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The president of the United States, appearing visibly angry in a prime-time address to the nation on Thursday night, told the American people that China has been aggressively meddling in our elections.
The claims were eye-popping, and the debate about how to better secure American voting procedures and maintain a free and fair press will continue. But there’s another burning question Americans should be asking: What is the United States of America going to do about China now?
One of the most obvious and immediate actions would be to revoke the president’s decision to welcome huge numbers of Chinese students to American universities. Universities are fertile ground for groundbreaking research and technology and present enormous espionage opportunities. On Thursday, the day of the president’s address, the Department of Homeland Security announced that it would be tightening restrictions on foreign student visas. But after the president’s speech, there’s no question there should be major reductions in Chinese student visas — and fast.
Trump said China stole millions of files on American voters with the goal of influencing the 2020 presidential election. Trump said the files included names, addresses, phone numbers, political affiliations and other voter-registration information.
Universities are fertile ground for groundbreaking research and technology and present enormous espionage opportunities.
Trump also claimed China sought to influence business leaders to abandon their support for Trump’s presidential bid and to identify American journalists who had reported negatively on his presidency. China then allegedly offered the journalists large sums of money to increase their negative reporting in hopes of undermining Trump’s reelection campaign.
It will take weeks and months to flesh out the president’s claims, but the White House made public the heavily redacted intelligence documents that allegedly support them. It is imperative that our electoral system be safe and secure, as must the private information of American citizens.
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Voters should also be confident that they can vote safely, that each vote will be counted fairly and that the outcome of the election accurately represents the views of American citizens. No business leader or journalist should be bribed to support or work against any American candidate in the service of America’s enemies.
Chinese President Xi Jinping, left, shakes hands with U.S. President Donald Trump at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Thursday, May 14, 2026. (Kenny Holston/Pool Photo via AP)
At the same time, the United States should take every reasonable measure to thwart obvious Chinese intelligence collection operations and explain that those measures are a direct response to China’s exploitation and abuse of America’s open society.
In August 2025, President Trump announced that the United States would accept up to 600,000 Chinese students. In response to opposition from many of the president’s supporters, the White House clarified that this was a continuation of U.S. policy.
Trump defended his position and said it would be “insulting” to China to deny Beijing access to these visas and would harm relations between the two nations amid important talks about trade.
Trump’s defense of Chinese visas was a reversal of the position Secretary of State Marco Rubio had articulated just months earlier. Rubio said in May 2025 that he would revoke Chinese visas held by people with connections to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), especially those “studying in critical fields.” In his confirmation hearing before the Senate, Rubio said China is the nation’s top geopolitical adversary. He also said, “Much of what we have to do to combat China is here at home.”
Indeed, China cares deeply about those U.S. student visas. Xi Jinping is the only CCP leader since Mao Zedong to stay in power beyond two five-year terms. He is currently in his third five-year term, with no end in sight, and is carrying out his plan to replace the United States as the world’s most powerful and influential nation.
Xi’s goals would not preserve anything resembling the status quo for Americans. China expert Matt Pottinger, a former senior official in the first Trump administration, has explained that Xi’s aims are to “disintegrate the West and usher in an antidemocratic order.”
Essential to China’s effort to outpace America is collecting massive amounts of data on Americans to steer their thoughts and opinions, divide and confuse them, and advance Chinese technology in space, advanced AI, aerospace and quantum computing.
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It’s a simple and deadly formula: divide Americans and strip them of their sensitive national security research and technology while maintaining control and unity among the Chinese population and advancing China’s key industries to outpace the United States.
The Department of Homeland Security’s Thursday press release said, “Since 1978, foreign students have been admitted into the U.S. for an unspecified period, enabling thousands to become ‘forever students’ by perpetually enrolling in courses to avoid departure.”
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That’s an obvious problem, but it’s only one aspect of the issue. There are hundreds of thousands of Chinese nationals enrolled in American universities, many focusing their efforts on STEM-related research. And while Americans may want to generously invite foreign nationals to study at U.S. universities, especially in hopes of encouraging students to become more pro-America, candidates for American visas from China must go through a government and CCP vetting process — and each candidate must pass. Even if a Chinese student has no desire to harm the United States, he or she is necessarily tied to and responsive to China and the CCP.
Trump’s Thursday speech must be an inflection point, not only to galvanize bipartisan American support for securing fair elections, but also to protect our nation from Chinese espionage and impose a high cost on China for exploiting our open society.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM REBECCAH HEINRICHS
Rebeccah Heinrichs is a fellow at the Hudson Institute where she provides research and commentary on a range of security issues and specializes in missile defense and nuclear deterrence. Follow her on Twitter, @RLHeinrichs.
