U.S. officials are investigating a company that recently purchased roughly 52,000 acres of land surrounding the Travis Air Force Base in California. There is growing speculation over whether foreign interests are involved in the company and its recent acquisitions, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Travis Air Force Base serves as a crucial hub for large transport aircraft used in worldwide aid and munitions deployment, as well as refueling operations for smaller planes.

Since 2018, public records reviewed by The Wall Street Journal reveal that a company called Flannery Associates LLC has spent around $800 million buying swathes of land around the base. It has left local, state and federal officials puzzled as to who they are and what they want with it, reported the Daily Mail.

An attorney representing Flannery said the company is controlled by U.S. citizens and that 97% of its invested capital comes from U.S. investors. The remaining 3% comes from British and Irish investors.

The company reportedly declined to provide specific information about its investors despite government inquiries.

“We don’t know who Flannery is, and their extensive purchases do not make sense to anybody in the area,” said Rep. John Garamendi, D-Calif., the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee’s readiness panel. “The fact that they’re buying land purposefully right up to the fence at Travis raises significant questions.”

In a letter to Solano County, the company described itself as being “owned by a group of families looking to diversify their portfolio from equities into real assets, including agricultural land in the western United States,” according to county newspaper the Daily Republic.

The attorney representing Flannery Associates dismissed speculation that the company’s land purchases were motivated by the proximity to the military base, calling such claims “unfounded.”

Owning land near a military base is not inherently illegal or nefarious. However, the speculation surrounding Flannery’s purchases is seemingly rooted in recent events.

Just last year, a China-based food producer acquired 300 acres of land in North Dakota, mere minutes from a separate Air Force base reportedly housing sensitive drone technology. This raised concerns among lawmakers and military experts, amid particularly heightened tensions between China and the U.S.

Currently, China owns more than 192,000 acres of agricultural land within the U.S., with an estimated value of nearly $2 billion, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Meanwhile, commercial land in China remains under state control and is generally inaccessible to U.S. or foreign investors.

While certain states have enacted local laws to restrict Chinese land ownership, some federal lawmakers are pushing for a national strategy.

Last year, two Republican lawmakers introduced a bill that would prohibit members of the Chinese Communist Party or individuals working for the CCP from purchasing real estate in the U.S. And earlier this year, a bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced a separate bill aiming to restrict the sale of U.S. agricultural land to individuals or entities tied to the governments of Iran, North Korea, Russia or China.