Here’s the latest broadside from Reuters: Amazon has curried favor in China by promoting books extolling the leadership of President Xi Jinping and his version of “socialism with Chinese characteristics.”
This comes at the same time that the New York Times is describing how China’s government is spending massive amounts of money on Facebook and Twitter, even though those platforms are not allowed to operate in China. The Chinese government uses automatic “bots” to generate likes and forwards of messages it has posted.
The Wall Street Journal/Rhodium group has revealed that Intel, Nvidia and other semiconductor companies are helping China’s military develop advanced semiconductor capabilities inside China, thereby helping the People’s Liberation Army.
And a report by the Center for Security and Emerging Technologies in Washington has issued a report that chips made by Intel are showing up in facial recognition products made by Chinese companies. Facial recognition is a form of AI.
A moment of reckoning is at hand–the Winter Olympics are just a metaphore. NBC and sponsors such as Coca-Cola are knowingly supporting a regime that is disappearing people like tennis star Peng Shuai. When will American companies recognize that the optics–and the reality–of aiding and abetting a digital dictatorship are too high a price to pay?
