Senator warns TSA of military benefits of Chinese pilots training at U.S. flight schools

GOP Sen. Jim Banks is warning the Transportation Security Administration that Chinese pilots training in U.S. flight schools may provide unacceptable military benefits to the Chinese military. 

Banks, citing government assessments and public reporting, notes that China – including its People’s Liberation Army Air Force and Navy – is experiencing a shortage of trained pilots.

Banks cites new data that indicates Chinese flight schools are currently at capacity, prompting prospective pilots to seek training elsewhere, in American institutions. Investigative journalist Peter Schweizer reported earlier this year in a new book, The Invisible Coup, that while China needs 5,000 cadets each year, its flight schools can only produce 1,200. 

“Each Chinese citizen trained at an American flight school helps break through China’s pilot bottleneck. While many of these students will go on to civilian and not military careers, the Chinese Communist Party, through its Military-Civil Fusion strategy, has foreclosed our ability to view this training with the benefit of a doubt,” Banks wrote in a letter to the Deputy Administrator of TSA last week.  

“The more Chinese citizens there are with aviation training, the more options the Chinese military has to recruit pilots and instructors for its malign purposes,” the Indiana GOP senator continued. 

You can read the letter below: 

The Chinese Communist Party has long employed a strategy of Military-Civil Fusion under which the Chinese government boosts private, civilian enterprise with the knowledge that certain technologies and experience would be valuable for a potential future conflict. 

Under a law passed shortly after 9/11, Congress assigned responsibility to the Secretary of Homeland Security to vet foreign nationals that want to study in U.S. flight schools and to exclude those that were potential national security threats. 

Banks says that the program, which is currently administered by TSA, should be expanded to consider the threats posed by the Chinese Communist Party when considering whether to approve Chinese pilots at American flight schools. 

“While TSA currently assesses risk based on immigration records, terror watchlists, and criminal history, the scale of the threat posed by the CCP and other foreign adversaries clearly warrants consideration as an additional factor,” Banks wrote. 

“Therefore, I respectfully request that TSA update the Flight Training Security Program to preclude individuals from foreign adversary nations, such as China, from attending flight training schools in the United States,” he added.