The Associated Press has published an investigation concluding that American technology firms were instrumental in creating the infrastructure of China’s digital police state — a system that, according to the AP’s findings, became the engine of the mass detention campaign against the Uyghur minority in Xinjiang.
The investigation, led by journalist Dake Kang and involving freelance partners and AP staff across a dozen territories, drew on more than 100 interviews and a cache of tens of thousands of leaked, classified, and publicly available documents. AP reporters obtained thousands of pages of internal Chinese government blueprints and accounting ledgers, more than 20,000 internal emails from the surveillance company Landasoft, and over 4,000 Chinese procurement bids that recorded purchases of American and foreign technology by Chinese police. Three outside experts on Chinese surveillance reviewed the classified documents and judged them likely authentic. “It is effectively inconceivable that they are not legitimate,” said Conor Healy, research affairs director for the surveillance research publication IPVM.
Central to the AP’s account is the partnership between IBM and Landasoft, a Chinese firm that the leaked emails show directly sold software customized from IBM’s i2 police analysis platform. Landasoft’s product was used to assign risk scores to Uyghurs, flag them for detention, and track their movements, the AP reported. IBM and other companies that responded to the AP said they fully complied with all applicable laws, sanctions, and U.S. export controls, both past and present.
The AP described how Chinese police and state-owned defense contractors built what it called “the largest and most sophisticated surveillance state on earth” by importing American predictive policing technology. The systems mined phone records, payments, video feeds, DNA databases, utility usage, and internet activity to identify individuals deemed suspicious and to predict their actions. In Xinjiang, that apparatus was turned on virtually the entire native Uyghur population as part of a forcible assimilation campaign.
The investigation itself was met with intimidation. AP reporters said they were tracked down by Chinese authorities, briefly detained, and questioned while pursuing the story. Many of the sources who provided material did so anonymously for fear of retribution.
The AP is seeking further information and documents through its global investigative team at ap.org/tips. The full findings were published September 9, 2025.