Hegseth cracks down on China's Confucius Institutes, but stays silent on Russian centers

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth declared on Friday that the “dormant organizations” of the Confucius Institutes operating at American universities constitute a national security threat, and announced that the Pentagon had added them to the list of institutions endangering US national security. According to reports by AFP and Reuters, Hegseth said in a video posted on social media that although Congress banned the Confucius Institutes a few years ago, they have resurfaced in new forms.

“It appears eighty new propaganda cells have popped up at thirty universities, under different names and with different legal status, but with the same mission: to steal intellectual property and get inside the heads of American students”

the secretary said, adding that over the past two months the department had “methodically eliminated every single one of them.” The Confucius Institutes, by their own definition, promote Chinese culture through language instruction and cultural events. Many of them, however, operate directly out of the universities with which they have partnered, with teachers, curricula and generous funding provided by Chinese authorities, which is why Washington has long considered them a tool of Chinese propaganda. Beijing, however, denies that the institutes spread the communist government's propaganda.

Hegseth's tough crackdown is particularly notable given that Donald Trump has repeatedly boasted about his “very good relationship” with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The two leaders held a summit in Washington in September, discussing everything from artificial intelligence to trade to the war in Iran, and confirmed that they would meet again before the end of the year. In this campaign against Chinese propaganda, however, it is striking who goes unmentioned. The head of the Pentagon, whose drinking habits were reported on by the American press even before his confirmation, and who promised during his hearing that he would not drink while in office, has not said a word about Russian cultural institutes, even though they serve as cover organizations for the very same kind of influence operations.

The cultural centers known as “Russian Houses,” operated by the Russian state agency Rossotrudnichestvo, were already placed under sanctions by the European Union back in July 2022, on the grounds that they are the Kremlin's primary tools of hybrid influence and historical falsification, presenting the occupied Ukrainian territories as Russian. The Russian House in Berlin, for instance, screened an RT documentary in October 2022 that branded Ukrainians as Nazis, and had previously hosted a photo exhibition by the Russian state news agency on alleged crimes committed by the Ukrainian army. On September 19, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha called on governments around the world to restrict or close the Russian Houses, citing risks of disinformation and espionage, while Germany, after a Russian drone attempted to attack the Leipzig-Halle airport with explosives, terminated the agreement governing the operation of the Berlin center and expelled the staff sent from Moscow. Moldova closed the Russian House in Chișinău this past July, Azerbaijan announced the closure of its own in February, yet in the United States, the Russian House in Washington continues to operate undisturbed, even though the FBI suspected its then-director, Yuri Zaitsev, back in 2013 of trying to recruit young Americans on behalf of Russian intelligence. Meanwhile, Rossotrudnichestvo is planning to open eleven new Russian Houses abroad.

The Trump administration, then, is ready to come down hard on China, but far from taking action against Moscow's influence operations, it has even dismantled the defenses against them. In 2025, the FBI's task force on foreign influence was disbanded, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence's center for countering foreign influence was shut down. All this is happening in the same month that the Democratic leaders of Congress's intelligence committees warned that Russia is trying to use AI-generated fake videos to influence the November 3 midterm elections. Hegseth has taken down eighty Chinese propaganda cells, but he doesn't see the Kremlin's agents — even though they are operating right in front of him.

Ugar