In California, there is a three-tiered system of public universities. The California Community College (CCC) System serves as the foundation and feeds into the California State University System (CSU). This, then, steps up into the University of California System (UC). All of these are public university systems, and all fall under the federal definition of institutional educational corporations. In legal terms, this means public universities have two main missions.[1]
The first mission of public universities is to remain fiscally solvent. This means that in addition to federal and state funding streams, student tuition, endowments, and donations, a university must be able to attract investment partnerships and business ventures to stay afloat.
The second mission of a public university is to provide educational services that will benefit the students, the institution, and the national interest. Therefore, universities serve not only as places of learning but also as economic drivers to improve the workforce and ensure that the United States has a well-qualified talent pool. Ultimately, this keeps the economy strong in intense international competition.
The UC system has gained a prestigious reputation for its arts and humanities programs, with a host of well-known UCs producing top-notch liberal arts scholars. However, it is in STEM research and development that the UC system has earned itself the sobriquet of the Ivy League of the West.
This is a legacy of the Second World War and the Cold War, when laboratories such as Berkely’s Lawerence Livermore Lab—much akin to Harvard’s Bell Lab—were set up to support state-of-the-art research and development. It was from these academic hubs that business clusters and technological ecosystems developed, forming tech industries such as Silicon Valley.
During the Cold War, academic institutions and technology firms worked in tandem with the American government to compete with the Soviet Union so as to benefit the free world and defeat authoritarian systems such as Communism. With the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of bipolar competition, the United States remained as the sole unipolar hegemon—the unipolar moment.[2]
Many prominent intellectuals, such as Stanford’s Francis Fukuyama, declared an “End to History.” This meant they believed the entire world would move towards becoming a universal system where democratic principles and human rights took center stage. Thus, previous restrictions on foreign investments and closed markets were now opened by governmental policymakers, businesses, and corporations. Universities soon followed suit and began making significant investments with nations such as China, believing that they would eventually become democratic through economic and institutional interdependence.
They were mistaken.
Following this post-Cold War euphoria, when an institutional culture of openness prevailed, a new rising power took advantage of America’s goodwill—or perhaps naiveté—to strengthen its own authoritarian system and compete with or replace the dominant power. This nation was China.
The University of Chicago professor, Samuel Huntington, who taught Francis Fukuyama during his tenure at Harvard University, posited his own thesis in contraposition to Fukuyama in which he envisioned a “Clash of Civilizations” emerging within the coming decades. What Huntington said in his thesis was correct. The world has now entered a multi-polar era where rising civilizational states and economic blocks compete against each other on the world stage.
Times and circumstances change, and thus, by dint of logic, so too must policy considerations. The world has now entered the age of artificial intelligence (AI), where systems of systems are interconnected within the Internet of Things.
Business ventures, joint partnerships, and educational exchanges in STEM fields with rival Great Powers now pose a risk to America’s economic and national security. Indeed, open source and dual-use platforms can be used for military-based applications, as is currently the governmental policy in China’s Civil-Military Fusion Model.
Therefore, engaging with China in the STEM fields in any university partnership is the equivalent of engaging with the Soviet Union during the Cold War—a rival authoritarian government seeking to create a system that erodes and replaces the American-based systems by any means necessary. Unrestricted warfare, subversion, intimidation, and influence are all tools employed by China on unsuspecting universities.[3]
In political science, there is what is termed the Security Dilemma.[4] It holds that there is a threat paradox and a trust deficit, meaning that a nation can never divine a potential adversary’s true intent and, therefore, must constantly seek to outpace its rival in the economic, military, and political arenas. One can never trust a rival power’s word.
To put it simply, if someone is undermining you and you ask if they were doing so, why would they admit to you that they were? This is not pessimistic thinking. It is realistic thinking. And the stakes are high.
All great powers fall under the security dilemma, and this is the reason why all nations have militaries. The strongest powers even possess nuclear weapons. In fact, never has a United States President proposed the elimination of America’s Nuclear Triad.
