Move FM Global News

WASHINGTON D.C.: The Biden administration has added 43 businesses to the US Commerce Department’s Entity List, including Frontier Services Group, for training Chinese military pilots and other activities that threaten US national security.

Frontier Services is a security and aviation company previously run by Erik Prince, founder of the security firm Blackwater.

The Test Flying Academy of South Africa, a flight school under scrutiny by UK authorities for recruiting former British military pilots to train Chinese military pilots, was also added to the list.

Companies on the list cannot receive US exports for activities deemed contrary to US interests.

Included in the new US listings are Frontier Services Group sites in China, Kenya, Laos and the UAE; TFASA companies in South Africa, China, the UAE and the UK; and aerospace and defense conglomerate Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC) businesses in China and South Africa.

In a release, the Commerce Department said that in addition to recruiting western pilots to train Chinese military pilots on western air force tactics, companies were added to the list for acquiring US-origin items in support of China’s military modernization, including hypersonic weapons development and hypersonic flight modeling.

“It is imperative that we prevent China from acquiring US technologies and know-how to enable their military modernization programs,” Commerce Department official Matthew Axelrod said in a statement.

Thirty-one Chinese entities have been added to the list.

Shanghai Supercomputing Technology was recently added for offering cloud-based supercomputing services that support hypersonic missile research.

Also, nine Chinese and Pakistani companies were added for assisting Pakistan’s ballistic missile program, and two companies were included for enabling China to carry out human rights abuses, including against Ugyhur Muslims and members of other minority groups in Xinjiang, western China.