American Tech Companies Supply Military-grade AI to China: Microsoft, Amazon Among DoD Suppliers

Microsoft, Amazon, Oracle Among DoD Suppliers Entangled in China's AI Civil-Military Ecosystem

WASHINGTON, DC, UNITED STATES, October 18, 2023 /EINPresswire.com/ -- A new report from the American Security Project outlines extensive transfer of foreign technology and expertise from America’s high-tech commercial sector into China’s state security, intelligence, and defense agencies.

The report, “Code War: How China’s AI Ambitions Threaten U.S. National Security,” finds that several prominent U.S. government contractors are engaged in second- and third-level dealings with Chinese state security and defense agencies, inadvertently contributing to China’s mass surveillance, espionage, psychological warfare, and autonomous weapons development. The report comes in the wake of new limits on sales of advanced semiconductors by the Biden Administration on Tuesday, which cuts deep into American semiconductor companies' revenues—but not their AI software ties to Chinese Communist Party entities.

“US government contractors are vital to China's development of artificial intelligence. If American companies and allies continue to supply military-grade AI to China, this investment could facilitate a global shift to more clandestine and manipulative means to obtain political ends,” states report author Courtney Manning. “The geopolitical consequences of an authoritarian regime with revisionist objectives extending its authority across the Indo-Pacific and beyond are difficult to overstate.”

The report discusses several threats if this behavior is not cut short. In the short term, the report finds, China could meet its objectives across the Taiwan Strait and in the South China Sea. The American Security Project finds that these threats have long been neglected, and policymakers must catch up quickly to address the flood of sensitive and dual-use AI being passed directly from American technology companies to the Chinese government.

Findings include:

● Microsoft’s artificial intelligence products are used by partners who work in security, defense, and intelligence in China. One partner, China Electronics Technology Group Corporation, uses Microsoft's Cloud AI to engineer national military and civil ICT systems used in the oppression of Uyghur minorities. Microsoft remains a major supplier of technology services to the U.S. government, overseeing the Navy’s Flank Speed enterprises, the DoD Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability, and the Defense Information Systems Agency’s Top Secret and other classified data.

● Amazon is the primary artificial intelligence and cloud computing provider of the U.S. Department of Defense, receiving over $20 billion in contracts in 2022. It simultaneously maintains several high-impact contracts with Chinese government partners, including the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC), a paramilitary organization sanctioned by the U.S. government for its ties to human rights abuses in Xinjiang, and Nanjing Keji Data Technology Co, Ltd, which provides cognitive intelligence application services to military end-users under its “AI+National Defense Military Industry Solution” program.

● Oracle maintains 24 offices throughout the PRC and provides artificial intelligence software that allows Chinese police to conduct mass surveillance in Xinjiang. Oracle remains a top U.S. Department of Defense contractor, securing up to $9 billion in grants last year. Its American website claims that its customers include “all five branches of the U.S. military” as well as NASA, the Department of Commerce, and the Central Intelligence Agency.

The American Security Project (ASP) is a nonpartisan organization created to educate the American public and the world about the changing nature of national security in the 21st Century. For more information, please visit www.AmericanSecurityProject.org.

Courtney Manning
American Security Project
+1 202-347-4267
[email protected]
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