cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/46678390

Lawmakers and activists across the political spectrum called on American tech firms to stop selling surveillance equipment to Chinese police and for Congress to examine the issue after The Associated Press reported that U.S. technology had played a far greater role than previously known in enabling human rights abuses by Beijing.

Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri told AP he wanted to summon tech companies before Congress to address how their technology exports were used. Hawley, a longtime critic of U.S. technology companies, bemoaned Silicon Valley’s general lack of cooperation with Congress on that and similar inquiries.

“I think eventually we’re going to have to subpoena these people,” Hawley said.

In a post on the social media site X this month, Hawley vowed that “Big Tech must cut ties with the CCP - or face my committee,” referring to the ruling Chinese Communist Party. Hawley sits on several Senate panels that might have jurisdiction to examine technology issues

An AP investigation published this month revealed that U.S. technology companies to a large degree designed and built China’s surveillance state. Firms including IBM, Dell, and Cisco sold billions in technology to Chinese police and government agencies, despite repeated warnings that such tools were being used to quash dissent, persecute religious sects and target minorities. Companies named in AP’s reporting said they complied with all export control laws.

Yang Caiying, who told AP for its investigation about how her family was targeted by Chinese surveillance using American technology because of their activism in rural Jiangsu, said she was “shocked by the pivotal role that major U.S. tech companies have played” in her family’s ordeal. Yang is now collecting signatures for petitions urging Washington to bar U.S. firms from selling to Chinese police, both online and on the street.

Other lawmakers from both parties urged Congress to beef up export laws to prevent more American technology from being used to fuel human rights abuses abroad.

“China has been utilizing partnerships with U.S. tech companies to build malignant ‘smart cities’ that are used for mass surveillance and human rights abuses against millions of innocent Chinese people,” said Rep. John Moolenaar, a Michigan Republican who chairs the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party. The panel is charged with examining the strategic global competition between the U.S. and China.

“As executives at Nvidia and other American tech companies chase business in China, they cannot deny that their technology will be used to commit atrocities, strengthen China, and weaken America,” Moolenaar said.

Moolenaar called for American companies to work with Congress to write new laws that restrict the export of technologies that enable oppression. and work harder to keep their products from being smuggled into China.