E-commerce giant Alibaba sues US government over defence blacklist

E-commerce giant Alibaba has launched a high-stakes legal challenge against the US government, suing to get off a Pentagon blacklist that claims it is linked to the Chinese military. The Department of Defence (DoD) has said that because Alibaba complies with Chinese technology regulators, it is effectively an arm of the military. In the lawsuit filed in a California federal court Alibaba pushed back, claiming the determinations "have no basis in fact or law". The challenge comes after the Pentagon recently expanded its blacklist of companies it will not be able to do business with from the end of the month to include massive tech names like Baidu, BYD, and Nio. The defence department put Alibaba on the blacklist, saying the firm was a "military-civil fusion contributor to the Chinese defence industrial base" because of its regulatory ties to Beijing. But Alibaba countered the argument, saying none of the members of its independent board had any military affiliation. Every multinational operating in China - including American firms - must follow the exact same local rules, it noted. Its platforms, Alibaba said, are built for retail and cloud computing, not weapons or intelligence. While the blacklist does not freeze finances immediately, it triggers a brutal operational penalty on 30 June. Starting next week, the Pentagon is legally banned from doing business with any blacklisted firm. …