Senator Thom Tillis and a group of Republican Senate colleagues have introduced the Protect Our Bases Act, a legislative effort aimed at bolstering national security by enhancing the ability of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) to review foreign land purchases near sensitive U.S. military, intelligence, and national laboratory sites.
“We must address the growing threat from the Chinese Communist Party and other hostile regimes trying to get close to our most sensitive military and intelligence sites,” said Senator Tillis. “The Protect Our Bases Act ensures the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States has the most up-to-date information on key U.S. national security locations so dangerous land purchases can be blocked well before they become security risks.”
The legislation follows an incident in 2022 involving Fufeng Group, a Chinese company linked to the Chinese Communist Party, which planned to purchase land near Grand Forks Air Force Base in North Dakota. CFIUS could not evaluate this transaction for national security risks because the Department of Defense had not listed the base as a sensitive site for national security purposes. Although local authorities ultimately blocked the transaction, it highlighted deficiencies in CFIUS’s process for reviewing foreign land purchases.
The Protect Our Bases Act mandates that agencies represented on CFIUS provide updated records annually of military, intelligence, and national laboratory facilities deemed sensitive sites. The bill also aims to simplify these records’ use for CFIUS’s national security reviews and requires CFIUS to submit an annual report to Congress certifying that such reviews are complete and accurate.
