Secure Technology Value Solutions is a company with a boring name and a bland website that is staffed by jovial-looking former policemen and corrections officers. It doesn’t exactly scream “Chinese Communist Party threat,” and that’s precisely the point.

Secure Technology Value Solutions is actually a front for Nuctech, a Chinese government- and military-owned company, and it’s selling sensitive security equipment to police and corrections departments all across the United States.

Nuctech sells devices such as the body scanners that passengers must use during airport security checks, as well as larger devices, such as cargo scanners for commercial ports.

It was an early adopter of a technique that’s become popular among Chinese companies that fall under national security scrutiny: Change the name of your American subsidiary to something that sounds benign and hope to fly under the radar.

Nuctech’s U.S. subsidiary changed its name to Secure Technology Value Solutions in 2022, after Nuctech was hit by several forms of national security sanctions.

Nuctech equipment was blocked from U.S. airports a decade ago by the U.S. Transportation Security Administration and sanctioned by the U.S. Commerce Department in 2020 on national security grounds.