With the unrolling of the new China-based Deep Seek AI system—whose model was most likely stolen from Microsoft’s open AI Chatbot GPT—the potential threat of China gaining access to critical information, professorial research, and proprietary models from the corporate university sphere has never been more perilous.
It is rather astounding, then, that the UC System—a system that receives massive investment from corporate funding streams—would risk exposing its digital ecosystem and R&D to a Chinese-based corporation under the direct control of the Communist Party of China (CCP). This corporation will, in all likelihood, utilize the research under its Civil-Military Fusion model.
Consider what corporate shareholders would think of making such a risky policy investment with their money.
Yet the UC System, under its President Micheal V. Drake, has taken no such risk management approach in its official policy stance on AI. The UC system proclaims on its website that “The UC becomes one of the first universities in the nation to establish overarching principles for the responsible use of AI.”[5] Yet nowhere in UC’s responsible principles document does it state that foreign-based and domiciled AI could pose a risk to information, research, or student safety. In fact, China is not even mentioned.[6]
While speculative in nature, this writer believes that this critical omission is due to previous investment contracts and partnerships with China. China’s market potential is massive, and the potential revenues that can be generated through past and continued dealings provide an alternative funding stream for the UC system.
Thus, to protect this funding stream, the UC system instead diverts the threat to potential bias—of which pages are written—perpetuating a political narrative that divides the nation, the institutions of higher education, and the university communities themselves.
UC’s Chief Compliance Officer, Alexander Bustamante states, “Overwhelmingly, survey respondents were concerned about AI enabled tools, particularly the risks of bias and discrimination.”[7] Another quote by a UC Berkely Professor states that, “Unrepresentative data sets or poor model design, for example, can unwittingly exacerbate problems of discrimination and bias.”[8]
The four focus areas where the greatest risk presented themselves according to the UC ‘Expert’ Panel was in health, human resources, policing, and campus safety—which are all important. However, it is rather shocking that foreign influence was never voiced as a concern, especially considering the large number of Chinese students present on UC campuses. In fact, foreign students—many of them Chinese—make up over fifty percent of the student population in the Graduate STEM fields in American Universities.[9]
As related in previous articles, many of these students could face imprisonment and the loss of health, education, travel, and employment opportunities if they write or publish any documents counter the CCP Partly Line.
This is, of course, enforced under the Social Credit System, another AI-enabled organ of repression. Considering that all data in China is linked to a system of systems in this age of the Internet of Things, student safety should most certainly consider the foreign students attending their campuses. Perhaps they, too, are considered merely revenue generators for the UC System by risk management analysts.
This is not a left or right issue. It is a National Security Issue and a Human Rights Issue.
If individuals are concerned with Social Justice and human rights—as the UC AI document states they are—then they should consider the Ethnic Genocide being perpetrated on Uighurs in Xinjiang province.[10] Consider ten super-bowl-sized stadiums full of people being imprisoned and reeducated, for nothing more than practicing their culture. Should the UC system conduct business with a nation that perpetrates such crimes against humanity?
If individuals are concerned about preserving the environment, perhaps they should research China’s new plan to divert over 50 percent of the Mekong River for its new canal in Cambodia—which will lead to an inevitable environmental catastrophe—and less on climate partnerships with a nation who produces two new coal power plants a month that will be in operation for the next fifty years.[11] Is this a serious climate policy?
The list of artists, intellectuals, and free thinkers who have been jailed or are listed as “disappeared” by the CCP is endless. It is amazing that these human and environmental rights abuses are occurring while UC’s leaders stand silent instead of approaching them in a point-blank manner with common sense policies that are entirely within their control.
The UC system, as well as universities across the United States, need to act independently due to the lack of Federal and State regulation. They need to be leaders, not followers. Phasing out previous contractual agreements with nations such as China and protecting data under the secure services of Microsoft Chat-bot GPT Edu, which is designed for such purposes, would set a new standard for other universities across the United States to follow suit.
