Days after it was reported that the US Department of Defence had decided to remove a Chinese maker of remote sensors used in smart cars from its blacklist of military-tied companies, the Shanghai-based firm has yet to receive notification from the Pentagon.
American defence officials concluded that Hesai Group did not meet the “legal criteria for inclusion” in the blacklist, according to the Financial Times story on Tuesday.
However, at present the Pentagon “has not yet communicated this action to Hesai, nor have we seen any official announcement or confirmation from DoD on this matter”, a company representative told the Post in an emailed statement on Thursday.
The representative declined to comment on the FT report, instead referring to its inclusion in the blacklist in January as a “mistake”.
Two sources familiar with the matter said the DoD had likely not yet reached a final decision. The DoD has so far refused to comment, noting the matter is still in court.
A clerk at the US District Court for the District of Columbia on Thursday said no date had yet been scheduled in Hesai’s case.
In May, months after the DoD added Hesai to its blacklist, the company sued the Pentagon.
Court documents dated July 31 showed that Paul L. Friedman, a US district judge hearing the case, denied Hesai’s request for a summary judgment and granted the DoD a chance to present its facts in the case.
Since the development surfaced this week, the administration of President Joe Biden and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris has drawn fire from Republicans, who have raised national-security concerns over the apparent U-turn.
US congressman John Moolenaar, Republican of Michigan and chair of the House select committee on China, described lidar as a “foundational technology of the future and one we cannot let our adversaries control”.
“If the United States allows CCP-affiliated firms like Hesai to dominate our market, we will cede our vehicles, factories, ports and other critical infrastructure to direct CCP surveillance and manipulation,” Moolenaar told the Post via email on Thursday.
Some defence experts tracking Hesai’s case attributed the Pentagon’s current silence to bureaucratic hurdles and heightened internal scrutiny following the media leak.
“The DoD require labyrinthine approvals and can be subject to all sorts of hold-ups due to ordinary bureaucratic delays,” according to Bill Drexel of the Centre for a New American Security, a Washington-based think tank.
“That said, with the blowback from the announcement that Hesai may be removed from the blacklist, it seems likely that the decision is coming under some further scrutiny internally,” said Drexel.
Lidar remained “a very important strategic technology for defence and we can’t afford to get this wrong”, he added.
