The Associated Press obtained tens of thousands of pages of classified blueprints, internal emails, and procurement records that show how U.S. technology companies systematically armed the Chinese state with the tools of mass surveillance. The documents reveal that IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and others sold products directly to police and security agencies, often marketing their technologies with Communist Party catchphrases such as “stability maintenance” and “key persons.”
IBM’s role was particularly deep. In 2009, the company partnered with Huadi, a state-owned subsidiary of China’s largest missile contractor, to build Phase Two of the “Golden Shield” — the national police database designed to digitize law enforcement and enable predictive policing. Classified blueprints reviewed by the AP show that the system was intended to “consolidate Communist Party rule” and track hundreds of thousands of citizens online. IBM said any such relationships were “old, stale interactions” and that it was not aware of any current misuse.
A former IBM partner, the Shanghai-based firm Landasoft, later developed the Integrated Joint Operations Platform (IJOP), which became the central system for Xinjiang’s mass detention campaign. Leaked emails show that Landasoft’s software was “developed based on i2,” the IBM analytics tool. The IJOP fused data from banks, railways, phone companies, and millions of cameras to compile dossiers on residents, assign risk scores, and flag individuals for arrest. In one week in 2017, the system flagged 24,412 people as “suspicious,” leading to most being detained.
Other U.S. firms supplied critical infrastructure. Dell and Chinese partner Watrix promoted a “military-grade” AI laptop with “all-race recognition” on Dell’s WeChat account. Thermo Fisher marketed DNA kits to Chinese police as “designed” for the Chinese population, including “ethnic minorities like Uyghurs and Tibetans.” Nvidia, Intel, Oracle, Microsoft, and VMWare provided chips, servers, and cloud services that processed the surveillance data. Procurement records reviewed by the AP show that maintenance contracts for IBM, Dell, HP, Cisco, and Seagate equipment remain active, and that Oracle and VMWare software still runs police databases.
“Everything was built on American tech,” said Valentin Weber, a researcher at the German Council on Foreign Relations. “China’s capability was close to zero.”
The human toll is stark. The Yang family of Jiangsu province has been hounded by police for more than a decade after challenging a land seizure. Their phone calls, text messages, and travel bookings are fed into a government database. More than a dozen cameras ring their house, and when they try to travel to Beijing to petition, masked officers intercept them. In July 2024, Yang Guoliang’s mother was tackled outside the leadership compound, jailed, and strip-searched; she and Yang’s sister have since disappeared. The family is now isolated — the last house standing in a village cleared for development — and their relatives are too terrified to contact them.
In Xinjiang, the surveillance net swept up even those tasked with enforcing it. Kalbinur Sidik, a teacher, was assigned as a building head and saw the Landasoft software in action, with lists of names and a “Push Alert” button that triggered arrests. She watched the number of attendees at mandatory flag-raising ceremonies shrink as neighbors were detained. Parida Qabylqai, a pharmacist, was flagged after visiting her parents abroad, dragged to a camp, and held under constant camera surveillance. A former Xinjiang civil servant, Liu Yuliang, recalled arresting a young police officer who had himself sent many to the camps; later, the system flagged Liu and he fled China.
Officers were told “computers cannot lie,” said Nureli Abliz, a former Xinjiang government engineer now in Germany, who was present at closed-door planning meetings. “They concluded they weren’t surveilling Uyghurs closely enough.” He added: “The tech companies told the government their software is perfect. It’s all a myth.”
The Chinese government said it uses surveillance technologies to “prevent and combat terrorist and criminal activity” and denied targeting any ethnicity. The Xinjiang government added that there is “absolutely no such thing as ‘large-scale human rights violations.’” A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson called the U.S. “a true surveillance state.”
Legal experts said that while many U.S. tech companies likely complied with the letter of export controls, the sales raise difficult questions. Raj Bhala, an international trade law expert at the University of Kansas, called the issues “the kind of gray area that we put in exams,” noting “possible inconsistencies, possible violations” but stressing that more facts were needed.
Former Cisco lawyer Katie Shay told a human rights conference that companies had a responsibility to understand how their technology might be misused, acknowledging the pain of those who suffered. Cisco said it is committed to human rights but warned that lawsuits over legal exports could “open the floodgates.”
The Associated Press investigation comes as U.S. law enforcement agencies are increasingly adopting predictive policing tools and as President Donald Trump has rescinded a Biden-era executive order meant to safeguard civil rights from surveillance technology. The Chinese model, built on American know-how, has been exported to other authoritarian governments, and security analysts warn that the domestic erosion of protections could lead to similar abuses in the United States.
Yang Caiying, the Yangs’ eldest daughter, now in exile, said: “Because of this technology … we have no freedom at all. At the moment, it’s us Chinese that are suffering the consequences, but sooner or later, Americans and others, too, will lose their freedoms.”