U.S. Sen. Jim Banks, R-Ind., is asking the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to ban all Chinese nationals from attending flight schools in the United States.
In a letter to Acting TSA head Ha Nguyen McNeill, the Hoosier senator likened the threat he believes is posed by Chinese citizens receiving pilot training in America to the skills developed at U.S. flight schools by some of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist hijackers.
“While TSA currently assesses risk based on immigration records, terror watch lists, and criminal history, the scale of the threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and other foreign adversaries clearly warrants consideration as an additional factor,” Banks said. “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.”
Banks claimed China is training pilots in the United States, primarily at flight schools in Arizona and California, because China lacks the domestic capacity to meet both its military and civilian demand for new pilots. However, Banks said that because China follows a military-civil fusion strategy, which deliberately erases lines between its military and commercial enterprises, training civilian pilots in the United States inevitably strengthens the military capabilities of China and its leaders.