Dozens of Pentagon-backed studies have come under scrutiny after revelations that they indirectly relied on Chinese supercomputers long sanctioned by the U.S. government. These computing centers are known for supporting Beijing’s nuclear and hypersonic weapons development.
According to investigative findings, U.S. national laboratories supported at least 102 research projects that involved work performed using computing power from five specific Chinese facilities already blacklisted by the Department of Commerce.
The projects often included co-authors from Chinese institutions tied to the country’s military. The reports thanked centers like the National Supercomputer Center in Guangzhou for providing access to TianHe systems, which the U.S. sanctioned nearly a decade ago.
Some projects even listed Chinese researchers from entities subordinate to China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, which plays a central role in the CCP’s military technology push. These collaborations were sometimes coordinated with U.S. universities or DOE facilities.
Spokespersons from labs such as Los Alamos and Oak Ridge denied that their researchers worked on Chinese systems themselves. But they did not answer whether their partners abroad had used those systems to process or model data derived from U.S. projects.
Experts say this workaround allows sensitive American research to be accessed by sanctioned institutions without violating the letter of the law — a gap in enforcement that could endanger national security.
In one 2018 study, funded by the Pentagon, American and Chinese researchers jointly explored atomic structures relevant to nuclear systems. The paper credited Guangzhou’s TianHe-2 supercomputer — the most frequently cited of the blacklisted systems.
Eads described this trend as “disconcerting,” warning that key technologies could be slipping through regulatory cracks and landing in hands aligned with the Chinese military.
