ULA steps up scrutiny of supplier ownership

United Launch Alliance (ULA) has expanded efforts to determine who owns its suppliers after finding out that one of them was Chinese-owned, according to the head of the US space company.

ULA has hired an outside firm to “tunnel through” its supply chain every quarter to ensure none of its suppliers is owned by China, said Tory Bruno, ULA’s president and CEO. To gain access to US intellectual property despite being a potential adversary, China uses shell companies and other methods to “infiltrate” US technology companies “without being detected”, Bruno explained.

While developing its new Vulcan Centaur launch vehicle, ULA realised “almost by accident” that Germany-based Kuka, which supplied tooling software, had been purchased by Chinese company Midea Group. The discovery, which led ULA to remove Kuka from the programme, was a “wake-up call”, Bruno said on 15 September at the Air Force Association’s virtual Air, Space & Cyber Conference.

It “is just shocking in terms of the scale and ubiquity of this threat and this effort on the part of China to not only gain access to intellectual property through traditional means – hacking or espionage – but through infiltration of the supply chain”, he said.

Bruno urged the US government to consider enacting laws to make it harder for China to buy or invest in US companies. Such restrictions should include Silicon Valley startups, which often attract Chinese funding, he asserted.