Alibaba has taken the US Department of Defense to court over a label the company insists it does not deserve. In a complaint filed on Tuesday in the federal court in San Jose, California, the Hangzhou group asked a judge to strike its name from the Pentagon’s list of “Chinese military companies” and declared the designation, in its own words, to have “no basis in fact or law.”
The list in question is the one maintained under Section 1260H of the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act, which requires the Pentagon to name Chinese firms it judges to have direct or indirect ties to the People’s Liberation Army.
Alibaba was added on June 8, alongside Baidu, BYD, the robotics maker Unitree, and others, in an update that pushed the roster to 188 entities, up from 134 the year before.
In its filing, Alibaba argued that it is governed by an independent board, none of whom has any military affiliation, and that its products and services are built “for retail, logistics, and enterprise information technology, not weapons, defense, or intelligence.”
The 💜 of EU techThe latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol' founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It's free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now!The Pentagon’s justification, set out in a June statement, was that the company is “a military-civil fusion contributor to the Chinese defense industrial base” through its affiliation with China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, with an indirect link to the state asset regulator known as SASAC.
