A liberal activist working to kill legislation that would prevent citizens of adversarial nations, including China, from purchasing land near military bases is married to a woman with multiple links to the Chinese government, a Washington Examiner review has found.
Wess Miller is a senior staffer at a Texas-based consulting firm who has taken a particular interest in pieces of legislation in Ohio and Texas. Miller says the laws, which prevent citizens of adversarial countries such as China from buying land within a set distance from U.S. military installations or critical infrastructure, are racist. What Miller does not mention in his speeches, however, is that his wife works for a subsidiary of a Defense Department-designated “Chinese military company” and that she holds patents alongside a dean of one of China’s premier defense universities.
Miller has placed himself at the helm of efforts to block Ohio House Bill 1 and Texas Senate Bill 17, speaking at rallies earlier this year where he characterized the proposed pieces of legislation as xenophobic.
“Like all of you, I am deeply concerned, frightened even, by the racist legislation being proposed and passed across the nation right here behind me in this very building,” Miller said to a crowd of activists in front of the Ohio Statehouse in June. “These laws were designed under the false pretense of national security, the hollow promise of public safety. We’re not fooled. That’s not what this is about. This is about weaponizing fear into policy to target the vulnerable communities to divide us and undermine the very fabric of our society. These laws tell your families, my family, you don’t belong here.”
He echoed similar rhetoric in a rally staged in front of the Texas State Capitol in May. Miller has also penned a series of op-eds arguing that the laws would stunt U.S. economic growth and arguing that they could lead to violence against Asian Americans.
Miller emphasized in a statement to the Washington Examiner that he is “absolutely for keeping bad people and bad governments out of the United States” but feels that the laws go too far by also applying to Chinese citizens who are in America legally.
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/J5spy_MDQs0?si=NK5MA4JHrrvpcTka" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>In his speeches and essays, Miller omits one factor that could be motivating his reasoning: his wife’s links to the Chinese government.
Speaking to the Washington Examiner, Miller denied that his wife’s connections have had any impact on his advocacy.
“Just like anybody that’s married, and is not working together, I can’t speak to anything about my wife’s work,” he said. “She’s here legally working. I don’t know anything about her work and, regardless of the subject matter, I just have nothing to say because I don’t know anything about it.”
Miller’s wife works at Futurewei, a wholly owned subsidiary of Huawei, which functions as the Chinese telecommunications giant’s research arm.
In 2021, the Defense Department began publishing an annual list of corporations that it has determined the Chinese military owns, controls, or collaborates with extensively. Huawei was featured on the inaugural edition of this list and has been present on every iteration since.
An FBI inquiry found that Huawei’s equipment could be used to disrupt U.S. military communications, and the bureau blocked multiple projects proposed by the firm. Indeed, Huawei’s rise was largely fueled by investment from Chinese state entities. The telecom giant’s founder is a veteran of China’s military, and Bloomberg investigations conducted in 2019 and 2022 found that the corporation’s employees conduct research alongside Chinese military scientists, further evidencing Huawei’s ties to the Chinese military apparatus.
Miller’s wife has been a patent manager at Futurewei for over a decade, working as the “primary bridge” between the “HQs and US IP team” while also filing patent applications to protect the firm’s research. Prior to working at Futurewei, she was a patent manager at Huawei.
While Futurewei in 2019 claimed to be distancing itself from Huawei, that did not stop the Air Force from suspending its access to government contracting and federal assistance programs in April 2020. Further, employee reviews posted on the website Glassdoor claim that Chinese leadership still exercises considerable influence over Futurewei.
Additionally, Miller’s wife attended the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, which the state-funded Australian Strategic Policy Institute designated as “very high” risk due to its defense research operations and links to cyberattacks.
Her links to Chinese military research do not end there. During her time at the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Miller’s wife was awarded patents and, on two such awards, she is listed as a co-inventor alongside a dean of Beihang University.
Beihang University is one of China’s “Seven Sons of National Defense,” a group of institutions supervised by China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology that maintain formal partnerships with the Chinese military and serve as major sources of scientific training for those working in China’s military or border defense industry. The university had nine major defense laboratories as of May 2021 and focuses on technology related to aviation and ballistic missiles, according to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
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In addition to opposing land security bills, Miller has also emerged as an ardent supporter of Chinese-born state Rep. Gene Wu, the Texas House Democratic leader. Wu has faced criticism from Republicans over his allegedly close relationship with Chinese officials after photos surfaced of him and consular officials from a Chinese diplomatic post that was raided in 2020 after the federal government accused them of espionage. The officials were seen burning documents hours after the federal government ordered its closure.
Wu’s wife, who was granted an exclusive interview with Chinese consular officials following the ordered closure, appeared to defend them on X by claiming that “everyone spies.”