U.S. Tech Companies Prop Up China's Vast Surveillance Network
Critical pieces of China’s cutting-edge surveillance state share a connection. They came from America.
Some of the biggest names in U.S. technology have provided components, financing and know-how to China’s multibillion-dollar surveillance industry. The country’s authoritarian government uses those tools to track ethnic minorities, political dissidents and others it sees as a threat to its power—including in Xinjiang, where authorities are creating an all-seeing digital monitoring system that feeds into a network of detention camps for the area’s Muslims.
U.S. companies, including Seagate Technology PLC, Western Digital Corp., Intel Corp. and Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co., have nurtured, courted and profited from China’s surveillance industry. Several have been involved since the industry’s infancy.
The U.S. connections came under scrutiny in October, when the Trump administration added eight Chinese surveillance companies to an export blacklist, as part of a wider push to keep American technology out of China’s hands. The Chinese companies played a role in human-rights abuses in “China’s campaign of repression” in Xinjiang, the Commerce Department said.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/us-tech-companies-prop-up-chinas-vast-surveillance-network/ar-BBXnwAb?li=BBnbfcN