Ohio Senator Wants Treasury to Review Chinese Solar Firm's Plan to Lease Building 13 Miles From Wright-Patterson Air Force Base

Sen. Bernie Moreno, an Ohio Republican, sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on July 31 asking for a formal national security review of a Chinese company's plan to lease or buy a building near Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

The company is SolarSpace Technology Co., Ltd., a Chinese manufacturer of photovoltaic cells and modules. According to the letter, posted on Moreno's Senate website, SolarSpace intends to lease or purchase a facility at 2555 Woodman Drive in Kettering, Ohio. About 13 miles from Wright-Patterson, a base Moreno describes as employing roughly 38,000 military personnel, civilians and contractors.

The referral didn't come from Moreno's office. The Dayton Development Coalition flagged the pending transaction to Bessent's office on June 22, 2026, according to both Moreno's letter and Mercer County Outlook. Moreno is asking Bessent, in his role as chair of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), to formally investigate it.

Moreno's language is blunt. He called SolarSpace a "shell company" for Beijing's military and intelligence objectives, according to the New York Post, and told Bessent "the Chinese Communist Party is never allowed to purchase or lease land near our military installations."

Wright-Patterson isn't just any base. It houses Air Force Materiel Command, the Air Force Research Laboratory, and the National Air and Space Intelligence Center. The Air Force Research Laboratory has run hypersonic research programs since the early 1960s, backed by roughly $1.7 billion in investment over a 25-year span, according to a senior lab scientist cited by ZeroHedge via The Epoch Times.

The espionage risk isn't hypothetical. In 2014, a former civilian employee of the Air Force Research Laboratory was sentenced to 37 months in federal prison for selling sensitive lab information to someone he believed was a Chinese intelligence agent, according to The Epoch Times reporting picked up by ZeroHedge.

No charges, no investigation, yet

No CFIUS review has been announced. No charges have been filed against SolarSpace or anyone connected to the deal. Moreno's letter is a request, not a finding. The claim that SolarSpace is a CCP "shell company" is Moreno's characterization, not an established fact from a completed investigation.

Real estate transactions by foreign-owned manufacturers happen constantly in the U.S., including plenty of legitimate solar and battery investment that state and local officials have courted for jobs. Kettering city or county officials involved in the property deal haven't been quoted defending or explaining it in any of the available reporting, and SolarSpace itself hasn't issued a public response in these sources. Without their side on the record, this is currently a one-sided allegation, even if it's a serious one worth investigating.

Ohio's stalled property law

Ohio House Bill 1, the Ohio Property Protection Act, would bar foreign-adversary governments and companies, including those from China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela under Nicolas Maduro, from buying agricultural land or "protected property" within 10 miles of a military base or critical infrastructure site, according to Mercer County Outlook. That radius was cut down from an earlier 25-mile proposal.

State Rep. Angie King, a Celina Republican and one of the bill's main sponsors, said on social media that HB 1 was on track for a vote until "professional sports interests stepped in," according to Mercer County Outlook. King argued Ohio's obligation is "to Ohioans not foreign millionaire athletes," suggesting lobbying tied to sports team ownership or stadium land deals slowed the bill's momentum. No further detail on which sports interests or what specifically they objected to appears in available reporting.

The critical infrastructure definition in HB 1 is broad by design, covering power plants, dams, water treatment plants, refineries, transmission lines, telecom infrastructure down to cell towers and fiber lines, railroads and pipelines. Critics quoted in Mercer County Outlook's coverage note that definition could effectively blanket large stretches of the state, raising its own set of line-drawing questions about how aggressively "critical infrastructure" should be defined before it swallows ordinary commercial real estate.

The SolarSpace matter now sits with Bessent's Treasury Department. CFIUS reviews are typically confidential and can take months, and the department has not set a public timeline. Whether Ohio lawmakers revive HB 1 before the current legislative session ends is also unresolved. Both tracks, the federal review and the state bill, will determine whether Ohio actually gets a legal mechanism to block deals like this one before the next one shows up 13 miles from another base.