UC leaders should ban China’s Deep Seek AI due to the clear risks and liabilities it poses and focus less on the loss of investment from Chinese-based corporations. Rather, they should focus on what they can gain by investing in American-based companies that will provide secure servers, jobs, and economic strength for the nation’s best and brightest.
Protecting professorial research and Chinese students is not xenophobic. Rather, it is the right thing to do, and there are soluble policy solutions that could reap dividends for American corporate investors, not only for the short term but also for the long term.
The UC System’s Leaders and Staff need to step up to the plate and respond in proactive policy manner to address the new multi-polar transition and the return of Great Power Competition.
It is imperative that strong security measures be taken now to protect America’s higher education system so that the digital ecosystems built on the foundational AI platforms are seeded by secure American-based corporations. This will allow for the cross-pollination of data and information in the event of further deteriorating relations with the CCP.
Considering the rhetoric from CCP leaders of “heads being bashed bloody against Great Walls of Steel,” the CCP’s intent and course of action appear quite clear.[12]
The only good policy is a just policy. UC’s leaders need to act accordingly.
[1] Higher Education Law: Principles, Policies, and Practice: Dayton, Dr. John: 9781506129211: Amazon.com: Books
[2] Rethinking U.S. Foreign Policy After the Cold War | Foreign Affairs
[4] Breaking out of the Security Dilemma: Realism, Reassurance, and the Problem of Uncertainty | The Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
[5] UC adopts recommendations for the responsible use of artificial intelligence | University of California
[6] UC AI Working Group Final Report
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid.
[9] United States Hosts More Than 1.1 Million International Students at Higher Education Institutions, Reaching All-Time High | IIE
[10] China’s Repression of Uyghurs in Xinjiang | Council on Foreign Relations
[11] Hun Sen emerges to back $1.7 billion Cambodian canal project – UCA News
[12] China’s Xi marks Communist Party centenary with strong words for adversaries – Washington Post
Cover designed by Jared Gould using image of “UCBerkeleyCampus” by brainchildvn on Wikimedia Commons and Cineese flag by Kozioł Kamila on Adobe Stock; Asset ID#: 1142264418
Let’s look at what China actually did.
Back in 2008, China’s missiles were going wildly off course and crashing. These are the missiles that now have nuclear warheads and are aimed at us, but back then they were not a threat.
Bill Clinton was running for re-election and needed money to defeat Bob Dole (R-KS). In stepped a Johnny Chung who reportedly gave at least $366,000 to the cause.
Chung then gave an additional $35,000 to the Democratic National Committee, after which Clinton approved the transfer of commercial satellite-launch technology to China — guidance technology that helped the PRC to develop the very missiles that now threaten us.
Two years later, some were publicly stating that this — “and not what he did with the little girl” — was what he should have been impeached for.
China got the guidance technology — not maybe, not possibly — China got it. This really happened. I’ve seen reports that they already have the blueprints for the F-35, our way-over-budget super-duper new fighter jet. Boston is big into BioTech and I’ve lost count of the number of Chinese nationals arrested for trying to smuggle stuff out of the country through Logan.
And the Wuhan Flu almost certainly leaked out of the CCP’s lab in Wuhan….
The possibilities are scary, but what already HAS happened ought be enough.
Paging President Trump, Paging President Trump….
2008?
This bizarre article does not even seem to have any identification of the author ” Early Huey.”
But aside from that — the article seems to think that UC should have its own foreign policy with regard to China.
It is claimed that “Protecting professorial research and Chinese students is not xenophobic.” I guarantee that the foreign policy advocated for UC is not looked upon favorably on “professorial research and Chinese students.”
If the United States government wants to try to isolate China — and perhaps also Canada, Greenland, Europe, and free Asia — I suspect that the United States is going to end up as the isolated former great power.
We’re going to be a former great power because of our relations with these countries—China, specifically.
I didn’t make much sense of UC having it’s own autonomy either, but I think what the author is getting across is that the UC system must itself step up to the plate and cut ties with China.
Decoupling from China is supported by this administration. But the next White House could see ties with China differently, thus making more sense of the argument that the campus should act on its own to cut ties.
That is my sense of it anyway.