BEIJING, June 9 -- The electric hatchback that outsold Tesla last year, the app a billion people use to shop and pay, the search engine that has become one of China's biggest bets on artificial intelligence: as of Monday, Washington files all three under the same heading. Military companies.

The Pentagon posted an updated roster to the Federal Register designating Alibaba, the carmaker BYD, the search and AI group Baidu, electric-vehicle maker NIO, telecom giant Huawei, shipping group COSCO and more than a dozen others as Chinese military companies operating in the United States. SCMP reported it as the widest reach yet of the so-called 1260H designations, named for the section of US defense law that created them.

The list carries no im...