US adds Alibaba, BYD and other Chinese tech champions to military company blacklist

The Pentagon signalled on Monday that it was adding Alibaba, BYD, Baidu and dozens of other Chinese companies to its list of entities it says are linked to China’s military, widening a blacklist that increasingly targets sectors at the heart of US-China technological competition. In a Federal Register notice scheduled for publication on Wednesday, the US Department of Defence designated a broad range of Chinese firms as “Chinese military companies” under Section 1260H of the National Defence Authorisation Act. These include electric vehicle makers, artificial intelligence companies, battery manufacturers, biotech firms and solar suppliers. The designation can complicate companies’ access…