China's largest memory chipmaker sues the Pentagon to get off its 'military-ties' blacklist

ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT), China's largest maker of dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) chips, filed suit Friday in a Washington federal court against the US Department of Defence, naming Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth and asking a judge to remove it from the Pentagon's Section 1260H list of companies alleged to have ties to the Chinese military (SCMP).

CXMT was first added to the 1260H list in January 2025 and stayed on after a June review, part of an update that added 65 new entities on June 8, 2026, according to a WilmerHale client alert and the Defense Department publication. CXMT is the fourth major Chinese tech firm to challenge the designation in court, after lidar maker Hesai, drone maker DJI, and biotech firm WuXi AppTec (The Next Web).

Recent rulings in those cases have shown US judges willing to scrutinise Pentagon evidence and grant interim relief, according to Mark Shi, a compliance lawyer at Shanghai-based Co-Effort Law Firm (CryptoBriefing). At issue is whether broad ties to China's industry ministry or its state-asset regulator are enough to sustain a 'military-linked' label, and how much process the Pentagon owes a designated company. The suit's outcome is not yet known, and any commercial impact on CXMT's chip business is not established in the public record.