Closing the back door: Trump's Washington is finally blocking China’s infiltration

Whatever its faults, the Trump administration has made one thing clear: America will no longer leave its security, economy, or technological future in the hands of China.

Days ago, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that the Pentagon is shutting down a Microsoft program that had relied on Chinese nationals to help manage sensitive defense cloud environments — an arrangement that might give Beijing’s engineers a backdoor into U.S. military data.

That decision came alongside the administration’s crackdown on China’s Huawei, which controls nearly one-third of the global 5G equipment market — more than any other company. In comparison, all U.S. firms combined hold just 21 percent. To counter that threat, the White House approved the Hewlett Packard Enterprise-Juniper Networks merger, a move urged by the intelligence community as essential to the U.S.’ national security interests.

Huawei isn’t just another competitor. According to the Department of Defense, it operates as an extension of the Chinese state, accused of everything from surveilling Uyghurs to giving Beijing “backdoor access” into users’ mobile phones. In this case, national security rightly outweighed antitrust nitpicking.

In July, the White House also blocked Hong Kong–based Suirui International from buying California’s Jupiter Systems — a deal that would have handed Beijing control over audiovisual equipment used in defense and critical infrastructure. In the past, such transactions often slid through the cracks. Today, however, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States has become far more vigilant, closing loopholes and ensuring that Chinese state-backed firms cannot slip into sensitive markets.

Taken together, these actions are part of a broader strategy to cut off China’s ability to infiltrate America through software contracts, corporate mergers, and stealth acquisitions. The White House understands that in China, the line between business and the state is not clearly defined. Corporations such as Huawei and Suirui are used by Beijing to advance Chinese national interests at the expense of American values and objectives.

By pushing back, the executive branch is not turning America into China, but it is acknowledging that business in sensitive sectors like tech has implications for American national security. The last thing we want is a corporate acquisition turning into a Chinese Trojan horse.

Left unchecked for years, China has burrowed deep into America’s economic engine. It has estimated that the Chinese Communist Party steals $600 billion in intellectual property every year. As recently as late 2024, hackers employed by the Chinese Communist Party infiltrated computer networks at the U.S. Treasury.

During the 2024 presidential campaign, Chinese hackers even targeted both President Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance’s phones. It showed just how far China will go to gain an unfair advantage. These cyber intrusions are not isolated events but part of a systematic effort to undermine U.S. democratic institutions, weaken public trust, and tilt the balance of global power. America is finally beginning to respond in kind, treating Beijing not as a normal economic actor but as a hostile rival that exploits the openness of free societies.

The U.S. is the most innovative country in the world and among the most secure. The Chinese know they cannot compete on level terrain; they need to bend the rules. History offers ample evidence that free societies remain more creative and resilient when they protect their core industries, as seen in the Cold War when American tech dominance depended on careful guarding of military-industrial secrets. If Washington had been as careless then as it has been in recent decades, the Soviet Union would have enjoyed far greater leverage.

This is why President Trump's critics are being unfair when they accuse him of distorting free markets by working to counter the Chinese. It is Beijing that’s the bug in the system here, not Washington. A market subsidized by the Chinese state and leveraged against the U.S. can hardly be called “free.”

The White House is taking the sensible position that national security must come before profit margins. And often the two run together — by banning Chinese engineers from the Pentagon, it has opened up new jobs for Americans.

The message is clear: China will no longer get a foothold in America’s most sensitive industries. That’s not protectionism — it’s good, old-fashioned, American patriotism. It should be celebrated, not condemned.

Rob Wasinger is co-founder of The Ragnar Group. He was director of Senate relations for the Trump transition team in 2016 and the first White House liaison at the State Department during the Trump administration.