Senate Approves ‘FIGHT China Act’ To Halt US Funds Fueling China’s Arsenal

The Senate passed two major bills this week targeting U.S. technology and security ties with China, limiting the flow of advanced research and federal funding to companies linked to Beijing.

The new legislation is part of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), an annual defense policy bill that provides $879 billion in funding for the U.S. military. With their bipartisan passage in the Senate Thursday evening, Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn’s “FIGHT China Act of 2025” and Tennessee Republican Sen. Bill Hagerty’s “Bio-Secure Act” are poised to clamp down on perceived vulnerabilities in U.S.-China security.

Senator Cornyn’s Foreign Investment Guardrails to Help Counteract (FIGHT) China Act of 2025 establishes new guardrails to prevent U.S. money and expertise from advancing China’s high-tech military programs, including advanced chips, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, hypersonic weapons, and supercomputers. The bill passed on a bipartisan basis.

“This is a transparency bill that will give us insight into how much money is being invested in the People’s Republic of China and the extent to which those investment dollars are flowing directly into the arsenal of our greatest strategic adversary, the People’s Republic of China,” Cornyn said on the Senate floor Thursday. “The United States is the largest source of foreign investment in semiconductors, quantum computing and AI in China due to China’s military fusion strategy. These investments directly support the People’s Liberation Army.” (RELATED: Here’s the contents of the major defense bill the Senate just passed during the shutdown)

Senator John Cornyn (R-TX), U.S. Senate Majority Whip, speaks to the media at the Capitol on December 1, 2017 in Washington, DC. Senate Republicans say they have enough votes to pass the tax reform bill. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

The bill authorizes federal agencies to block or penalize transactions that channel U.S. capital or expertise to key Chinese sectors. It also requires regular reporting to Congress on U.S. investments in Beijing’s technology industries.

“We should develop the most sensitive and advanced technologies at home, rather than funding their development in countries that do not share our values,” added Massachusetts Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren. “[The bill] would protect our national security and help ensure that American ingenuity, innovation, and investment do not end up boosting these countries’ progress in areas like artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and microelectronics.

In addition to Cornyn’s efforts, Senator Hagerty’s Bio-Secure Act bans federal contracts that use equipment or services from “biotechnology companies of concern,” targeting “biotechnology companies controlled by the CCP,” as the senator described them Thursday, because they are “tools of the CCP, collecting and analyzing the DNA of millions of people around the world.” The bill passed on a bipartisan basis.

“The Bio-Secure Act prevents American taxpayer dollars from flowing to biotechnology companies of concern,” Hagerty said Thursday on the Senate floor. “This ensures that the federal government cannot purchase, contract with, or subsidize CCP-controlled biotechnology companies that endanger the DNA of American citizens and the security of the United States. » (RELATED: Another Chinese National Arrested for Allegedly Smuggling Biomaterials to University of Michigan Lab)

Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN) speaks about border security and Title 42 during a press conference at the U.S. Capitol on May 11, 2023 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

Under Hagerty’s amendment, the federal government is prohibited from contracting, funding or providing subsidies to companies linked to the Chinese military that handle genetic or biological data, such as genomics and DNA sequencing.

“Communist China has openly identified biotechnology as a key area for future warfare,” Hagerty said. “To cite just one chilling example, in 2017 the People’s Liberation Army National Defense University wrote about the possibility of, and I quote, ‘specific ethnic genetic attacks which can,’ and I quote, ‘be a precise, targeted attack’ – get this – ‘that destroys a specific race or group of people or a specific person.’ »

“It’s scary,” Hagerty said.

The Senate approved the NDAA on Thursday, ending weeks of gridlock around the massive $879 billion package and marking a rare step in approving major legislation during a government shutdown. With the passage of the bill, the House and Senate Armed Services Committees can now begin to reconcile the differences between each chamber’s respective versions.

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