(DCNF)—The Department of Defense (DOD) and Department of Energy (DOE) have funded more than 100 research projects using Chinese government supercomputers sanctioned by the U.S. for collaborating with China’s military, a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation found.
The DCNF compared federally-funded research project reports against entities sanctioned by the U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC). The DCNF identified 102 projects, primarily conducted through U.S. national labs, involving at least one of five sanctioned Chinese supercomputer centers in Beijing, Changsha, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Tianjin.
While it’s unclear what information may have been shared with the sanctioned supercomputers, intelligence analysts and lawmakers say the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is committed to weaponizing research with dual civilian and military applications.
“It is unacceptable that federally-funded researchers continue to use Chinese supercomputing centers that have been blacklisted for supporting China’s military buildup,” Michigan Republican Rep. John Moolenaar, chairman of the House Select Committee on the CCP, told the DCNF. “These systems have been instrumental in China’s hypersonic missile research, nuclear weapons development, and other strategic capabilities that directly threaten U.S. national security. The use of these centers by American researchers poses serious risks of U.S. technology transfer and cyber exploitation.”
Additionally, some research projects included China-based co-authors belonging to other sanctioned institutes serving the Chinese military, such as universities subordinate to China’s Central Military Commission.
Spokesmen for Argonne, Los Alamos, and Oak Ridge national laboratories told the DCNF their personnel had not used the sanctioned CCP supercomputers. Yet, when asked directly if the research projects involved China-based co-authors who had used the sanctioned Chinese supercomputers, the spokesmen did not respond.
DOD and DOE did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
The DOC sanctioned the Chinese supercomputing centers in question for “activities contrary to the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States” related to China’s weapons of mass destruction programs. The sanctions prohibit items of U.S. origin from being exported to the listed entities.
However, L.J. Eads, a former U.S. Air Force intelligence analyst, said there’s a major loophole in U.S. export control regulations that national labs seem to be exploiting.
“One major loophole is that while U.S. export controls restrict direct access, Chinese researchers can still exploit U.S. research by having China-based collaborators run simulations on sanctioned supercomputers,” Eads told the DCNF. “This loophole also allows DOD and DOE researchers to circumvent restrictions by outsourcing computations to China, which poses serious national security risks.”
‘Military-Civil Fusion’
After reviewing the DCNF’s findings, Eads said the majority of identified research projects relying on sanctioned Chinese supercomputers have both civilian and military applications, such as space weather modeling, which impacts satellite communications as well as “ballistic-missile early warning radar systems,” according to the U.S. Space Force.
Supercomputers are orders of magnitude faster than conventional computing technology, and, thus, are used to perform complex calculations, such as rapidly modeling advanced ballistics and nuclear reactions, Eads said.
“The power of these supercomputers equates to using tens of thousands of the newest MacBooks all at once,” Eads told the DCNF.
Consequently, U.S. entities using sanctioned Chinese supercomputers for advanced research may be exposing American technological assets to the threat of technology transfer through the CCP’s so-called “Military-Civil Fusion” strategy, which the State Department has warned “seeks to exploit the inherent ‘dual-use’” of technologies with both military and civilian applications.
“[CCP supercomputers] linked directly to the [People’s Liberation Army], risk transferring sensitive U.S. algorithms and models that could significantly enhance China’s capabilities in critical areas such as nuclear simulation and hypersonic weaponry,” Eads said.
‘No Such Thing As Harmless Cooperation’
Since October 2015, the DOD has funded at least 25 research projects using sanctioned CCP supercomputers, according to a DCNF review of U.S. government websites and scholarly databases.
In one instance, federal records show several Pentagon grants supported an October 2020 report conducted by a team of Chinese government personnel and a U.S. university professor researching “high-entropy alloys,” which have both aerospace and advanced nuclear applications. The team’s 2020 report thanks the “computational resource provided by the TianHe-1 supercomputer at the National Supercomputer Center in Changsha,” which the DOC sanctioned five years prior in February 2015 for activities contrary to U.S. “national security or foreign policy interests” and its use in “nuclear explosive activities.”
The DOD also funded a September 2024 report conducted by U.S. and China-based university professors, as well as Chinese government personnel, concerning hydrogen production. Eads noted the research may benefit the development of nuclear energy. The 2024 research report expressed gratitude for “the computational resources provided by the TianHe-1A, TianHe II supercomputer,” both of which were sanctioned by the DOC in 2015.
A third Pentagon-funded report from October 2018 conducted by U.S. and Chinese university professors, as well as DOD researchers, investigated atomic interactions, which Eads said could have dual-use applications related to developing nuclear weapon systems.
