States Have an Important Role to Play in Countering CCP Infiltration

W hile American states debate the nature and scope of foreign adversary threats, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is actively stealing intellectual property, co-opting university research programs, placing operatives in state and local political processes, and acquiring strategic real estate adjacent to military installations. The question for state legislatures is not whether these threats are real but whether they are willing to act before a breach occurs rather than after.

In Indiana, Governor Mike Braun recently signed S.B. 256, a sweeping law addressing CCP infiltration across four critical domains: government technology contracts, university research security, real property acquisition, and foreign-agent registration. It is among the most comprehensive state-level responses to foreign adversary threats in the country and deserves to be replicated.

In recent years, Indiana public schools have distributed tens of thousands of Lenovo devices to students and teachers. The Fort Wayne Community Schools, charged with the education of nearly 30,000 students, issued Lenovo Chromebooks to all K–5 students and Lenovo Chromebooks and PCs to grades 9–12. Districts such as Randolph Schools use LanSchool, a Lenovo remote digital learning system. In 2020, there were at least 15,000 Lenovo machines in Indiana public schools, and at least another 5,000 in 2024.

What many parents don’t know is that Lenovo’s largest shareholder is Legend Holdings, an entity founded by the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Lenovo devices have a documented history of security vulnerabilities in government use. The State Department banned them from its network in 2006, and in a 2008 lawsuit, a Marine network and systems engineer alleged that relabeled Lenovo devices given to the Marine Corps transmitted data back to China.

S.B. 256 addresses this by prohibiting state and local entities, including school districts, from contracting with companies controlled by citizens or agents of foreign adversaries. Contractors must certify that neither they nor their subcontractors are prohibited persons. This is not a ban on foreign-made goods but rather a targeted requirement ensuring that instruments of a foreign adversary are not managing Indiana’s information systems.

A 2024 congressional report, “CCP on the Quad,” uncovered nearly 9,000 joint publications, funded by the Pentagon or the intelligence community, in which American researchers collaborated with Chinese nationals on technology with direct military applications. In March 2025, John Moolenaar, the chairman of the House Select Committee on the CCP, wrote to Purdue University’s president demanding transparency on the national security risks posed by Chinese nationals in its STEM programs. Purdue officials complied with the request, revealing that of the 58,000 students on Purdue’s West Lafayette and Indianapolis campuses, nearly 2,200 were Chinese national students. Nearly 30 percent of their Chinese graduate students participated in federally funded research projects in the fall 2024 semester, with the heaviest concentrations in engineering, biological sciences, mathematics, and technology-related fields.

American taxpayers should not be funding research that ends up in the hands of the People’s Republic of China’s military-industrial complex. S.B. 256 requires state universities, including Purdue, to conduct a foreign influence and research security review before admitting students from adversary nations into sensitive fields, including engineering, artificial intelligence, computer science, microbiology, and virology. Students who clear the review must attest that they will not accept funding from a foreign adversary.

In some places, the CCP is making its presence known in close proximity to American military bases. In 2019, Chinese billionaire Sun Guangxin invested $110 million in Texas farmland near Laughlin Air Force Base, planning a wind farm that would have accessed the state’s electricity grid. In 2022, Chinese food manufacturer Fufeng Group purchased land near Grand Forks Air Force Base in North Dakota. Indiana has its own vulnerabilities that could have been easily exploited: The Naval Surface Warfare Center Crane Division is the third-largest naval installation in the world by area, and the state is also home to Camp Atterbury–Muscatatuck and the Grissom Air Reserve Base. But that state’s new statute prohibits individuals or entities connected to foreign adversary nations from acquiring real property, mineral rights, or water rights in Indiana, replacing a narrower statute that had covered only agricultural land.

The federal Foreign Agents Registration Act has historically been inconsistently enforced, and it doesn’t reach state-level political activity. S.B. 256 fills this gap, requiring agents of hostile foreign governments to register with the Indiana attorney general. The law also empowers the governor to designate entities as affiliates of foreign terrorist organizations, stripping them of all state funds and contracts.

Indiana has constructed a governing framework for how a state can systematically close the doors that foreign adversaries have been walking through for years. The four pillars are interconnected: Tech contracts protect government infrastructure, research security protects intellectual property, land restrictions protect physical property, and foreign-agent registration brings influence operations into the light. Together, they address the CCP’s preferred vectors: technology, talent, territory, and influence.

Every state has public universities conducting federally funded research. Every state has government technology contracts. Every state has land near critical infrastructure. Every state is a target of foreign influence operations. What Indiana has demonstrated is that these threats can be addressed legislatively, with appropriate due process protections, without discriminating against law-abiding foreign nationals. The rest of the states should take note and take action.