The Pentagon Just Labeled the Company Running the LA28 Olympics as a Chinese Military Company

The Pentagon just blacklisted a company for serving the Chinese military that Los Angeles is handing the keys to for the 2028 Olympics.

The Pentagon made it official but the IOC still hasn't touched the contract.

And what they control at these Games puts them inside something no foreign military company has ever touched before.

Pentagon Blacklists Alibaba as Chinese Military Company Tied to PLA

The Department of War announced Monday that Alibaba had been added to the official list of entities identified as Chinese Military Companies operating in the United States.

The designation falls under Section 1260H of the National Defense Authorization Act.

It means the Pentagon has formally determined that Alibaba serves the military-civil fusion strategy of the Chinese Communist Party – a program designed to ensure that every major Chinese technology company feeds intelligence, data, and capabilities directly to the People's Liberation Army.

The Pentagon's own designation document states Alibaba is "indirectly affiliated" with China's State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission and is "a military-civil fusion contributor to the Chinese defense industrial base" through its ties to China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

Alibaba is not a fringe company on this list.

It is one of China's largest corporations, with a market cap that once exceeded $700 billion, running China's dominant e-commerce platform and its leading cloud services division.

And – the Monday designation did not change a single word of their contract – it remained the exclusive worldwide partner of the International Olympic Committee for cloud infrastructure, cloud services, ticketing, and e-commerce platform services at the 2028 Los Angeles Games.

The IOC still has Alibaba listed at the top tier of its partner program.

Their website still reads: "Since becoming a Worldwide Olympic Partner in 2017, Alibaba has committed to helping the IOC transform the Olympic Games for the digital era."

That partnership runs through 2028 – right through the closing ceremony in Los Angeles.

Congress Warned LA 2028 Olympics About Alibaba National Security Risk in 2025

This is not a surprise to anyone who was paying attention.

In September 2025, U.S. Representative John Moolenaar (R-MI), chairman of the House Select Committee on the CCP, along with Homeland Security Committee Chairman Andrew Garbarino (R-NY) and both ranking members, sent a formal letter to then-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem demanding action.

Their warning was unambiguous: "Alibaba serves as a critical enabler of the CCP's digital surveillance and censorship apparatus. The company appears to have partnered with Chinese military firms on surveillance and weapons development, helped process data for PRC intelligence agencies, and established a CCP party committee within the company."

They weren't speculating.

The Internet Protocol Video Market documented in 2020 that Alibaba openly marketed a cloud service delivering automatic alerts to customers every time its systems identified a Uyghur.

That is not a product a private company builds on its own initiative.

Researchers at the Center for a New American Security documented in 2021 that Alibaba's cloud division had supported data centers built to advance military-civil fusion and that a senior Alibaba executive had attended a military big data conference run through China's Academy of Military Science.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, then a Republican senator, joined eight colleagues in 2023 demanding Alibaba face financial restrictions over the same concerns.

The letters stacked up. The designation came Monday. The Olympics contract stayed in place.

When the designation dropped, Moolenaar didn't mince words: "This updated list of Chinese military companies is a warning to American businesses, all levels of government, and the American people. These Chinese companies are working with the Chinese military against our national interests. American companies must stop doing business with these threats to our national security, otherwise they are enabling China's military ascendance."

Alibaba Controls Cloud Infrastructure and Ticketing for LA 2028 Olympic Games

Alibaba is not hanging a banner at the stadium. It is running the infrastructure.

The IOC partnership, locked in since 2017, hands Alibaba exclusive operational control over the entire digital backbone of every Olympics through 2028 – the cloud systems that run the Games, the ticketing platform that processes every ticket sold, and the e-commerce infrastructure underneath it all.

At the Milano Cortina Winter Games earlier this year, Alibaba Cloud managed energy monitoring systems, transportation optimization networks, broadcast production pipelines, and athlete information management.

France understood what that meant before Paris 2024.

French cybersecurity officials spent significant effort limiting Alibaba's role at the Paris Games and ultimately forced Olympic data to remain within French national jurisdiction.

France treated it as a national security matter.

Los Angeles has 19 active military installations within the greater metro area.

The congressional letter to Noem named them: proximity to military assets, defense contractors, critical infrastructure, and leading technology firms all converge in a way that makes Chinese access to Olympic data in Los Angeles categorically different from Chinese access to Olympic data in Paris.

China's Military Civil Fusion Law Means Beijing Can Access Any Olympic Data It Wants

Here is what the IOC's partnership structure ignores.

China's National Intelligence Law, passed in 2017 – the same year Alibaba signed its Olympic partnership – legally compels every Chinese organization to secretly support, assist, and cooperate with state intelligence operations.

There is no opt-out.

There is no private Chinese technology company that can legally refuse a Beijing request for data.

When Alibaba manages cloud infrastructure for an event held in Los Angeles two miles from a Navy base, that data is legally accessible to Chinese intelligence the moment Beijing asks for it.

The military-civil fusion strategy isn't a theory or a concern – it is codified Chinese law, and the Pentagon's Monday designation is the formal American acknowledgment that Alibaba is part of it.

Congress warned DHS. DHS didn't act. The IOC didn't move. And now the Pentagon's own blacklist is in effect while Alibaba's name still sits at the top of the LA28 partner page.

Your government just told you Alibaba serves the Chinese military.

The Olympics are two years away – and nobody in charge of protecting that event has pulled the plug.

Sources:

• Jerry Dunleavy, "L.A. Olympics 2028 partnering with Alibaba, which Pentagon says is 'Chinese Military Company,'" Just the News, June 9, 2026.
• "Protecting U.S. Infrastructure: Chairmen Moolenaar, Garbarino Send Bipartisan Letter to Secretary Noem on PRC-backed Alibaba's Involvement in 2028 LA Olympics," House Select Committee on the CCP, September 10, 2025.
• "Moolenaar: American Companies & Governments Should Cut Ties With New Pentagon-Listed Chinese Military Companies," House Select Committee on the CCP, June 8, 2026.
• "Olympics inks cloud services deal with Alibaba despite US deeming it potential security threat," Washington Examiner, January 25, 2022.