Major U.S. tech companies currying favor with President Donald Trump are coordinating alongside foreign entities recently designated by the Pentagon as arms of China’s military, the Washington Examiner found.
Seated inside the Capitol Rotunda in January, tech executives whose wealth could eclipse entire countries flanked Trump during his inaugural address. There was Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Apple CEO Tim Cook, and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, one of Trump’s closest advisers. In the audience next to Trump’s pick to lead the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, was Shou Zi Chew, the CEO of China-owned TikTok.
Now, as the second Trump administration gets underway, tech CEOs are scheduling meetings with the president and scaling back some of their left-leaning programs that came under fire from Republicans over the years. However, they do not appear to be scaling back all of their publicly documented partnerships and other ties to entities close to one foreign adversary: China.
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Big Tech’s ties to the Chinese military-backed companies, based on public records reviewed by the Washington Examiner, are an illustration of how the largest corporations in the United States work, in certain cases, alongside foreign adversary-backed companies. The U.S.-based companies have recently done business with or allowed their services to be used by the entities that are on the Pentagon’s 1260H list for those acting as agents of the People’s Liberation Army in China, the military of the Chinese Communist Party.
“Ensuring U.S. leadership in technology and research is crucial to winning the competition against the CCP,” said Rep. John Moolenaar (R-MI), the chairman of the House’s select committee on China, which investigates corporations and their ties to Chinese military-linked entities. “We must lead the way in emerging technologies of the future, protect our most critical research, and rapidly innovate to stay ahead.”
‘American companies need to make a choice’
Published by the Department of Defense, the 1260H list encompasses companies that are either controlled or owned by the Chinese military or identified as “military-civil fusion contributors” for the People’s Liberation Army — akin to CCP defense contractors.
While the 1260H list does not come with sanctions, unlike other U.S. government lists, such as the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security entity list, U.S.-based corporations have increasingly faced pressure from lawmakers to distance themselves from any Chinese ties to avoid the appearance or possibility of boosting China’s authoritarian government.
One tech company with significant ties to companies on the 1260H list is Microsoft — which donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration. The company declined to comment for this story.
Microsoft, which invested $20 million in Chinese military-backed Inspur in 2005, owned 22% of Shanghai Wicresoft as of late 2023. Shanghai Wicresoft, an IT company that Microsoft helped form in 2002, has worked with the likes of AI giants SenseTime and CloudWalk — two Chinese military companies on a Treasury Department entity list that bans Americans from buying or selling public stakes in them.
The U.S. government has said both SenseTime and CloudWalk are linked to China’s surveillance of ethnic minorities in the western Xinjiang region.
Cloud-related partnerships are also an area that adjoins Microsoft to Chinese military companies.
On its cloud marketplace, Microsoft allows the Beijing-based China Mobile to sell services that provide “cross-regional synchronization of your business data.” China Telecom, which has reportedly been responsible for unlawfully diverting its internet traffic to commit espionage, lists Microsoft’s cloud computing Azure platform as a partner on its website. The Biden administration’s Federal Communications Commission revoked China Telecom Americas’ authorization to operate in the U.S. in 2021 over national security concerns.
Chinese military company Quectel has celebrated a partnership with Microsoft on its website, while documents reviewed by the House select committee on China shed light on how Microsoft has partnered with a subsidiary of China Communications Construction Group — “a company with significant involvement in militarizing the South China Sea.”
“American companies need to make a choice: Do they want to put America first or the Chinese Communist Party first? If they can’t muster the requisite patriotism to do the right thing, Congress and the Trump administration should step in and establish penalties for doing business with companies affiliated with the People’s Liberation Army,” said Michael Sobolik, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute who specializes in U.S.-China relations.
Amazon, which also poured $1 million into Trump’s inauguration, allows a host of Chinese military companies to use its Amazon Web Services marketplace, including China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom, GTCOM, and Tencent, data show.
Chinese military companies Autel Robotics, DJI, and others rake in cash selling their products through Amazon to American consumers, moreover.
Amazon did not dispute the unearthed ties. But it insisted it is in compliance with all laws and regulations.
“Amazon Web Services complies with all applicable US laws, including trade laws, regarding the provision of AWS services inside and outside of China,” an Amazon spokesperson told the Washington Examiner.
Apple, whose CEO, Cook, donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration, has its own ties to 1260H list companies. Software records show that on its App Store, Apple hosts products tied to Yitu, Tencent, SenseTime, Inspur, DJI, China Telecom, and other Chinese military companies. DJI, a drone maker, was said by the U.S. government in 2021 to be complicit in China’s oppression of ethnic minorities in the western Xinjiang region.
Public reporting has linked Apple to business negotiations with Chinese military-backed Tencent and TikTok owner ByteDance. Apple Music also closed a deal last year with China Mobile. Apple did not reply to requests for comment.
