Bill Drexel, an associate fellow for the technology and national security program at the Center for a New American Security, said the U.S. unknowingly assisted China’s repressive use of technology.
In an interview with the Federal Newswire, Drexel emphasized the power and potential danger of artificial intelligence.
"In a lot of ways the technological repression ecosystem that's coming out of China, we laid the foundation for unwittingly with the best of intentions," Drexel said to Federal Newswire. "Ultimately when you look at things like Microsoft's AI research lab in Beijing and the alumni of that program, it reads as a who's who of the big AI tech companies in China today that are fueling the repressions in Xinjiang and elsewhere."
Drexel continued to say the U.S. believed engaging in free trade with China and opening those economies might influence the country toward a more open society, according to Federal Newswire. He noted this notion did not pan out.
"In recent years we've seen that conclusion kind of turned on its head," Drexel told Federal Newswire. "You could argue that trend is most dramatic in tech where it's not that we've pulled them into a freer, more open internet but quite the reverse. They've pulled the internet and these technologies further into autocratic repressive applications.”
Nury Turkel, a Uyghur American who was born in the Xinjiang region who is now chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, testified in a March 23 Congressional hearing that the ongoing genocide being committed against the Uyghur population involves technologically advanced tools, according to a release of his statement.
"The Chinese government has mobilized 21st-century high-tech tools like biometric scanning — forced collection of DNA, iris scans, facial scans and voice prints," Turkel said in his statement. "Combined with mobile-phone tracking apps and a massive network of surveillance cameras, the regime has mobilized machine-learning to build a comprehensive and permanent 'total control' regime.
"This is the most sophisticated genocide in the modern era, supported by technology and facilitated through forced labor programs," Turkel added, according to his statement. "It is the largest incarceration of ethnoreligious groups since the Nazi era."
AWS and Microsoft, the two largest cloud companies in the U.S., are actively increasing their endeavors in AI and cloud-related ventures in China, despite the concerns expressed by their own executives regarding the potential risks posed by the Chinese government in terms of artificial intelligence, Protocol reported.
The article said Microsoft has the most ties to China, having operated there since 1998. Dr. Hsiao-Wuen Hon, chairman of Microsoft’s Asia-Pacific research and development group, said, “to a large extent, we contributed a big part to the effort to bring China to the world class research landscape.”
Microsoft has recently initiated the relocation of its leading AI researchers from China to Vancouver, according to Daily Hive. Numerous individuals currently engaged in artificial intelligence in Beijing may be transferred, with the intention of mitigating the risk of talent being lured away by Chinese companies or facing harassment from government officials. The move has been named the "Vancouver Plan."
“A kind of consensus is emerging among tech industry and geopolitical leaders that [AI] will be pretty fundamental to competition in years ahead,” Drexel said to Federal Newswire. “Vladimir Putin noted that whoever has the advantage in AI will rule the world.”
He added Xi Jinping, and many other leaders have made similar comments about this, Federal Newswire reported.
