The Ministry of Commerce of the People’s Republic of China just added several prominent Western companies to its Unreliable Entity List, including the research firm TechInsights. This Canada-based company was one of the institutions that revealed Huawei used TSMC to build the Ascend 910B chip despite American sanctions, resulting in a possible $1-billion fine for the Taiwanese chip maker. According to the announcement by the Ministry of Commerce [machine translated] (via Bloomberg), TechInsights and all the other companies in its list organizations and individuals within China are prohibited “from engaging in transactions, cooperation, and other activities with the aforementioned entities, especially transmitting data or providing sensitive information to these entities.” TechInsights and all its subsidiaries across the globe are included in the ban. But what’s interesting is that the research firm has been specifically mentioned in the government announcement, and that most of the other companies on the list are defense contractors and aerospace companies like Elbit Systems of America and BAE Systems.

Full report : China bans TechInsights from working with or receiving data from Chinese entities, citing national security concerns, after a report on Huawei’s Ascend AI chips.