The 2018 research report thanked the “National Supercomputer Center in Guangzhou,” which houses the sanctioned TianHe-2 supercomputer, according to the U.S. government. Guangzhou’s National Supercomputer Center was involved in 68 of the 102 research reports identified by the DCNF, the most of any of the sanctioned Chinese supercomputers.
“The CCP’s comparative advantage is surveillance, not science or fundamental research,” Jacqueline Deal, an advisory board member at State Armor, a nonprofit focused on countering the CCP, told the DCNF. “The Party has wired its universities and overseas research institutions in order to sense and detect work with military or intelligence applications. There’s no such thing as harmless cooperation on dual-use topics with people subject to the reach of China’s surveillance apparatus.”
‘Loopholes’
The DOE and U.S. national laboratories have also supported at least 77 research projects using sanctioned CCP supercomputers, according to a review of government websites and scholarly databases.
Illinois’ Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), known for its work on the Manhattan Project to develop the atom bomb, has been involved in at least 29 research projects using sanctioned CCP supercomputers.
One DOE-funded ANL research project published in December 2020, titled “Memory-Efficient and Skew-Tolerant MapReduce Over MPI for Supercomputing Systems,” used Guangzhou’s TianHe-2 supercomputer and focused on optimizing memory storage for supercomputers.
In addition, ANL and U.S. university researchers collaborated with personnel from China’s National University of Defense Technology (NUDT), which the Commerce Department sanctioned in February 2015.
An ANL spokesperson told the DCNF by email that its researchers had “not used any of the sanctioned Chinese national supercomputing centers or their associated supercomputers,” and said that compliance with federal regulations was “a top priority.”
Yet, ANL did not respond to questions about whether or not it had supported research projects relying on China-based researchers using sanctioned CCP supercomputing centers.
New Mexico’s Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), which was established in 1943 to build the atomic bomb, has been involved in at least 22 research projects using sanctioned Chinese supercomputers, 15 of which involved collaboration with personnel from sanctioned Chinese universities.
Among other examples, in August 2022, LANL published a DOE-funded research project concerning spacecraft physics that leveraged simulations from Guangzhou’s TianHe-2 supercomputer.
The project also included personnel from Beihang University, which the Department of Commerce sanctioned in May 2001 under its former name, Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Beihang University is one of China’s so-called “Seven Sons of National Defense,” which serve as “defense science, technology and industry work units” subordinate to the main driver of the CCP’s Military-Civil Fusion strategy, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, according to the House Select Committee on the CCP.
A LANL spokesperson told the DCNF by email that “no LANL researchers worked on Chinese supercomputers, and there was no violation of export controls or Department of Commerce sanctions.”
However, the LANL spokesperson said certain research projects involving sanctioned Chinese supercomputers included LANL personnel who had participated in “scientific interpretation” or had “collaborated on the fundamental science.”
A LANL “code expert” who has allegedly developed a “large, open-source code” that was “used by the space physics community” and the sanctioned CCP supercomputers was also a research project co-author to “ensure that the code is working properly,” the LANL spokesperson told the DCNF.
“It’s disconcerting that esteemed DOE scientists, who are fully aware of the department’s critical national security role, persist in engaging with these sanctioned platforms,” Eads said. “Their actions contradict the very mission they are supposed to uphold.”
Tennessee’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), another Manhattan Project landmark, has likewise participated in 26 research projects using sanctioned CCP supercomputers.
In November 2018, ORNL published a DOE-funded research project investigating the production of an exotic material called graphane, which may have applications in solar cells, and is related, but not to be confused with graphene. The research acknowledged that “calculations were performed on the TianheII supercomputer at the Chinese National Supercomputer Center in Guangzhou.”
“ORNL has not violated Department of Commerce rules related to foreign entities,” an ORNL spokesperson told the DCNF by email. “No U.S. researchers performed work on Chinese supercomputers, and no government resources were used to support Chinese research conducted at the Chinese supercomputing centers.”
However, the spokesperson acknowledged that Chinese personnel involved in ORNL research projects had “used an ORNL instrument for non-sensitive, open science experiments” and had “used Chinese computers to analyze data.”
“Loopholes in current regulations and enforcement have allowed this dangerous practice to persist, exposing sensitive U.S. research to potential exploitation by Beijing,” Rep. Moolenaar told the DCNF. “Congress must act swiftly to close these gaps and ensure that taxpayer-funded research does not, in any form, contribute to strengthening our top geopolitical adversary.”
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Bypass Big Tech Censors
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.