Josh Chin

Yeah, right.

Well, so when the Iran war broke out, we knew that Iran was burning through a bunch of drones.

And we know from previous reporting that China was a major supplier of those drone parts.

We started digging around.

And in the process, we contacted this group named Iran Watch that tracks weapons procurement to Iran.

And they told us about an email that they had gotten accidentally from a company calling itself Shaman Victory Technology, which was a company based in China that was

openly selling a sort of German-designed engine that has been used in the Shahed drone, which is the main sort of one-way attack drone that Iran and Russia both have been using.

And it was a completely open sales pitch that ended up in their inbox, apparently because the sales rep for Xiamen Victory Technology later told us he was using AI to target potential clients.

And so these engines are considered dual use goods.

They're subject to sanctions by the US and EU.

But this company was happy to sell them without without really hiding it.

Right.

So this engine was originally designed by a German company called Limbach, which was purchased a few years ago by a Chinese company.

And what it comes down to ultimately is that these are smaller factories.

This particular company said they started only selling these engines earlier this year, which is coincidentally when the tensions between Iran and the U.S.

started to pick up.

It's such a small company, it just doesn't really deal in dollars.

And so the way that sanctions work is by essentially cutting off a company's access to the U.S.

financial system.

For a company that doesn't deal in dollars, isn't planning to travel to the U.S.