OPINION:
The guest list at a recent White House dinner with President Trump included technology industry giants Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai, Sam Altman, Bill Gates and Tim Cook. There was also a little-known Silicon Valley firm, CSBio, a niche manufacturer of peptide and DNA/RNA synthesizers.
Jason Chang, the 42-year-old CEO, joined the company in 2009 and rose to the top in 2019. Why was a mid-tier biotech at the same table as Silicon Valley’s most powerful? The answer raises unsettling national security questions. CSBio’s technology has been flagged by U.S. regulators as a dual-use risk capable of producing deadly toxins. Its Shanghai arm has openly celebrated the People’s Liberation Army and accepted military-civil fusion designations.
This isn’t just another biotech startup; it is a firm operating at the intersection of American innovation and Beijing’s defense machine.
At the crossroads of medicine and weapons
CSBio’s synthesizers are prized in pharmaceutical labs for producing peptides vital to vaccines and therapeutics, but U.S. export control officials have long warned that the very same machines can also make regulated toxins and biological warfare agents.
Unlike traditional production, which requires living cells and weeks of growth, automated synthesizers can churn out toxic peptides within hours. That makes once-difficult compounds — botulinum toxin, ricin derivatives, saxitoxin analogs — suddenly far more accessible.
These are not fringe concerns. They are substances strictly banned under the Chemical Weapons Convention.
The Bureau of Industry and Security called out CSBio by name in its Section 1758 case study, stressing that automated synthesizers offered a “simpler, more reliable route” for producing dangerous peptides. By December, the Bureau of Industry and Security placed peptide synthesizers on the Commerce Control List alongside missile and nuclear-enabling technology because of their bioweapons potential. These machines are not just lab tools. They are potential weapons factories in a box. Once a firm accepts military-civil fusion status in China, its technology will no longer be neutral; it will be aligned with Beijing’s defense establishment.
In China’s backyard
CSBio’s wholly owned Shanghai subsidiary, CSI Biotech (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., operates out of Zhangjiang Pharma Valley. It assembles and distributes the company’s flagship CS936 synthesizers, industrial-scale systems capable of producing peptides at volumes up to 3,000 liters.
This isn’t just another overseas office. On Sept. 3, a day before the White House dinner, CSBio Shanghai organized employees to watch the People’s Liberation Army’s 80th anniversary parade. It framed the parade as a moment to “experience the nation’s strength” and turn patriotism into corporate motivation. Chinese government records show CSBio Shanghai is not a bystander but rather a participant in Beijing’s military-civil fusion strategy.
This year, it was listed in the Zhangjiang Science City Special Development Fund. In 2022, it was designated a “specialized, advanced, special and innovative” enterprise, a label Mr. Xi Jinping uses to align companies with defense priorities.
Also in 2022, CSBio was awarded “high and new technology enterprise” status, which provides subsidies and tax breaks in exchange for alignment with state goals.
These designations embed CSBio Shanghai inside Beijing’s defense ecosystem. Hardly any of the company’s patents are filed in the United States; most are filed in China, locking critical intellectual property into the Chinese Communist Party’s jurisdiction.
A jarring contrast
On Sept. 3, CSBio’s Chinese arm celebrated the People’s Liberation Army. The next day, its leadership was dining with the U.S. president. For U.S. policymakers, the optics should be chilling. How did a mid-tier biotech, openly embedded in China’s defense ecosystem, gain a seat at the most exclusive table in Washington? Was it political donations? Industry lobbying? Or a bid to soften looming export control scrutiny from the Bureau of Industry and Security?
The irony is glaring. At the exact moment the bureau was tightening controls on peptide synthesizers, a company at the heart of the issue was enjoying White House access. This dual posture — saluting the PLA one day, courting Washington the next — exposes cracks in America’s research security firewall.
CSBio is no outlier. It represents a growing class of firms that straddle two worlds: presenting themselves in the U.S. as benign innovators while subsidiaries in China are legally bound to serve Beijing’s strategic objectives. Under Chinese law, there is no firewall. Every “specialized and innovative” firm is part of the Chinese Communist Party’s mobilization network.
The Nanjing Agricultural University connection
In 2021, CSBio partnered with Nanjing Agricultural University to create the CSBio-NAU Lab. On the surface, it looked like a normal academic-industrial collaboration, but the university’s research portfolio goes far beyond agriculture. It covers molecular toxicology, pesticide discovery, insect biology and plant-pathogen interactions. All are fields with dual-use potential.
The danger is not hypothetical. In June, FBI agents charged two Chinese researchers — one from the University of Michigan and the other from Zhejiang University — with attempting to smuggle Fusarium graminearum, a fungus that devastates wheat and maize, into the U.S. Modified or weaponized strains of this pathogen pose direct national security risks.
CSBio’s peptide technology intersecting with NAU’s agrobiological expertise fits the exact pattern of dual-use concern that the Bureau of Industry and Security has warned about: Tools marketed for medicine and agriculture can be rapidly redirected toward weaponization.
Call for clarity
CSBio forces Washington to confront a hard truth: America’s most sensitive biotech innovations are bleeding into Beijing’s defense ecosystem through subsidiaries, patents and joint labs. The dual posture of companies such as CSBio, celebrating PLA parades in Shanghai while dining in the White House, cannot be tolerated. Congress, regulators and the administration must ask: Who is vetting the firms getting access to America’s leaders? Are export control laws enforced in practice or merely on paper? How do we stop companies from serving two masters: Washington on one side and Beijing on the other?
• L.J. Eads is the founder of the CCP BioThreats Initiative, an independent research effort focused on exposing China’s use of biotechnology and artificial intelligence for strategic and military advantage.
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