Google, which also joined the $1 million Trump donation club, inked a long-term patent licensing deal in 2018 with Tencent, which has been deemed an “intelligence gateway” for CCP intelligence agencies. Google also hosts Tencent’s products on its Google Play store.
Google declined to comment. It also hosts products on its Google Play Store developed by China Mobile, a Chinese military company that is listed as a Google Cloud “partner.” China Telecom is a Google Cloud “partner.”
Tesla, which also did not respond to requests for comment, has long shared ties to China: As far as the 1260H list, Bloomberg reported last year that Tesla was working alongside Chinese military-backed CATL. Tesla can thank Chinese military-backed China State Construction Engineering Corporation for taking the lead on contracting for one of its Chinese factories that began to be built in 2018, according to permit documents.
In 2018, Tencent disclosed a roughly 5% stake in Tesla, whose CEO, Musk, went as far as to describe himself as “kind of pro-China” in an online conversation with two members of Congress in July 2024. CNBC reported in 2023 that Tencent sold “some” of its Tesla shares.
‘Surveillance state’
To Victoria Coates, a former national security adviser to Trump and now vice president at the Heritage Foundation, it’s important for Americans to be aware that Chinese military companies on the Pentagon’s list are not mere neutral actors.
“They are actively part of the CCP’s surveillance state,” she said.
It is unclear what further agency enforcements may come against CCP-linked companies under the second Trump administration — the first being ripe for sanctions.
But under Trump 2.0, questions remain about how tough Trump will be on China. Trump has, for instance, rallied around supporting TikTok after its ban in the U.S. over national security concerns. On Saturday, Trump imposed tariffs on China.
As Chinese companies in the U.S. look to curry favor with the new president, Trump’s allies have recently initiated lucrative partnerships with CCP-linked entities. Days before Trump’s inauguration, the Trump-friendly lobbying firm Ballard Partners registered to lobby on behalf of Pirelli Tire, which counts the Chinese state-owned China National Chemical Corporation as its single largest shareholder. Since that time, Ballard has scooped up at least $40,000 from Pirelli Tire while also leaning on hundreds of thousands of dollars in lobbying revenue to flood in from another Chinese-owned client, TikTok, documents show.
Trump’s inauguration was aided by a $250,000 check from Syngenta Corporation, an agricultural company tied to the Chinese government-backed Sinochem conglomerate, financial disclosures show. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
Perhaps no tech company in the U.S. has better attempted to get in the good graces of Trump ahead of the next four years than Meta, which previously worked alongside Amazon and China Mobile on a global subsea cable project. But unlike other Trump-friendly Big Tech companies, Meta appears to have severed all apparent ties with companies on the 1260H list.
“Meta has not invested in any projects or partnerships alongside China Mobile since 2020, before the Pentagon’s 1260H list was released,” Francis Brennan, a spokesman for Meta, told the Washington Examiner.
‘A new cold war’
Meanwhile, another influential U.S.-based tech player has appeared to cultivate lucrative connections with Chinese military-backed companies as it pulls in significant revenue in China.
According to multiple reports last year, Nvidia has plans to partner with Chinese military company Inspur, which is also on a Commerce Department blacklist, to distribute a variant of their top-of-the-line AI chips that comply with U.S. export restrictions to Chinese customers. Export controls were placed on Nvidia’s top-level chips to stop the Chinese government from developing a competitive edge over the U.S. Nvidia still sells non-export-controlled chips to Tencent, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Tencent, which the Pentagon added to its list of Chinese military companies in early 2025, has long-standing relationships with Nvidia.
Nvidia’s website, for example, notesthat its AI Enterprise product can be accessed through Tencent Cloud. In a 2023 blog post, Nvidia stated that the Chinese tech conglomerate used open-source resources it created to support the development of its AI products.
“Our products are general purpose platforms designed for socially beneficial purposes,” a Nvidia spokesperson told the Washington Examiner. “We comply with all U.S. export controls and expect our customers to do the same. We conduct extensive diligence to confirm that parties are not restricted by entity listings before shipping to them, consistent with best industry practices.”
Nvidia no longer has business relationships with Chinese military-backed BGI or SenseTime, according to a source close to the company. When reached by the Washington Examiner, Nvidia did not dispute its ties to Tencent and Inspur.
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As far as Tencent, Nvidia reportedly entered discussions with the Chinese military company last year to exploit a loophole in U.S. export restrictions by establishing remote data centers. China Telecom, which the Pentagon has designated as a Chinese military company since 2021, was reported to be seeking a similar arrangement to access Nvidia’s chips.
“This is a new Cold War,” said Sobolik, the China expert. “American tech companies need to advance freedom, not Xi Jinping thought.”
