[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 207 (Tuesday, December 9, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8565-S8566]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
National Defense Authorization Act
Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, one of the things we have to do before we
open our Christmas presents in a couple of weeks is to pass the
National Defense Authorization Act. This is one of the rare instances--
and you can count them on maybe one hand--where we actually have good
bipartisan cooperation, and it is for a good cause. It is in the
defense of our Nation and in support of the men and women who wear the
uniform and who keep us safe.
The Senate and the House have now released a final text that has been
reconciled between the House and the Senate versions. All that remains
now is for the House and then the Senate to pass the final version and
send it to President Trump for his signature.
The National Defense Authorization Act is one of the most important
pieces of legislation we pass each year. I believe we have done it--
without exception, I want to say--for 63, 64 years in a row.
Now, I wasn't here for each of those years, but that is the history
that has been handed down.
As I said, this legislation is critically important because it makes
sure that our military has the necessary resources to achieve the
missions of today and rise to the challenges of tomorrow. As we have
seen even in the battlefield in Ukraine, the nature of modern warfare
has changed dramatically with the advent of the ubiquity of drones.
With even poor countries like Yemen, where the Houthis send drones into
countries like Israel or attack merchant ships in the Red Sea, we have
had to use million-dollar missiles to shoot down basically cheap
drones. Well, you can't continue that, you can't sustain that, so it is
important that we update and modernize our military according to the
threats and the technology available today.
Given our rather inconsistent record in other must-pass legislation,
this is an impressive run of 56 years, my notes remind me, underscoring
the importance the U.S. Congress has always placed on ensuring the fact
that we have the strongest military in the world. We have the strongest
military in the world not in order to fight but in order not to have to
fight--in order to maintain deterrence. That is what President Reagan
talked about and what President Trump has talked about--peace through
strength. That comes with deterrence.
We are demonstrating the fact that we are committed to the defense of
our Nation and our friends and allies around the world and that we are
not afraid to make that investment. Any country that might decide to
change the status quo and start a military conflict knows from the
outset they are likely doomed to fail.
This year's NDAA, the Defense authorization bill, includes numerous
important policies to strengthen our national defense, but perhaps the
biggest success in this year's annual authorization bill is a
significant win against the Chinese Communist Party. What I am
referring to specifically is a provision that is in the reconciled bill
that creates a vehicle for transparency on outbound investment from the
United States into China.
We have known for decades now that China has attracted manufacturing
from around the world into that country, to the detriment of
manufacturing jobs here in America, and that they have used that
technology they have learned and the workforce training that has gone
along with it in order now to build weapons systems and threaten peace
in the Indo-Pacific and threaten the United States--our position of
dominance--when it comes to national security.
This provision that I will speak more to in a moment has been many
years in the making. It goes back to 2021.
I tell people that the most important lesson I have learned here in
the U.S. Senate is perseverance. If at first you don't succeed, try,
try again, and that is what we did here. So in 2021, I partnered with
then-Senator Casey on the initial outbound legislation. We worked
through several different iterations of this legislation and listened
to the input from stakeholders around the Nation--all with the goal of
having notification, prohibition with regard to the investment of
American dollars in China.
In 2023, I introduced the Outbound Investment Transparency Act and
pushed for its inclusion in the Defense authorization bill that year.
The Senate voted 91 to 6 to include my amendment in the annual Defense
bill that year. Obviously, this enjoys broad bipartisan support in
recognizing the challenge and indeed the threat that China could pose.
It is highly unusual, as we know now, to see that level of agreement in
Congress, but given the preeminence of the threat, nearly every one of
my colleagues supported that provision.
Unfortunately, after nearly unanimous consensus that this amendment
was needed to counter the rise of the Chinese Communist Party, that
provision was dropped when the House and the Senate went to conference.
Then, last year--back again--I continued to push for this provision
and was adamant that we had no time to lose. Even so, the language on
outbound investment was once again dropped from the Defense
authorization bill.
I want to credit Speaker Johnson, who has led a valiant effort in the
House to include this provision in the end-of-year continuing
resolution, but of course, when everybody tried to add their favorite
policy rider to the continuing resolution at the end of last year, the
bill collapsed under its own weight, and all of those outside
provisions were stripped out. Once again, we kicked the can down the
road.
Now, if we were simply talking about some relatively routine
function, like funding a bridge, this might have been something par for
the course, but that is not what we are dealing with here. I am
confident in saying we are living in one of the most dangerous times
since the Second World War, and China is our most significant
adversary.
President Xi has signaled that he intends to reincorporate Taiwan in
2027 into the Chinese nation. As we approach the end of 2025, this is
just a little more than a year away.
