U.K. Blocks Sensitive Technologies From Being Acquired by China

According to a report, the British government has blocked University of Manchester from selling visual sensing technology to Chinese companies and believes the prohibited technologies may be used on military drones and missiles.

The decree was issued under the National Security and Investment Act 2021 (NSIA 2021) in the name of the U.K. Minister for the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, Kwasi Kwarteng, citing the NSIA 2021. The decree came into force from this year.

The University of Manchester said it would comply with the government’s order, saying that it has created a national security internal system to review proposed international agreements.

A spokesman for the University of Manchester said that this case complies with the relevant system, in accordance with the legislation, and the university has voluntarily submitted this agreement to the British government.

The buyer in the agreement is a Chinese company named “Infinite Vision”. According to the agreement, the company will use the “Scamp-5” and “Scamp-7” vision sensors to develop, test and verify, produce, use, and sell authorized products.

According to the university’s web page, these sensors do not output images, but automatically compute at high speed and low energy consumption, which can be applied for new in-built vision applications such as robots, VR (virtual reality), autonomous vehicles, toys, and reconnaissance.