismantled every one of these organizations over the past two months.