NASHUA, NH – Congresswoman Maggie Goodlander served as an intelligence officer in the Naval Reserve for more than a decade. She is a member of the House Armed Services Committee and is a founding member of the National Security Task Force. Last week, she announced her support for a handful of bipartisan bills intended to protect American National Security when foreign entities or companies are involved with the purchase of critical locations and land in the United States.
In the wake of controversy over the Nongfu Springs investment in Nashua, Ink Link News sat down with Goodlander recently to discuss her concerns with that deal, the legislative action underway, and the national security implications involved both locally and nationally.
Goodlander described her concern with these foreign purchases by saying, “We’re seeing a pattern across the country of major real estate acquisitions by Chinese foreign nationals, including people affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party. It’s farmland in America, but what is particularly concerning to me is real estate that is in close proximity to sensitive U.S. facilities, including military installations, water infrastructure, other critical infrastructure. This is why the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS, was created.
For the last 50 years, CFIUS has reviewed transactions, including, most recently, Congress gave this body authority to review real estate transactions.”
On August 5th, she sent a letter to U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who is the chair of CFIUS. She requested that CFIUS initiate a retroactive review of the 80 Northwestern Boulevard building purchase by the US subsidiary of Nongfu Springs. She cited its proximity to multiple defense and infrastructure locations as a basis for her request.
The letter read in part, “In recent years, real estate transactions in close proximity to certain sensitive U.S. facilities have undergone CFIUS review and, when warranted by the facts and the law, such transactions have been prohibited. Moreover, as the U.S. Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency has made clear, “[our] ability to supply water and manage wastewater are considered National Critical Functions” and “these functions are so vital to the U.S. that their disruption, corruption, or dysfunction would have a debilitating effect on national security, economic stability, and public health and safety.”
“We’ve seen clearly that people are concerned, and for good reasons, and I share those concerns, and this is exactly why we have a process to give everybody peace of mind when we see a transaction like this arrive,” she said.
To date, she has not received a response from the Treasury Secretary. Read her full letter HERE.
In addition to national security concerns, Goodlander also expressed economic security issues involved with Investment by Chinese interests.
“With respect to this real estate transaction, the questions center on whether this poses a threat to our national security, to the safety of our communities in New Hampshire, and, whether it poses a threat to our economic security, because what we’ve seen from the Chinese Communist Party is their business model is really centered and anchored in a commitment to stealing intellectual property from people across the United States, from stealing trade secrets, and that’s how they operate. So it’s two pillars of core security concerns that are at stake here.”
Currently, the National Defense Authorization Act and the Farm Bill are up for reauthorization in the 119th Congress. The congresswoman is supporting the following legislation to fully investigate and address the threats posed by foreign investments, namely made by China, to our country:
- Protecting America’s Agricultural Land from Foreign Harm Act, bipartisan legislation to prohibit the purchase or lease of U.S. agricultural land by individuals associated with the governments of China and other foreign adversaries.
- FARMLAND Act of 2025, bipartisan legislation to expand CFIUS review to include land transactions over $5 million or 320 acres of land.
- Protecting American Agriculture from Foreign Adversaries Act of 2025, which requires CFIUS to determine whether a national security review is necessary for agricultural land transactions involving transactions with foreign persons from a foreign adversary country.
- FARM Act, bipartisan legislation that requires CFIUS to review any investment that could result in foreign control of any U.S. agricultural business.
She also voted for the Agricultural Risk Review Act, which passed the House earlier this year, to permanently add the Secretary of Agriculture to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) for agriculture transactions.
Goodlander is coordinating with the State and the other members of the Federal delegation on this issue. She also acknowledged the limited role that the city has in foreign policy and national security, saying, “In this case, the state is our core partner here, because the issues that have that arise around this are not, as you’ve pointed out in your reporting, these are not core issues for the city of Nashua to have to deal with. Communities across our state face these same questions when any kind of transaction like this arises. So I’m closely coordinating with all the relevant partners at the state level and across the federal government.”
At the time of our interview, hundreds of FBI officers were deployed as cops in Washington, DC, which takes them from the critical counterintelligence responsibilities of the bureau. Goodlander discussed the national security implications of staffing and budget cuts across the government occurring under the second Trump administration, explaining how those changes affect Nashua and New Hampshire directly.
“I saw during my time as an intelligence officer in the Navy Reserve, when I was working with partners across our intelligence community, just how important it is to fully resource our intelligence. It’s critical to our military readiness, to our national security, to our economic security, and we should be investing resources on that front. I’m really concerned about what the cuts across the board have done to some of our most critical partners in the intelligence community we rely on, including, by the way, you know, I was at the Air Traffic Control Center in Nashua (FAA) and NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. NOAA, which in the world of intelligence, when you’re briefing an active situation, you always start with the weather. It controls everything. They now have no one from NOAA fully staffing that Air Traffic Control Center, which is responsible for more military airspace than any other Air Traffic Control Center in the country.”
