The U.S. government is employing sanctions and export controls to limit China’s military buildup, including development of brain warfare and toxin weapons, a senior Commerce Department official told Congress on Thursday.
Thea D. Rozman Kendler, assistant commerce secretary for export administration, said that preventing U.S. technology from boosting threats from China is now focused on curbing exports of advanced microchip technology and equipment.
“Day by day, we aggressively and appropriately contend with the strategic technology threat posed by China,” Ms. Rozman Kendler told the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party.
Committee Chairman Mike Gallagher complained that the administration’s new outreach to China appeared designed to avoid provoking Beijing officials.
“Perhaps most troubling, the administration has also delayed policies to end Huawei export licenses, restrict outbound capital flows in critical sectors, and hold CCP officials responsible for the Uyghur genocide accountable,” the Wisconsin Republican said. “Clearly, the push for high-level engagement has come at the cost of defending ourselves from [Chinese] aggression.”
Ms. Rozman Kendler told the panel in her prepared testimony that the new China sanctions target biological weapons programs, including brain warfare arms.
“Ensuring that our technology is not used against us is central to our approach with the PRC,” she stated, using the acronym for People’s Republic of China. “Using a scalpel approach, we seek to restrict the PRC’s military modernization efforts by restricting key, sensitive technologies without undercutting U.S. technology leadership and unduly interfering with commercial trade that doesn’t undermine our national security and foreign policy.”
On brain warfare, Ms. Rozman Kendler said the department imposed sanctions based on U.S. intelligence indicating the Chinese military is working on “novel biological weapons that evade detection, attribution and treatment.”
Currently, over 700 Chinese entities have been placed on the Commerce Department blacklist of companies engaged in dual-use, civilian-military research.
The department’s Bureau of Industry and Security, led by Ms. Rozman Kendler, oversees the sanctioning. Chinese companies or institutes can land on the list for supporting the People’s Liberation Army military modernization and weapons of mass destruction programs. Others were sanctioned for assisting Iranian weapons and military programs; facilitating human rights abuses in western China’s Xinjiang province; and providing restricted items to Russia.
The sanctions also target military development of artificial intelligence, surveillance, biotechnology, microelectronics, and quantum computing, Ms. Rozman Kendler said.
“For example, in December 2021, we added the PRC Academy of Military Medical Sciences and its eleven research institutes under the PLA’s Academy of Military Sciences to the entity list for using biotechnology processes to support PRC military end uses, including purported brain-control weaponry,” she stated.
A report by three intelligence analysts disclosed earlier this month by The Washington Times stated that China leads the world in the development of brain warfare arms — weapons using microwave or other directed energy sources to disrupt brain functions or influence government leaders or entire populations.
The Commerce Department’s December 2021 notice on the sanctions said only that the Chinese military is using “biotechnology processes to support Chinese military end-uses and end-users.”
U.S. officials are also keen to restrict dual-use American technology exports that could accelerate China’s biological weapons development. In particular, the department is targeting China’s attempts to acquire synthetic biology and genomic editing, including software used in nucleic acid assembly and synthesis.
This technology “can be used to design and build functional genetic elements from digital sequence data,” Ms. Rozman Kendler said. “This data can then be manipulated to create novel pathogens or enhance existing ones.”
Commerce officials also successfully gained support from the 43 countries of the Australia Group, an international group working to halt the spread of chemical and biological weapons.
Beijing also is said to be trying to buy peptide synthesizers — technology that makes it easier and faster “to produce toxins and pathogens that can be exploited for biological weapons purposes.”
U.S. intelligence agencies believe China is working to develop biological weapons designed to attack specific ethnic groups. “We are looking at potential biological experiments on ethnic minorities,” a senior U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told The Washington Times in May 2020.
Data on Chinese ethnic bioweapons were gathered from people with knowledge of the program, the official said.
Additionally, a Chinese general wrote in a 2017 book that advances in biotechnology have made “specific ethnic genetic attacks” more likely in a future conflict. China’s National Defense University also disclosed that the Chinese military is preparing for “specific ethnic genetic attacks” in the future.
In her prepared testimony, Ms. Rozman Kendler said the Commerce Department in December sanctioned Cambricon Technologies, a Chinese chip and software producer, for supporting PLA military modernization. Then in March, China’s BGI Research and BGI Tech Solutions, were hit with sanctions for their role in collecting genetic data used in monitoring ethnic minorities in China.
Ms. Rozman Kendler said China is also developing advanced artificial intelligence for the military that Beijing hopes will provide an edge against the U.S. military.
Development of AI is built on supercomputing and advanced semiconductors and can “be used for cognitive electronic warfare, radar, signals intelligence, and jamming,” she said.
China has charged that the Biden administration’s export restrictions are aimed at undercutting China’s economic growth, but Ms. Rozman Kendler insisted that her department’s policies are focused solely on supporting U.S. national security and foreign policies.
Ms. Rozman Kendler said the Commerce sanctions are having an impact — China has expanded its own investment in the technology after U.S. sources were cut off, but is unable for now to produce advanced logic semiconductors.
“Although our measures have restricted the PRC’s ability to indigenously produce advanced semiconductors, we know that the PRC is looking for ways to continue accessing these high-end chips,” Ms. Rozman Kendler said. “We continue to review open-source and classified information to address circumvention attempts, to track the impact of our controls, and to be proactive and nimble.”
• Bill Gertz can be reached at bgertz@washingtontimes.com.
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