Dozens of taxpayer-funded science projects tied to the Pentagon and Department of Energy have quietly partnered with blacklisted Chinese supercomputing centers that the U.S. government once sanctioned for helping Beijing build weapons.
The Daily Caller News Foundation identified over 100 such projects by cross-referencing federal research records with a list of sanctioned Chinese facilities. Many of these projects were carried out at prominent U.S. national laboratories like Argonne, Oak Ridge and Los Alamos, which all contributed to America’s atomic and defense legacy.
Among the Chinese facilities involved were the National Supercomputing Centers in Guangzhou, Tianjin, Beijing, Shenzhen and Changsha — all sanctioned in 2015 for contributing to China’s weapons programs. In many of the reviewed cases, Chinese collaborators ran simulations on the blacklisted machines, raising concerns about technology transfers.
“Federally-funded researchers should never have anything to do with tools that help China’s military,” said Rep. John Moolenaar, chairman of the House Select Committee on the CCP. He warned that the use of those machines threatens U.S. national security through exposure of sensitive models and data.
In one case, U.S. researchers studying spacecraft physics in 2022 co-authored a paper with Chinese academics, thanking a banned Chinese supercomputer for its contributions. Another 2020 study, focusing on nuclear materials, credited the same machines despite Commerce Department restrictions in place for years.
Some labs deny using the banned equipment directly but do not dispute that Chinese co-authors may have handled the computing work. Former Air Force analyst L.J. Eads says this represents a major regulatory gap allowing U.S. knowledge to be exploited through “backdoor” cooperation.
Argonne and Oak Ridge national labs were both involved in research using China’s TianHe-2 supercomputer in Guangzhou. Oak Ridge helped explore exotic materials, while Argonne worked with Chinese institutions on memory optimization for massive computing systems.
The concept of “Military-Civil Fusion” — a Chinese strategy to blur the line between military and civilian technologies — plays a central role in the concern, as research into areas like space weather or hydrogen energy can serve both purposes.
The Department of Commerce previously warned that such collaboration could provide China with critical knowledge to enhance its missile programs and nuclear simulations. Despite repeated outreach, both the Department of Defense and Department of Energy declined to comment.
Los Alamos admitted that while its staff did not use foreign systems directly, they were involved in interpreting results from projects relying on Chinese computing. In one case, the lab’s own software expert worked with Chinese partners to validate code on blacklisted machines.
