How the Pentagon is FUNDING China’s hypersonic missiles
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US companies funded by the Pentagon are selling their technology to Chinese companies involved in hypersonic missiles, according to a new analysis.
US law prohibits the sale of US products to China if there is knowledge or even reasonable suspicion that they will be used for missile development.
Nevertheless, an investigation by The Washington Postpublished Monday found numerous examples of US companies supplying Chinese entities with their software or equipment ā often using intermediaries.
The Washington Post has found evidence of more than 300 sales since 2019 of US-originated technology to dozens of entities involved in China’s hypersonic or missile programs conducted by nearly 50 companies.
Even more worrying, analysts said, was that many of the US companies were often funded by the Pentagon and partnered with the US military while selling the sought-after goods and programs to Chinese companies.
“It’s very disturbing because the bottom line is that technology that could be used for military hypersonics was funded by US taxpayers, through the US government, and ended up in China,” said Iain Boyd, director of the Center for National Security Initiatives. at the University of Colorado at Boulder, talking to The Post.
The Chinese military is pictured on August 4 testing its long-range missiles. On Monday, The Washington Post reported that Pentagon-funded technology was being sold to China through intermediaries
A Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapons Concept (HAWC) missile seen in an artist’s conception. China and the US are engaged in an arms race to build the best hypersonic weapons
Boyd conducts computational research on hypersonics – technology that allows missiles to travel at more than five times the speed of sound, potentially evading current defenses.
The United States and China are currently engaged in an arms race to create the most advanced weapons, Pentagon officials say.
In July and August 2021, the Chinese military launched a missile that used a “fractional orbital bombardment” system to propel a nuclear-capable “hypersonic glide vehicle” around Earth for the first time.
The test left the United States stunned, showing that China’s capacity went far beyond what was previously known.
In October 2021, General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, authorized the test for the first time and said the missile – designed to evade US nuclear defenses – came “very close” to a “Sputnik”. moment’ for the United States. States.
The Washington Post team has found evidence that US companies had sold equipment through intermediaries to a Chinese company they said was “instrumental” in the design of the 2021 test.
General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in October 2021 that the US was deeply concerned about the Chinese missile test and was watching closely.
One of the companies was Arizona-based Zona Technology, which sold technology through resellers to the Chinese Academy of Aerospace Aerodynamics (CAAA).
The academy, CAAA, was heavily involved in the 2021 test.
Zona Technology has research and development services contracts with the United States Air Force and received $31.6 million in grants from the Pentagon’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program.
Ping-Chih Chen, the chief executive of Zona Technology, said he was not aware of a sale of its aeroelasticity simulation software – a type of aerodynamics software – directly to CAAA, but said they had sold to another company that, under sales contracts then passed it on to CAAA.
Zona’s China distributor, Jon Ding, said he licensed Zona software to a Beijing-based company, Hifar, in 2019.
Ding told The Washington Post that he trusted his customers wouldn’t break the rules, so he didn’t check to see if the technology was being resold.
“I didn’t, because they promised me and I trust them, so I don’t do this kind of tracking,” he said, adding that he warned Hifar not to sell to restricted groups.
The photo shows Chinese soldiers conducting exercises in Shenyang, northeast China’s Liaoning province. China races the US to get the best hypersonic missiles
Zona Technology, in Arizona, is partially funded by Pentagon grants and has sold equipment and technology to middlemen who resold it to China
Another Arizona company, 4D Technology, also sells technology to Beijing through intermediaries
Another company that sold to CAAA through intermediaries was California-based Metacomp Technologies, which like Zona partners with the US military and received a SIBR grant ā in Metacomp’s case, of $13.9 million.
David Habib, legal counsel to Metacomp, told The Washington Post that the company “has no idea if and how those companies bought or transferred Metacomp software to others.”
He said the company is “scrupulous about complying with US export control laws and demands it from its customers.”
Another Arizona-based company, 4D Technology Corp, manufactures an instrument used to collect data in hypersonic tests called interferometers.
The company received more than $2.5 million in SBIR grants from the Pentagon from 2010 to 2017 and sold it in January through its distributor in the country of interferometer technology, which went to the China Air to Air Missile Research Institute.
They have not responded to the sale.
Even Siemens, the well-known German company, is involved in the sale, according to The Washington Post.
The paper reported that a US division of the technology giant, Siemens Digital Industries Software, sold technology to the Beijing Institute of Technology through a reseller in December 2020.
In a statement, Siemens said it is “committed to complying with applicable national export control regimes.”
The company said, “We are monitoring our customer base to facilitate compliance with these regulations and proactively and routinely stop selling our software portfolio to entities subject to US government restrictions.”
Siemens Digital Industries Software announced an agreement to acquire Zona Technology in July, and the deal remains pending.
Pentagon officials closely monitor China’s progress
The value of US technology to China is clear.
“In this case, American technology is superior – we can’t do certain things without foreign technology,” a Chinese scientist told The Post, who according to the paper works in a university lab conducting tests for hypersonic vehicles.
‘There is not the same technical basis.’
An American researcher said that purchasing the software and technology would save the Chinese teams enormous time and costs.
‘I’m going to design’ [a hypersonic missile] with these software tools’, says the researcher.
‘I’m going to fly it into a computer and analyze it with these tools. And once I get the model to fly my mission, I can test it in a wind tunnel.’
Matthew S. Borman, deputy assistant secretary for export administration at the Department of Commerce, said US companies couldn’t just put the problem with their middlemen.
Even an exporter wishing to ship a US-made pencil to a known missile end user in China would be denied a license, he said.
“What we’ve always said to companies is don’t blind yourself,” he said.
“You can’t just say, ‘Oh, I’m selling it to a distributor, I don’t know what they’re going to do with it.’
‘Certainly if it is a party of which it is easy to establish that they are a supplier to the Chinese army.
‘The primary responsibility lies with the company. And if they don’t exercise that responsibility, they run the risk of committing an offence.’