How Silicon Valley tech helped build China’s digital police state

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An Associated Press investigation into China’s surveillance and policing described how U.S. companies helped build tools that enabled what the AP said became a “digital cage” for people tagged by Chinese authorities as suspicious or politically sensitive. The investigation, based on tens of thousands of pages of internal materials and other records, also described how surveillance technology used by Chinese police relied on systems and components associated with multiple American technology firms.

The AP’s reporting centers on Yang Guoliang, a farmer in eastern Jiangsu province, where, AP said, his family was caught in a network that monitored their movements and communications. AP said a body camera hung from an IV drip recorded a police beating of Yang that left him bloody and paralyzed, and that the Yangs’ surveillance routine was not new. AP said the Yang family’s train tickets, hotel bookings, purchases, text messages and phone calls were forwarded to the government, and that more than a dozen cameras ringed their home.

AP also described how the Yangs attempted to leave their area and reach Beijing multiple times, but masked men intercepted them, often before they departed. AP said Yang’s wife and younger daughter were later detained and now face trial for disrupting the work of the Chinese state, a crime AP said can carry up to a decade in prison. Yang told AP that “Every move in my own home is monitored,” adding: “Their surveillance makes me feel unsafe all the time, everywhere.”

The AP investigation also reported that U.S. companies played a far greater role in enabling abuses than previously known, with internal documents and other evidence presented as showing how American firms designed and marketed surveillance technology that became a foundation for China’s digital policing. The AP said American surveillance technologies were part of systems used in Xinjiang to track, grade and subdue virtually the entire native Uyghur population, and AP linked that effort to predictive policing approaches that analyze large volumes of data in order to prevent crimes or attacks before they happen, while also allowing authorities to detain people for crimes they have not committed.

Within that framework, the AP described how “Golden Shield” policing was developed and expanded in Beijing and how Chinese police databases tracked so-called “key persons” whose movements could be restricted and monitored. AP reported that a Chinese defense contractor, Huadi, worked with IBM to design main policing systems known as the “Golden Shield,” citing thousands of pages of classified government blueprints taken out of China by a whistleblower and verified by AP. The AP said IBM and other companies responding to the investigation told AP they fully complied with applicable laws, sanctions and U.S. export controls and did not design the technology for police surveillance.

The AP also reported that in Xinjiang, authorities logged people as high-, medium- or low-risk, sometimes through 100-point scoring and deductions for factors including being Uyghur, and AP said some marketing explicitly discussed race. The investigation said Dell and a Chinese surveillance firm promoted a “military-grade” AI-powered laptop with “all-race recognition” on Dell’s official WeChat account in 2019, and that Thermo Fisher Scientific marketed DNA kits to Chinese police on its website as “designed” for the Chinese population, including “ethnic minorities like Uyghurs and Tibetans,” until contacted by AP in August.

The AP said that while the flow of American surveillance technology slowed starting in 2019 after outrage and sanctions over atrocities in Xinjiang, the earlier systems left a foundation Chinese firms built upon and, in some cases, replaced. AP reported concerns continuing over where technology sold to China ends up, including a letter in late July by 20 former U.S. officials and national security experts criticizing a deal for Nvidia to sell H20 chips to China.

In response, AP reported that Nvidia said it does not make surveillance systems or software, does not work with police in China and has not designed the H20 for police surveillance. The AP said Nvidia posted on its WeChat account in 2022 that Chinese surveillance firms Watrix and GEOAI used its chips to train AI patrol drones and systems to identify people by their walk, and that Nvidia told AP those relationships no longer continue. AP also said the White House and the Department of Commerce did not respond to requests for comment.

The investigation extended to broader commercial and policy questions, including what AP said were sales pitches from multiple companies that referenced programs and language connected to surveillance and censorship efforts. AP reported that companies often said they were not responsible for how products were used, and said some directly pitched their technology as tools for Chinese police, citing marketing material from IBM, Dell, Cisco and Seagate. AP also said four practicing lawyers told AP that sales like those uncovered could potentially violate, at least in spirit, export laws at the time; those companies denied the suggestion.

As part of the inquiry’s contextual reporting, AP described how Beijing pursued the “Golden Shield” digitization effort after the Tiananmen crackdown in 1989 and how interest in surveillance expanded after the 2001 9/11 attacks, with American firms then selling surveillance technology that executives said could prevent crime and terror attacks. AP said later U.S. warnings included Congress demanding explanations from tech companies, and it described Cisco’s involvement through documents and court-related reporting, including a claim that Cisco presentations reviewed by AP said the company’s products could identify over 90% of Falun Gong content on the web.

AP’s reporting on consequences also returned to the Yangs’ experience. AP described how local authorities seized the Yangs’ land in 2009 after Beijing began planning “Golden Shield,” and how Yangs later won a 2015 ruling that their land seizure was illegal. AP said that just weeks after the ruling, officers used “Golden Shield” technology to identify human rights lawyers, detain them and press them into police vans across China, and that the Yangs’ case was later reversed.

In Xinjiang and across China, AP said the surveillance apparatus expanded through linked databases, risk scoring and networks of cameras and checkpoints, and included episodes in which officials and engineers told AP they believed computers and predictive systems were accurate despite errors. AP also reported statements from the Xinjiang government defending its surveillance as designed to “prevent and combat terrorist and criminal activity,” while saying it respects privacy and does not target any ethnicity.

The AP investigation concluded by raising broader questions about technology and rights beyond China, including concerns about how similar surveillance approaches could spread elsewhere as artificial intelligence and data-driven policing tools become more capable. The AP said the story echoed a warning that surveillance exports can become part of coercive governance, and that U.S. executive actions and safeguards were also under review during the Trump administration period, according to the investigation’s account.