Technically I've known about this for a while, since the first story broke back in September thanks to Chinese citizens who were brave enough to speak to the AP about the human rights abuses they had endured under the surveillance state.
However, I missed this particular follow up story that came out a few weeks ago, and breaks down investigative findings about the role the U.S. directly played in creating and selling China the surveillance tools:
U.S. lawmakers have tried four times since September last year to close what they called a glaring loophole: China is getting around export bans on the sale of powerful American AI chips by renting them through U.S. cloud services instead.
But the proposals prompted a flurry of activity from more than 100 lobbyists from tech companies and their trade associations trying to weigh in, according to disclosure reports.
The result: All four times, the proposal failed, including just last month.
But the tough talk about China obscures a deeper story: Even while warning about national security and human rights abuse, the U.S. government across five Republican and Democratic administrations has repeatedly allowed and even actively helped American firms to sell technology to Chinese police, government agencies and surveillance companies, an Associated Press investigation has found.
This reluctance to act reflects the tremendous wealth and power of the tech industry, which is more visible than ever under the Trump administration. And in recent months, the president himself has struck grand deals with Silicon Valley firms that even more closely tie the U.S. economy to tech exports to China, giving taxpayers a direct stake in the profits for the first time.
Now a U.S. citizen, Zhou testified before Congress in 2024, calling on Washington to investigate the involvement of American tech companies in Chinese surveillance. An AP investigation in September found that American companies to a large degree designed and built China’s surveillance state, playing a far greater role in enabling human rights abuses than previously known.
“It’s driven by profit, and that’s why these strategic discussions have been silenced or delayed,” Zhou said. “I’m extremely disappointed. … this is a strategic failure by the United States.”
Like many things in the U.S. right now, I feel like this investigation should have received more attention, especially given all the recent talk about U.S. patriotism, and accepting our own surveillance state in order to "win" the AI race against China.
