Chinese technologies are without question a double-edged sword. From DeepSeek AI to Huawei smartphones, DJI drones and industrial port cranes, many of these tools raise valid concerns about surveillance, information theft and disruption.
The United States is right to not trust them.
But not every Chinese innovation is a covert weapon. And there is one technology in particular that the U.S. would be short-sighted to decouple from — China’s GPS rival BeiDou.
Over the past year, BeiDou has drawn increasing suspicion from U.S. officials, ranging from members of Congress to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Critics have warned that the global satellite navigation system (GNSS) might enable Beijing to track users, push malware or manipulate navigation data. In March 2025, the FCC launched a formal inquiry to assess the potential national security risks associated with the use of foreign satellite navigation systems, including China’s BeiDou.
Skepticism is certainly warranted. But BeiDou isn’t Huawei, and not all threats are created equal. In the case of GNSS, many of the concerns reflect theoretical fears rather than engineering realities. Restricting access to BeiDou and other foreign GNSS like GLONASS would undercut the very resilience our positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) systems are supposed to deliver.
This would have the exact opposite effect that is intended, as it would actually hurt national security. It will also have profound implications for commercial operations and new technological innovations.
A wide range of commercial devices in the U.S. — including smartphones, drones, fleet management systems and augmented reality platforms — already rely on multiple GNSS sources to improve positioning accuracy. That need will only grow as we develop autonomous vehicles, advanced robotics and urban air mobility.
In recent field tests conducted at urban locations across the Pacific region, we found that disabling BeiDou reduced positioning accuracy by 30% to 40% — a staggering loss of precision with significant real-world implications for navigation, logistics and emergency services. These tests compared GPS+Galileo performance against GPS+Galileo+BeiDou in environments with limited sky visibility, where multipath interference and signal blockage are common. While results may vary in other geographies or under open-sky conditions (and would likely improve with the inclusion of additional constellations such as GLONASS), the findings underscore BeiDou’s critical role in enhancing resilience and accuracy in real-world, urban navigation scenarios.
If we get this wrong, we risk stalling American innovation, weakening our own infrastructure and ceding strategic ground to China. The fears surrounding BeiDou deserve a closer look.
Can BeiDou track U.S. users?
A longstanding concern is that BeiDou could be used to covertly track American users. This fear was highlighted in the 2017 U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission report, which documented speculation that BeiDou-enabled chips could allow China to locate smartphone users in real time.
But industry experts cited in that same report dismissed the possibility. Just like GPS, BeiDou’s primary function is to broadcast one-way signals that devices receive; they don’t transmit anything back. The only component of BeiDou that allows two-way communication is a niche messaging feature, found only in a small number of specialized receivers used in maritime emergencies or by the Chinese military.
These devices are expensive, rare and virtually nonexistent in the U.S. consumer market. Without this feature, BeiDou operates in a passive manner, like any other GNSS constellation. This means it cannot track you unless your device is already compromised through entirely unrelated methods. If there were a real threat of nation-state surveillance from these systems, we wouldn’t see multinational cooperation across all six constellations. GPS and Galileo would have been banned in China and Russia long ago, just as BeiDou and GLONASS would be prohibited in the U.S. and Europe.
Can it deliver malware?
Another theory is that BeiDou could be used to push malware to U.S. devices. This idea surfaced again in the FCC’s 2025 inquiry, which referenced the same 2017 staff report.
But there’s a fundamental problem with the claim: GNSS signals don’t work that way. Navigation satellites — whether American, Chinese, European or Russian — transmit limited, one-way data packets that contain timing and location information. They are not capable of delivering executable files or interactive payloads.
Yes, BeiDou includes a satellite-based messaging feature that can send short text strings. But again, this is only present on a small subset of devices not sold in the U.S., and the complexity and cost of enabling that function make it impractical for commercial use. There is no evidence of malware ever being transmitted via BeiDou, and as the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission noted in its 2017 report, experts are not aware of any feasible method to accomplish this through a navigation signal.
The real cyber threats to mobile devices (such as phishing, backdoors, app exploits) have nothing to do with GNSS constellations. Blocking BeiDou won’t change that.
Could China disrupt U.S. positioning?
One of the more strategic concerns is that China could selectively degrade BeiDou’s signal over the U.S. in the event of conflict, thereby cutting off service here while preserving it at home.
Technically, that’s far easier said than done. BeiDou’s satellites primarily operate in medium Earth orbit and use wide-beam antennas that cover huge swaths of the globe. It’s not feasible to selectively block one region, like North America, without degrading service elsewhere, potentially even in China.
What is far more likely are ground-based jamming or spoofing attacks, which have been observed in areas like the South China Sea, Eastern Europe and the Middle East. But these tactics aren’t unique to BeiDou; they affect all GNSS, including GPS.
Disabling BeiDou would not prevent such disruptions. It would simply eliminate a source of redundancy — thereby making our systems more brittle, not safer. Our own tests confirmed this: removing BeiDou access led to significantly degraded location accuracy.
The economic consequences
Beyond national security, there are major economic implications to restricting BeiDou. Precision positioning underpins key industries, from logistics and agriculture to aviation and autonomous systems. Reducing accuracy by 30% to 40% doesn’t just affect smartphone maps; it erodes performance in sectors that depend on high-level precision.
If U.S. companies are forced to redesign systems to exclude foreign GNSS inputs, we’ll see higher costs, delayed rollouts and diminished competitiveness, especially in global markets where interoperability matters. China, meanwhile, will continue building partnerships with countries eager for open, resilient navigation services.
Ceding this ground is not just a technical misstep: it’s an economic one, too.
We’re focused on the wrong threat
BeiDou is undoubtedly a strategic asset for China. It supports Beijing’s push to lead international technical standards, expand its soft power influence and offer alternatives to U.S.-backed infrastructure.
But it is precisely because BeiDou is so important to China’s long-term goals that weaponizing it would be counterproductive. If the system were ever caught delivering malware or tracking users, it would undermine China’s multibillion-dollar investment and damage its geopolitical credibility. It would also validate global concerns about using Chinese technology, likely prompting a large-scale exodus from the platform.
In short, it’s not a Trojan horse. It’s a soft power tool. And despite its strategic implications, the idea that BeiDou is being used as an active weapon of war doesn’t hold up under technical scrutiny.
The real strategic question isn’t whether China might exploit BeiDou, but whether the U.S. is prepared to lead. Just as GPS helped secure America’s digital and defense edge in the 1990s, next-generation PNT infrastructure could define the next 30 years of global innovation.
If we overreact now, we’ll be playing defense with degraded tools. But if we double down on GPS modernization and international trust, we’ll shape the future of navigation instead of retreating from it.
Sean Gorman, PhD, is the CEO and co-founder of Zephr.xyz, a developer of next-gen networked positioning technologies. Gorman has a more than 20-year background as a researcher, entrepreneur, academic and subject matter expert in the field of geospatial data science and its national security implications. He is the former engineering manager for Snap’s Map team, Chief Strategist for ESRI’s DC Development Center, Director at Maxar, and founder of Pixel8earth, GeoIQ and Timbr.io. Gorman served as a subject matter expert for the DHS Critical Infrastructure Task Force and Homeland Security Advisory Council, and he’s been awarded eight patents and 35 academic publications. He is also a former research professor at George Mason University.
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