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,