China is the largest police state in the world.
It uses surveillance to go after dissidents and minorities.
And who helped them build that surveillance?
Microsoft and other American tech companies!
This is how they did it.
Welcome back to China Uncensored.
I’m Chris Chappell.
The Chinese Communist Party has built
the world’s most advanced systems of mass surveillance.
And this is the laboratory where the Chinese regime
tests this new technology:
The region of Xinjiang,
home to a mostly Muslim ethnic Uighur population.
The surveillance includes a network of
40,000 facial recognition cameras,
as well as collecting DNA samples,
fingerprints, iris scans,
and blood samples from most Xinjiang residents.
It’s the dystopian nightmare everyone warned us about!
But we here in America didn’t simply sit idle
while the Chinese regime was building
this Orwellian system.
In fact, our companies actively helped!
US tech companies knowingly worked with the Chinese military,
as well as with private Chinese companies
contracted to do work for the Chinese government.
The problem is what’s called dual-use technology—
tech, like facial recognition,
that has both civilian and military applications.
There’s very little regulation of this.
According to Foreign Policy,
“U.S. Congress and government officials
have yet to call for a review of the extent of
U.S. investment and research partnership entanglements.”
The Commerce Department has proposed
some rules for emerging tech,
but the scope is unclear.
Fortunately, at the end of last year,
Microsoft truly stepped up to the plate.
They said there’s a need for “public regulation
and corporate responsibility.”
Wow, good for Microsoft.
Except...
Microsoft ignored both public regulation
and corporate responsibility
by working with the Chinese military.
According to a report last week in the Financial Times,
“Microsoft has worked with a Chinese military-run
university on artificial intelligence research
that could be used for surveillance and censorship.”
Well, that’s awkward.
Over the course of a few months last year,
three published papers were co-written
by the Microsoft team in Beijing,
and researchers tied to China’s
National University of Defense Technology.
That university is controlled by China’s top military body,
the Central Military Commission.
Which is headed...
by Chinese presitator Xi Jinping.
But how could Microsoft know all that?
I mean, the University only has
“defense technology” in its name
and also the military symbol in its logo?
That’s like going to Burger King
and being surprised when they have burgers.
And kings.
One paper that Microsoft worked on describes
“a new AI method to recreate detailed environmental maps
by analysing human faces,
which experts say could have clear applications
for surveillance and censorship.”
What a coincidence!
Because that’s the very same kind of technology
they’re using in Xinjiang to track the Uighurs!
But it’s dual-use technology.
It could have civilian applications
or military applications!
How was Microsoft to know that the military university
would want to use it for military applications?
Now US lawmakers are calling out Microsoft for what they’ve done.
Senator Ted Cruz,
hey...nice beard,
says “American companies need to understand that
doing business in China carries significant and deepening risks.
In addition to being targeted
by the Chinese Communist party for espionage,
American companies are increasingly at risk
of boosting the Chinese Communist Party’s
human rights atrocities.”
That’s crazy.
An American company knowingly helping
a murderous regime persecute people?
What are they, IBM?
Senator Marco Rubio said Microsoft is complicit
in the Chinese regime’s human rights abuses.
“It is deeply disturbing that an American company
would be actively working with the Chinese military
to further build up the government's surveillance network
against its own people—
an act that makes them complicit
in aiding the Communist Chinese government’s
totalitarian censorship apparatus
and egregious human rights abuses.”
In fact, he and Congressman Chris Smith spearheaded
this bipartisan letter urging sanctions on China
for the treatment of Uighurs in Xinjiang.
It was signed by 9 Republicans,
7 Democrats and one independent.
To which I say,
good for the Chinese Communist Party
for finally bringing Democrats and Republicans together.
Now Microsoft has defended their work
with the Chinese military university.
Their official response to the Financial Times was,
“The research is guided by our principles,
fully complies with US and local laws,
and...is published to ensure transparency
so that everyone can benefit from our work.”
I mean, if their principles are to make lots of money
while technically not breaking any laws,
then yeah, I guess they are guided by their principles.
My favorite Chinese state-run media, the Global Times,
defended Microsoft.
It wrote that the Chinese director of the research
“slammed the accusations as subjective interpretation,
saying that ‘he who has a mind
to beat his dog will easily find his stick.’”
Oh yeah?
Well just because you pointed out the stick
doesn’t mean you were beating a dog.
Or something.
It sounded more folksy in my head.
The point is,
this isn’t Microsoft’s only shady connection
to mass surveillance in Xinjiang.
In February, a European research team discovered that
a Chinese company called SenseNets
had a totally open, unsecure database
of 2.5 million Uighurs in Xinjiang.
The records tracked everything from each person’s ID number,
birthday, address, ethnicity, employer...
as well as updated GPS coordinates that could tell if,
for instance,
this particular person was visiting a mosque.
Any I know that sounds creepy,
but have you considered this?
Maybe the police are just tracking everyone’s ID,
birthday, and location so they know where to deliver
their state-sponsored birthday cake!
Surprise!
And that image is my birthday present to all of you.
But back to creepy surveillance.
The company handling all this tracking, SenseNets,
listed Microsoft as a partner on their website.
Now, Microsoft has since said SenseNets
was lying about that partnership...
and offered, well, very little proof to back that up.
But SenseNets has removed Microsoft’s logo now,
so that’s good enough.
But Microsoft’s relationship with Chinese mass surveillance
goes even deeper.
The three papers the Financial Times discovered
“underscore Microsoft’s...long-running links
to Chinese military-funded academia,
including its operation of several ‘tech clubs’
for students at Chinese universities
known to have military links.”
