U.S. Commerce Department has slapped trade restrictions on dozens of Chinese entities over their role in weaponizing biotechnology and other U.S. innovations to bolster the Chinese military and further its human rights abuses.
Among the 34 Chinese entities targeted is the Academy of Military Medical Sciences, China’s top medical research institute run by the Chinese military, alongside its 11 research institutes, for aiding the Chinese military with biotechnology, including “purported brain-control weaponry,” the department said, without elaborating on the technology.
Academy of Military Medical Sciences in 2018 applied for a patent for technology for collecting and processing brain signals, according to an online patent repository.
Institute of Radiation and Radiation Medicine, one of its subsidiaries targeted, in 2012 published a Chinese paper discussing how to establish a behavioral data bank on “assault mind control weapons.”
Trade restrictions were also imposed on HMN Technologies, formerly a company under Chinese telecom provider Huawei as Huawei Marine, as well as Jiangsu Hengtong OpticElectric, Shanghai Aoshi Control Technology Co., Ltd., and Zhongtian Technology Submarine Cable, for their role in acquiring U.S. items to modernize the Chinese military.
se bodies were put on the “entity list” which bars American companies from doing business with the sanctioned entity without a special license.
“ scientific pursuit of biotechnology and medical innovation can save lives. Unfortunately, the PRC [People’s Republic of China] is choosing to use these technologies to pursue control over its people and its repression of members of ethnic and religious minority groups,” said Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo in a Dec. 16 statement.
“We cannot allow U.S. commodities, technologies, and software that support medical science and biotechnical innovation to be diverted toward uses contrary to U.S. national security,” she added.
action on Thursday followed a U.S. investment ban last week on Chinese artificial intelligence firm SenseTime, after finding its subsidiary had developed a facial recognition program targeting ethnic Uyghurs in Xinjiang, where Beijing is conducting an expansive campaign of repression.
Most of the 37 entities under the Thursday ban are based in China. A network of entities from China, as well as Georgia, Malaysia, and Turkey were also added to the trade blacklist for “diverting or attempting to divert U.S. items to Iran’s military programs,” the Commerce Department said.
HMN Technologies, one of the Chinese firms sanctioned on Thursday, was sold by Huawei to a Shanghai-listed company in 2019, shortly after Huawei was itself put on the entity list. move, analysts said at the time, was aimed at freeing Huawei’s undersea cable business from the U.S restrictions.
Washington has been sounding alarms over Chinese-built undersea cables over concerns that it could be used by Beijing for espionage and to sabotage global communications. A World Bank-led project to build a cable connecting three Pacific Island nations was reportedly scrapped in June after the United States warned that HMN Technologies’ involvement created a security threat.
A leaked report Pezou obtained in 2018 showed that the Chinese regime might be intercepting communications from undersea cables, creating a risk for all phone and internet data transferred through the networks in the Asia-Pacific region.
Pezou : US Blacklist Dozens of Chinese Biotech Firms That Aid Military, Including for ‘Brain-Control Weaponry’