A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers sent a letter to Intel Corporation and NVIDIA Corporation seeking more information about the sale of advanced computer chips. These chips have allegedly been used by China for mass surveillance and other human rights abuses against Uighurs and other Muslim minorities in the Xinjiang region.
Democratic Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA), Chairman of the bipartisan and bicameral U.S. Congress and the Administration’s China Committee (CECC), and Republican Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), Co-Chairman of the CECC, asked the CEOs of both companies to respond to questions about the companies’ exports to China. The New York Times.
The New York Times reported last month that the Urumqi Cloud Computing Center is home to some of the world’s fastest computers that the Chinese government uses to spy on countless people in Xinjiang, with chips supplied by Intel and NVIDIA.
The senators also noted in their letter: “Publicly available information indicates that the Urumqi Cloud Computing Center is being used for ‘predictive policing,’ which analyzes large amounts of video and other surveillance data to preventively identify people who are considered dangerous or dangerous. disloyalty to the Chinese Communist Party.”
The letter states, “Over the past three years, there has been growing evidence that mass surveillance enabled by combining computing power and big data with traditional surveillance methods has enabled the implementation of China’s mass detention and forced labor policies that affect millions of Uighurs and other Muslim minorities.”
Based on these reports, lawmakers asked the two companies several questions about their operations in China, including whether they were aware that their technology would be used to support surveillance activities by Chinese security services; whether they had taken steps to ensure that their products were not used to commit human rights abuses or harm U.S. national security; and whether they were aware that the companies were selling products or services to entities in China that the U.S. government had identified as national security risks or suspected of serious human rights abuses and had placed on the U.S. Department of Commerce’s list of entities, among others.
The United Nations has previously estimated that more than one million Muslims are being held in internment camps in the Xinjiang region. The international community has also accused China of arbitrarily detaining Uighurs and other Muslim minorities, and subjecting them to forced education and abuse.
China has consistently denied mistreating Uighurs or the existence of internment camps, claiming that they are vocational and technical education centers designed to de-radicalize and help lift the region’s population out of poverty. China has stated in a white paper that Xinjiang actively implements international labor and human rights standards to protect the rights of workers.
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