Tensorust Research Exposure Ledger · lists pulled 2026-11-06 · papers 2025-01-01 to 2026-11-06

Which federal awards pay banned vendors.

We read 5,816 papers from 2025-26 whose methods name a company on a federal banned-vendor list as the lab, sequencer, drone or camera they used, and matched their grant numbers to USAspending. 906 federal awards at 209 institutions ($916M FY2025) face a rule that binds now or gives them no grace period: 780 awards ($759M) used BGI or MGI, which get no BIOSECURE grandfathering; 110 ($140M) flew DJI or Autel drones under the drone act's grant-funds ban, 62 of them still drawing funds ($76.7M); and 17 ($19.5M) used Section 889 covered telecom or video gear. Centers, training grants, fellowships and other program awards carry $700M of that; investigator-scale research awards are 594 awards and $216M. On the strictest cut, 188 of these awards ($59.5M) most likely paid the vendor directly.

Dollars are whole-award FY2025 obligations, and centers, training grants and fellowships carry a lot of them, so read the narrow and most-likely-paid cuts before acting. Counting every list, including Novogene (contesting its listing) and WuXi AppTec (listing blocked by a court), which keep a five-year grace period, 4,396 awards at 381 institutions carried $3.51B (NIH's part is 9.3% of its FY2025 extramural award dollars). 3,413 of those ($2.47B) are grace-eligible, contested or enjoined only, with no consequence before about 2028. Across everything, 865 awards ($298M) most likely paid a listed vendor directly.

No grace period: BGI and MGI

BIOSECURE gives existing awards five years to wind down, except for companies that were on the 1260H list by December 18, 2025. BGI and MGI were on it, so they get no grace period. DHS also put both on the UFLPA forced-labor Entity List on October 29, 2026, so new imports of their sequencers, flow cells and reagents are presumed barred unless the importer proves otherwise. Instruments already installed can keep running, so the near-term risk is reagent and parts supply. Papers from 780 awards ($759M FY2025, 178 institutions) name BGI services or DNBSEQ, BGISEQ and MGISEQ machines. On the narrow cut that is 261 awards and $341M. 121 awards ($42.2M) most likely paid them directly. 198 of these awards ($352M FY2025) run past the estimated ban date with no grace period to fall back on.

By list

An award counts under a list when one of its papers names a vendor on that list, so one award can count under several lists. Each list is pulled from its official source (Federal Register, eCFR, FCC, DHS) on every run, and every award is re-scored when a list changes. The last change seen: 1260H, 2026-11-06.

What each rule means for these awards

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Agencies buying listed products directly

These are federal contract transactions since October 2023, made after the vendor was listed, where the listed vendor is the seller or the description names its product. The last column shows the lists the vendor was on, and any purchase ban that was in force, on the action date. Some buys fall under exemptions, such as counter-drone training under the American Security Drone Act. Each one is a lead to check, not a finding of violation.

889-PURCHASE: 1 transactions, $12K; ASDA-1823: 23 transactions, $841K; 1260H-805: 1 transactions, $169. Source: USAspending.gov (FPDS).

NIH controlled-access studies sequenced on BGI/MGI machines, by grant

These are human genetic studies in NIH's dbGaP whose own sequencing runs in the European Nucleotide Archive were made on DNBSEQ, BGISEQ or MGISEQ instruments. Each is joined to its NIH grant: from the study's dbGaP record where it names one, otherwise from an NIH RePORTER project with the identical title. Controlled-access human data is what the DOJ data security rule and BIOSECURE care about most.

Coverage beyond the life sciences

Europe PMC covers biomedicine. Drones, cameras, routers, lidar and robots show up in engineering, agriculture and earth-science papers instead, so the ledger also reads the OpenAlex full-text index, Crossref funder records and the open PDFs. A hit counts only when a sentence reads as use of the product. That adds 1,167 papers and 282 awards ($297M FY2025) that Europe PMC alone never finds.

OpenAlex papers by field: Engineering 289, Computer Science 239, Earth and Planetary Sciences 124, Environmental Science 121, Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology 118, Agricultural and Biological Sciences 98, Medicine 85, Neuroscience 17.

Check your own books

Upload a vendor payment, purchase-order or P-card file and every line that pays a listed company, directly or through a reseller, is scored under each rule as of its date and joined to what your awards' own papers say. The workspace is private to a token we never see. Open a workspace

How it works

• Lists: DoD's 1260H list (Federal Register API, every notice since 2021 for listing dates), FAR 52.204-25 (eCFR), the FCC Covered List, DHS's UFLPA Entity List and BIOSECURE. BIOSECURE is derived from 1260H, and the engine watches the Federal Register for OMB's own list, due December 18, 2026.
• Evidence: A paper counts when Europe PMC finds the vendor in its methods, results, figures, tables, supplement or acknowledgments and, where open full text exists, a sentence names it. Engineering, agriculture and physical-science papers come from the OpenAlex full-text index and count only when a sentence in the abstract or the open PDF body names the vendor. A dbGaP study counts when its own sequencing runs in ENA were made on a BGI/MGI instrument. Author affiliations and reference lists never count.
• Awards: Grant numbers from Europe PMC grant metadata, OpenAlex and Crossref funder awards, the full-text funding statement and dbGaP study records, matched exactly to USAspending FAINs (FY2025-26 assistance). NIH FY2026 amounts and end dates come from NIH RePORTER.
• Attribution: broad = any 2025-26 paper citing the award names the vendor (includes awards whose only evidence is a Europe PMC section hit with no open full text to quote; those are flagged section_hit_only); narrow = a citing paper names 3 or fewer federal awards, and a quoted sentence names the vendor; most likely paid = narrow, an investigator-scale research or career award (NIH R01/R21/R35/R37/R03/R15/R61/R33/RF1/R00/R56/K/DP codes; non-NIH research awards of $5M or less in FY2025), and a US first author. Fellowships (NSF GRFP, NIH F), training grants, centers, cooperative institutes, ERCs/STCs/AI Institutes and other program-scale awards are never counted here.. Dollars are whole-award FY2025 obligations. A paper naming a vendor does not mean the whole award paid that vendor; the tiers narrow that down, they do not apportion it. A paper citing an award does not prove the award paid the vendor, so use the narrow and most-likely-paid cuts for decisions.
• Evidence gaps: 945 awards ($676M) rest only on a Europe PMC section hit, with no open full text to quote. They stay in the broad count, flagged, and are left out of the narrow and most-likely-paid cuts.
• FCC Covered List: shown for context. It blocks new FCC equipment authorizations and FCC subsidies such as E-Rate, not research grants, and devices already authorized are grandfathered or waived, so it never counts toward the in-force numbers.
• Status: WuXi AppTec's listing is blocked by a court (D.D.C., August 7, 2026), and Novogene is contesting its listing. The ledger keeps both and labels them.

Fixed-price audit

From one desk to the whole portfolio

Start on your own card; each step hands your director the evidence for the next.

Procurement packet, objections sheet and business case: in the kit at the top of this page.

For program offices and compliance teams

Sources: Federal Register, eCFR, FCC, DHS, Europe PMC, OpenAlex, Crossref, open-access PDFs, ENA, NIH dbGaP, USAspending.gov, NIH RePORTER. Public records, reorganized. A flag here is a lead for review, not a finding that any rule was broken. Tensorust LLC is not affiliated with any agency, institution or company named here.

Rankings: Institutions ranked by in-force awards.