The U.S. government said it will impose sanctions on five Chinese companies accused of stealing Google's trade secrets. As advanced technology comes to be seen as a security matter rather than simply an industrial asset, technology sanctions between the two countries are growing sharper.
The State Department said on the 19th that it is imposing broad sanctions on five Chinese entities under the Protecting American Intellectual Property Act (PAIPA) for infringing Google's trade secrets, according to the South China Morning Post. The targets are Shanghai Jisuan Technology, founded by former Google software engineer Ding Linwei; the venture capital firm MiraclePlus; two VC funds operated by MiraclePlus; and one corporate management entity. They face financial and commercial measures including asset freezes, bans on transactions with U.S. individuals and entities, and restrictions on financial services and foreign exchange licenses.
Ding, who was arrested in the United States in 2024, is accused of transferring more than 1,000 confidential files related to supercomputing, including Google's Tensor Processing Units (TPU), to his personal cloud account while working at the company. TPUs are next-generation artificial intelligence chips Google developed to compete with Nvidia's graphics processing units. In 2023, he secretly founded a startup in China, openly marketed it as capable of replicating Google's superintelligence infrastructure technology and raised investment. In September, a first-trial court sentenced Ding to 12 months in prison and ordered him to pay about $198,000 in restitution. The court acquitted him of economic espionage charges, citing insufficient evidence.
Although the two countries held a summit in September, their battle for technological supremacy is intensifying, driven by the view that advanced technology is a security issue rather than merely a commercial one. Britain's MI5 issued a report on Sept. 30 suggesting that Chinese AI startup Zhipu AI may be linked to the Ministry of State Security (MSS), China's intelligence agency, Bloomberg reported on the 19th. MI5 assessed that four Zhipu AI founders conducted joint research with the China General Technology Research Institute (CGTRI) before and after founding the company, and that CGTRI maintains very strong ties to the MSS. The United States had already restricted Zhipu AI's access to American technology last year over allegations that its AI research supported the Chinese military. The Chinese Embassy in London called MI5's claims "groundless."
As concerns grow over security risks posed by Chinese technology companies, the Trump administration has ordered models from DeepSeek, one of China's leading AI firms, removed from federal government use. The Department of Homeland Security published the guidance on the Federal Register website on the 19th, Bloomberg reported. Under the cybersecurity law, federal agencies are barred entirely from using DeepSeek and must remove DeepSeek products from their information technology systems. The restrictions also cover third-party services built on DeepSeek's AI models. DHS warned that DeepSeek could serve as a "multi-pronged threat vector," saying that sensitive data risks being transferred to China if U.S. government employees or vendors use its products.
The Trump administration has introduced a series of enforcement and regulatory measures targeting Chinese technology companies and their products. The Federal Communications Commission banned imports of new Chinese-made drones last December, along with imports of Chinese-made home routers, the devices that connect computers, mobile phones and smart devices to the internet. The FCC is also scheduled to vote on the 29th on a plan to exclude all Chinese laboratories from testing electronic devices such as smartphones, cameras and computers used in the United States.