Quoting the Financial Times, Nikkei Asia (December. ) reported that the U.S. Commerce Department on
December 16 put China's Academy of Military Medical Sciences and 11 affiliated biotechnology research
institutes on an export blacklist for allegedly helping the Chinese military to develop "brain-control"
weapons. Gina Raimondo, U.S. Commerce Secretary said, "China is choosing to use these technologies to
pursue control over its people and its repression of members of ethnic and religious minority groups." A
senior U.S. official said China was using emerging biotechnologies to try to develop future military
applications that included "gene editing, human performance enhancement [and] brain machine interfaces."
Michael Orlando, head of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center (NCSC), recently said the
U.S. was warning companies about Chinese efforts to obtain American technology in five key sectors,
including biotechnology. Separately, also on December 16, the U.S. Treasury put DJI, the world's largest
commercial drone manufacturer, and seven other groups on the "Chinese military-industrial complex
companies" list for alleged involvement in facilitating the surveillance of Uyghurs in Xinjiang. The targets
include Megvii and CloudWalk Technology, two facial recognition software companies, and Dawning
Information Industry, a supercomputer manufacturer that operates cloud computing services in Xinjiang. The
others are Xiamen Meiya Pico, a cybersecurity group that works with law enforcement, Yitu Technology, an
AI company, Leon Technology, a cloud computing company, and NetPosa Technologies, a producer of
cloud-based surveillance systems.
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