China has made no secret also of joining hands with Russia in
conducting joint military exercises. We see now, when it comes to
Ukraine, where North Korea, Russia, China, and even Iran--sort of the
hit list of greatest military threats--are joined together in
opposition to the United States and Europe in supporting the people of
Ukraine. So they have now locked arms against us.
Meanwhile, in the South China Sea, which is a very important
international lane of commerce, China continues to aggressively expand
its control by conducting military drills and creating islands out of
shoals and other pieces of territory. They have deployed surveillance
tools and inflamed tensions with their neighboring countries, like
Vietnam and the Philippines, in an attempt to intimidate them.
Let's not forget they are the powerhouse behind the drug crisis we
are facing at home as well. I am talking about the fentanyl crisis. It
is well established that fentanyl has been the leading cause of death
in America of young
[[Page S8566]]
people between the ages of 18 and 45. It is perhaps less well-
understood or -known that these drugs are smuggled across our southern
border by Mexican drug cartels, but they are manufactured from
chemicals imported from China to Mexico--so-called precursor chemicals.
But one thing is abundantly clear from all of this: China is not a
threat we can ignore.
Failure to address this provision on outbound investment is not just
to ignore the threat of China but to actively help them build up their
own defense arsenal and threaten peace in the Indo-Pacific.
At this very moment, U.S. companies are investing money in China.
They are bankrolling China's capabilities in semiconductors, quantum
computing, hypersonic systems, and artificial intelligence. We are in a
competition with China in each of those areas, so why in the world
would we blindly allow American investors to invest in our opponent and
help them defeat us in the race in each of these areas of technology?
It is estimated that U.S. investments in Chinese companies currently
total about $2.3 trillion in market value. That was by the end of 2020.
It included $21 billion in semiconductors, $54 billion in military
companies, and $221 billion in artificial intelligence.
Part of the problem is that China doesn't recognize a separation
between commercial enterprises and their military. They have a law that
forces their commercial enterprises to share information with their
military. It is called military-civil fusion. So there is no way to
just say ``Well, we are just investing, in America, in Chinese
businesses; we are not investing in the military.'' It is impossible
for that to be true given the Chinese law enforcing military-civil
fusion. So when you invest in China to help them build their capacity
in any one of these areas, you are helping the Chinese military that
one day may be an adversary--an open adversary--of the United States
and our friends and allies.
How can we expect the United States to dominate in the artificial
intelligence frontier if our companies are investing in the rise of our
biggest competitor? We have heard in the Foreign Relations Committee,
in a subcommittee that Chairman Ricketts chaired recently, that this is
the No. 1 race between China and the United States. It is who is going
to perfect the use of artificial intelligence and to use it not only
for commercial purposes but to defend the Nation or to use it for
aggressive offensive purposes. So wouldn't we want to know if American
companies are investing in the very technology China will try to use to
defeat us?
Again, China is more than just a commercial competitor. Every dollar
that the United States invests in a Chinese company is a dollar that is
going toward the potential production of weapons that may one day be
used to kill American soldiers.
Let me say that once more. Every dollar invested in China by a U.S.
investor into a Chinese company is a dollar that is going toward the
potential production of weapons and technology that one day may be used
to kill Americans.
It is mind-boggling to me that anyone in the U.S. Government would
not see the urgency of this policy of outbound investment transparency.
Once we have a good picture of exactly what is going on, we as
policymakers can decide what, if any, other policies we need to enact
to protect our country, but if we don't know because there is no
requirement to notify the government about what those investments look
like and what the nature of those investments is, we are completely
blind--I would say willfully blind--to that growing threat.
Those who have thrown up roadblocks against this provision over the
last 3 years are working directly, whether they know it or not, in the
interests of the Chinese Communist Party and directly, whether they
know it or not, against the interests of the people they represent--the
American people. But now, after nearly 5 years of work from Members in
both Chambers, I am proud to say the language that we have proposed to
address outbound investment transparency is in the final version of
this year's National Defense Authorization Act. The House, as I said
earlier, will vote this week, and I look forward to supporting that
provision again in the Senate.
This has been a marathon, and I am thankful to the majority leader,
Senator Thune. I mentioned the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson. I
would add a number of other names: Senator Tim Scott, Senator Cortez
Masto, Senator Dan Sullivan, and Representative Andy Barr in the
House of Representatives--all of whom will have contributed to this
success when we pass the bill.
The Chinese Communist Party may have successfully evaded our scrutiny
for the past few years, but this is the year we will finally put the
nail in the coffin and open our eyes to the growing challenge that
China represents--again, not just as a commercial, economic competitor
but as a potential military competitor on the battlefield. That is
something none of us want. The best way for us to prevent that from
happening is to deter China, and you don't deter them by having
American dollars invested in the very military capability that they
could use to fight us and defeat us and our allies in the Indo-Pacific.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.