In fact, Bill Gates got Microsoft into China
by building a personal relationship
with former Chinese leader
and murder toad Jiang Zemin.
And Jiang Zemin’s son owned a 50% share
of the MSN China website.
But before you say,
“Wow, Microsoft is the worst”...
I should tell you that there are actually
lots of American companies and organizations
doing shady things in China.
Like Cisco.
Cisco helped build China’s Great Firewall.
That’s the Communist Party’s internet censorship system
that prevents Chinese netizens
from accessing dangerous websites, like YouTube.
And a leaked internal powerpoint presentation
showed that Cisco was very aware that
one of the Chinese regime’s goals for the Great Firewall
was to target Falun Gong and other Chinese dissidents,
helpfully called “hostiles” here.
Falun Gong is the main group
the Chinese regime was persecuting at the time.
Falun Gong practitioners’ main thing is
hour-long meditation and exercises—
which, I have to say, is an incredibly boring thing
to put under surveillance.
But hey, I’m not the one paying for it.
So Cisco took a look at how the Chinese Communist Party
was monitoring and arresting all these people and thought,
what a great opportunity to sell more routers!
Anyway, it’s not just Cisco.
Top American University MIT
has a wide reaching partnership with SenseTime.
SenseTime is a world leader in AI facial recognition technology.
It also owns a 49% stake in SenseNets,
that company keeping on eye on 2.5 million Uighurs.
The one that Microsoft claims is totally not a partner.
And SenseNets is mainly owned by its Chinese parent company Netposa.
In 2010,
Netposa got some big investment from
an American venture capital firm:
Intel Capital.
It’s “where great companies are built.”
Which is good,
because Netposa has been doing its own investing
in US robotics startups.
Like Bito robotics.
It’s led by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University.
Netposa also invested in Exyn,
a drone software company,
which is competing in an AI challenge run by DARPA.
DARPA is the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
That’s the part of the US Defense Department
responsible for the development of emerging technologies
for use by the military.
If you’re like me,
you know about DARPA thanks to Metal Gear Solid.
You’re the DARPA chief Donald Anderson, right?
No, Snake!
That’s Decoy Octopus
disguised as DARPA Chief Donald Anderson,
and the FOXDIE virus the Pentagon injected you with
is going to give him a heart attack!
But...what about the Pentagon?
Pentagon?
Nnnggghhhh!!!
What is it?!
Whyyyy?!
Told ya.
Most of what I know about DARPA comes from a video game.
Anyway, as I mentioned earlier,
the Xinjiang government is also monitoring Uighurs
using their DNA.
And guess who’s helping?
More American companies!
Up until this February,
the American company Thermo Fisher
was selling DNA sequencers
directly to Xinjiang authorities.
This Yale professor shared DNA samples
with China’s Ministry of Public Security.
I mean come on!
How can you be a Yale professor
and not understand what the “ministry of public security”
gets up to in an authoritarian state like China?
California-based Amax works on computer deep learning.
They have a partnership with China’s state-owned Hikvision, and...
...ok you know what?
I’m just going to stop here
otherwise this episode will be like 10 hours long.
And I don’t think our video editor Seamus would like that.
But these American tech companies should know better!
It’s well known that Chinese companies
built the internment camps in Xinjiang.
Chinese companies built the technology
that monitors their every move.
Chinese companies built the software
that monitors Uighurs online.
So maybe if you give these Chinese companies,
or Chinese military researchers,
your latest cutting edge technology,
it might get used for some not so great things.
But hey, it’s not like we learned any lessons from history.
So what do you think of how US companies
have helped build China’s surveillance state?
Let me know in the comments below.
And now it’s time for me to answer
a question from one of you—
a fan who supports China Uncensored
with a dollar or more per episode,
by contributing through the crowdfunding website Patreon.
Spartaner 251 asks,
“what's going to happen in the end?
china will just send some little doctor or someone
to put all the blame on.”
For clarity, that was in reference to a recent episode
I did about the Chinese Communist Party
being put on trial for killing
innocent prisoners of conscience
for their organs.
So I actually think it’s very likely
they’re going to try to blame it on someone,
or on a small group,
instead of the Communist Party as a whole
This is Huang Jiefu.
He’s the face of China’s organ transplantation system.
Even though he hasn’t admitted to
killing innocent people for their organs,
he has gone on the air to make sure that
any shady things that may or may not have happened
were some other guy’s fault.
That guy is Zhou Yongkang,
a high ranking Communist official
who has now been purged.
Now specifically he was talking about
organs from executed prisoners.
But Zhou Yongkang was a powerful figure
in a political faction tied to
former Chinese leader Jiang Zemin.
He and his faction have been trying to oust
current Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
Which is why Xi has been trying to purge them all.
Like a Communist version of Pokemon.
Now Jiang Zemin, Zhou Yongkang,
and others in that faction are the ones
who started this system of forced organ trafficking.
So I have a feeling, as more evidence
of these crimes against humanity come out,
Xi is going to try real hard to blame it on Jiang and his folks,
so he himself doesn’t get the blame.
Because in communist China,
the captain is the only one who
doesn’t have to go down with the ship.
Thanks for your question, Spartaner.
And thank you to all my 50-Cent Army soldiers
who support China Uncensored.
It’s only because of your support that we’ve been able to cover
topics that most other TV shows don’t want to,
because they prefer to get advertising dollars,
rather than criticize the Chinese Communist Party.
Once again, I’m Chris Chappell.
See you next time.