A bill aimed at safeguarding the United States’ sensitive military assets from adversarial nations has been introduced by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), who is arguing that foreigners from countries of concern who are caught photographing or tracking such assets should be held accountable for intending to harm the U.S.
Cotton, who also recently introduced a piece of legislation to stamp out the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) influence on the transportation of U.S. Department of War (DOW) equipment, announced his latest bill, the Visual Protection of Strategic Assets Act, on Thursday.
Nationals from countries of concern, defined in the bill as North Korea, China, Russia, and Iran, who track or take pictures of “high-value assets” or “tier-1 installations” owned by the DOW, would be presumed to have acted in order to advance their nation’s interests over the U.S.’s.
“Foreign nationals photographing sensitive military assets are only doing so for one reason, to spy on the United States. My bill would hold these criminals accountable,” Cotton told Breitbart News.
“High-value assets” would be on a list maintained by the Secretary of Defense, and would include the Boeing E–4B Nightwatch and RC–135 aircraft, the Northrop B–2 Spirit aircraft, the Rockwell B–1 Lancer aircraft, and any nuclear command platform.
In consultation with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the secretaries of the military departments, the secretary of defense would designate “tier-1 installations” as any military installation that “houses, supports, or serves as a primary operating location for 1 or more high-value assets; or is critical to the execution of national strategic missions, including nuclear deterrence, global strike, or strategic intelligence collection.”
The list of high-value assets and tier-1 installations would have to be publicly available and updated at least once a year, the bill’s text states.
If foreigners from the aforementioned countries are caught photographing or otherwise tracking the outlined assets and installations, they would face strengthened penalties of up to 10 years in prison with a five-year mandatory minimum. Any foreign adversary convicted under the new law would be hit with an immediate visa revocation and removal proceedings.
Just last week, a national was charged with the unauthorized photography of U.S. military aircraft in Nebraska during a road trip through several states, which included a stop at military bases in South Dakota and Nebraska.
Tianrui Liang, a 21-year-old student at the University of Glasgow in Scotland, was arrested at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York as he attempted to head back to the United Kingdom, court documents viewed by the South China Morning Post revealed.
Liang flew to Vancouver, Canada, on March 26, where he met a friend who is a student in New York. Together, they reportedly drove across the U.S.-Canada border before the friend went back to New York. Alone, Liang then drove from Washington to South Dakota’s Ellsworth Air Force Base, according to the affidavit.
“He then travelled from Ellsworth to Offutt Air Force Base near Omaha, Nebraska, where he told investigators that he had photographed several aircraft, including an RC-135, a reconnaissance plane, and an E-4B, the FBI said,” the outlet reported.
Offutt is notably the headquarters of the U.S. Strategic Command. The E-4B Nightwatch is also known as the “Doomsday Plane,” in which War Sec. Pete Hegseth often takes official trips.
Another Chinese national, 35-year-old Qilin Wu, was charged in January for taking pictures of B-2 bombers and other “vital military installations” at Whiteman Air Force Base back in December 2025, with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Missouri noting that the suspect entered the U.S. illegally via the Mexican border.
Olivia Rondeau is a politics reporter for Breitbart News based in Washington, DC. Find her on X/Twitter and Instagram.
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