America behind China’s power!
A shocking revelation has come to light, which exposes a deep gap between America’s words and actions. According to the Associated Press (AP) report, on the one hand, the US government gives strict warnings to China on national security and human rights abuses, while on the other hand, for the last several decades, under five Republican and Democratic administrations, the US government has not only allowed its own tech companies to sell technology to Chinese police, government agencies and spy companies, but in many cases has also actively helped.
All this is happening at a time when there is a war for technological supremacy between the two countries. America knows very well that China is using its high-tech technology to strengthen its army and spy system. Despite this, a “loophole” has been left open, which China is taking full advantage of.
China has the key to every lock
American lawmakers have tried to close this backdoor four times since September last year. This biggest loophole is ‘Cloud Services’. In fact, America has banned the direct sale of powerful AI chips to China. But instead of buying these chips, Chinese companies are renting them from American companies (like Microsoft Azure or Amazon Web Services) and training their AI models.
Whenever there was a proposal to close this loophole, an army of more than 100 lobbyists from tech companies and their organizations became active. As a result, this proposal failed all four times.
According to the AP report, over the past two decades, American tech and telecom companies have spent millions of dollars on lobbyists who were working on bills affecting China-related trade.
Tech companies argue that if sanctions are imposed on them, China will develop its own domestic technology, which will be more dangerous for America. He also says that this will put American jobs in danger.
The US government itself became a ‘sharer in profits’
The matter is not limited to lobbying only. In recent months, President Trump himself has signed major deals with Silicon Valley companies that have further tied the US economy to technology exports to China.
In August, Trump announced a deal with chipmakers Nvidia and AMD, ignoring concerns from national security experts. Under this deal, export controls on the sale of advanced chips to China were removed, in exchange for which the US government would receive a 15% cut in revenue.
This month, Trump announced that the US government had taken a 10 percent stake in Intel worth about $11 billion. This simply means that now American taxpayers’ money is also linked to the profits that these companies are earning by selling technology to China. However, Intel says that this government stake is “passive” and they have no interference in governance.
American technology also used for atrocities
This ‘cloud’ loophole is not alone. The US also imposed sanctions on China after the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, but those sanctions were limited to low-tech police equipment (such as handcuffs, helmets and batons). New technologies like security cameras, surveillance drives or facial recognition never came under its purview. Between 2006 and 2013, several attempts were made to correct these shortcomings, but all failed.
The investigation also found that the US Commercial Service, the export-promotion arm of the US Commerce Department, played a key role in connecting US sellers with Chinese security agencies for more than a decade. In 2007, the department offered a webinar for just $35 on how to break into the Chinese security market.
The saddest aspect of this is the violation of human rights. Strong evidence has been found of the use of American technology in the atrocities against Uyghur Muslims in China’s Xinjiang province.
Gulbahar Hatiwaji, a Uyghur woman who was held in detention camps in Xinjiang for more than two years, says she was under constant surveillance with a system based on American technology, with cameras even installed in toilets.
Zhou Fengsuo, another Chinese activist who was a 1989 Tiananmen student leader, says, “This is all motivated by profit… I am extremely disappointed… This is a strategic failure of the United States.”
While Democratic Senator Ron Wyden explained the reason for this failure, he said, “What do all these companies have in common? A big wallet. That’s why we have not made any progress on this issue.”