The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security this week placed 32 foreign companies, including 23 in China, on its blacklist of sanctioned firms for activities that threaten America’s security. Among the Chinese entities was the Aerospace Information Research Institute that BIS said in announcing the sanctions is supporting China’s high-altitude spy balloon program.

In 2023, a Chinese surveillance balloon flew undetected over sensitive military and missile bases in the U.S., setting off a U.S. backlash over Chinese spying and violations of sovereignty. The balloon was eventually shot down over the Atlantic near South Carolina by an F-22 jet but not until passing thousands of miles over the country. China claimed it was a harmless weather monitoring craft and denounced the shootdown.

However, an extensive amount of electronic spying gear was recovered from the downed balloon. A report by the legal office of the Pentagon’s Indo-Pacific Command stated that Chinese high-altitude balloon spying operations have violated international law and the sovereignty of more than 40 countries across five continents.

The proliferation of drone technology is rapidly outpacing the ability of governments to ensure they are used safely and legally. This was the primary theme of a House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Federal Government Surveillance hearing this week, which also featured testimony on how unmanned aircraft systems are revolutionizing law enforcement operations by providing a cost-effective aerial perspective that can aid in crime scene investigations, search and rescue, and surveillance missions.

With the growth of the cheap and easy-to-operate drone market comes an increasing threat of misuse, whether intentional or negligent, UAS experts testified during the hearing, adding that criminal gangs are using drones to smuggle drugs, weapons and contraband into correctional facilities or across the U.S.-Mexico border.

Rep. Andy Biggs, Florida Republican, asserted during the hearing that drones are also increasingly causing a danger at airports by interfering with normal operations. The Federal Aviation Administration recorded 10,000 UAS airport incursions from January to June 2025 — a 13% increase over the same period last year.

Mr. Trump recently designated NASA and several other federal departments as agencies that require national security protection based on their intelligence, counterintelligence and investigative work.

The policy shift makes clear that NASA research is no longer just scientific or exploratory but requires protection under national security controls. Mr. Trump’s move aims to enforce the 2011 Wolf Amendment, named after former Rep. Frank Wolf, Virginia Republican, to a defense appropriations law that blocked NASA and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy from any cooperation with China or Chinese-owned companies on space matters. The measure became law as a result of cases involving technology theft by China, including theft of advanced U.S. nuclear warhead designs.

The House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party last year uncovered multiple Wolf Amendment violations, including more than a thousand NASA-backed publications co-authored by Chinese institutions, many involving the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Chinese defense contractors. Among the compromises was work that provided China with remote sensing technology that helped a military program known as the 863 Program.

Aerial refueling has for more than 70 years been the “silent force multiplier for American power,” according to Robert Wilkie, who writes that “from the Cold War to the fight against terrorism, tankers have allowed U.S. forces to deter aggression in Asia, reassure allies in Europe and strike terrorists in the Middle East with impunity.

“Without tankers, our aircraft are grounded. Without tankers, our global reach evaporates. Without tankers, America is vulnerable,” Mr. Wilkie, who served as secretary of veterans affairs and undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness in the first Trump administration, writes in an op-ed for The Washington Times.

“Yet today, the U.S. faces an alarming shortfall in this critical capability. The retirement of the KC-10 fleet, our workhorse tanker, has left combatant commands short of options,” he writes. “This is not a minor gap; it is a strategic crisis. Deterrence depends on reach, and reach depends on refueling. If our adversaries believe America cannot respond quickly and decisively, they will test us. That is how wars begin.”

The technology of a “little-known Silicon Valley firm” called CSBio “has been flagged by U.S. regulators as a dual-use risk capable of producing deadly toxins,” according to L.J. Eads, who writes in an op-ed for The Times that the company has a “Shanghai arm [that] has openly celebrated the People’s Liberation Army and accepted military-civil fusion designations.

“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,” writes Mr. Eads, the founder of the CCP BioThreats Initiative. “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,” he writes, referring to the People’s Liberation Army.

• Sept. 19 — Venezuela: Can U.S. Pressure Break Maduro’s Grip? Hudson Institute

• Sept. 24 — Rocket Dreams: Musk, Bezos and the Inside Story of the New, Trillion-Dollar Space Race, American Enterprise Institute

• Sept. 20-21 — AFA National Convention 2025, Air & Space Forces Association

• Sept. 22-23 — Cyber Defense Summit 25, Mandiant & Google Threat Intelligence

• Sept. 23-25 — National Cyber Summit

• Sept. 23-27 and Sept. 29 — U.N. General Assembly 2025: General Debate, United Nations

• Sept. 25 — Building the Space Force We Need and the Intelligence to Support It, Intelligence Studies Project

• Sept. 25 — Counterforce in Contemporary U.S. Nuclear Strategy, Advanced Nuclear Weapons Alliance