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URUMQI, China – At the end of a desolate road lined with prisons, in the heart of a complex bristling with cameras, American technology is powering one of the most invasive parts of China’s surveillance state.
The computers inside the complex, known as the Urumqi Cloud Computing Center, are among the most powerful in the world. They can watch more surveillance footage in a day than a person could in a year. They are looking for faces and models of human behavior. They follow the cars. They watch the phones.
The Chinese government uses these computers to observe countless numbers of people in Xinjiang, a region in western China where Beijing has launched a campaign of surveillance and repression in the name of the fight against terrorism.
Chips made by US semiconductor companies Intel and Nvidia have powered the complex since it opened in 2016. In 2019, at a time when reports said Beijing was using cutting edge technology to imprison and track majority Muslim minorities. Xinjiang, new chips have helped the complex join the list of the world’s fastest supercomputers. Intel and Nvidia say they weren’t aware of what they called their technology misuse.
Powerful American technology and its potential misuse are central to the decisions the Biden administration faces as it grapples with the country’s increasingly bitter relationship with China. The Trump administration last year banned the sale of advanced semiconductors and other technologies to Chinese companies involved in national security or human rights issues. A crucial first question for Mr Biden will be whether to tighten, relax or rethink these restrictions.
Some tech industry figures say the ban has gone too far, halting sales of valuable US products with harmless uses and prompting China to create its own advanced semiconductors. Indeed, China is spending billions of dollars to develop high-end chips.
In contrast, critics of the use of U.S. technology in law enforcement systems say buyers are exploiting workarounds and industry and government officials should monitor sales and usage more closely.
Companies often stress that they have little say in where their products go. Chips from the Urumqi complex, for example, were sold by Intel and Nvidia to Sugon, the Chinese company that supports the center. Sugon is a major supplier to the Chinese military and security forces, but it also manufactures computers for mainstream businesses.
This argument is no longer sufficient, said Jason Matheny, founding director of the Center for Security and Emerging Technology at Georgetown University and former US intelligence official.
“Government and industry need to be more thoughtful now that technologies are advancing to such an extent that you could perform real-time monitoring using a single supercomputer on potentially millions of people,” he said. he declares.
There is no evidence that the sale of the Nvidia or Intel chip, prior to the Trump order, broke any laws. Intel said it no longer sells supercomputer semiconductors to Sugon. Yet the two continue to sell crisps to the Chinese firm.
The existence of the Urumqi complex and the use of American chips are no secret, and there were plenty of clues that Beijing was using it for surveillance in Xinjiang. Since 2015, when the complex began to expand, state media and Sugon have been bragging about his ties to the police.
In five-year-old marketing materials distributed in China, Nvidia promoted the capabilities of the Urumqi complex and boasted that “the high-capacity CCTV application” won customer satisfaction there.
Nvidia said the documents referred to older versions of its products and that video surveillance was then integral to the discussion of “smart cities,” an effort in China to use technology to solve urban problems such as pollution, traffic and crime. A spokesperson for Nvidia said the company had no reason to believe its products would be used “for improper purposes.”
The spokesperson added that Sugon “has not been a significant customer of Nvidia” since the ban last year. He also said that Nvidia had not provided technical assistance to Sugon since then.
A spokesperson for Intel, which still sells low-end Sugon chips, said it will limit or stop doing business with any customer it says has used its products to violate human rights.
Advertising of Intel’s activities in China appears to have had an impact within the company. Last year, a business unit drafted ethics guidelines for its technology’s artificial intelligence applications, according to three people familiar with the matter who asked not to be named because Intel failed to render. public directives.
Sugon said in a statement that the resort was originally intended to track license plates and handle other smart city tasks, but its systems were found to be ineffective and were switched to other uses. But as recently as September, Chinese government official media described the complex as a video and image processing center for city management.
Advances in technology have given authorities around the world tremendous power to monitor and sort people. In China, leaders have taken technology to an even more extreme level. Artificial intelligence and genetic testing are used to screen people to determine if they are Uyghurs, one of the minority groups in Xinjiang. Chinese companies and authorities say their systems can detect religious extremism or opposition to the Communist Party.
The Urumqi cloud computing center – also sometimes referred to as the Xinjiang Supercomputing Center – made its debut on the list of the world’s fastest computers in 2018, ranking No.221. In November 2019, new chips helped to push his computer to n ° 135.
Two data centers run by Chinese security forces are next door, a way to potentially reduce latency, experts say. Nearby are also six prisons and rehabilitation centers.
When a New York Times reporter attempted to visit the center in 2019, he was followed by plainclothes police. A guard pushed him away.
Chinese state media and Sugon’s previous statements describe the complex as a watchdog, among other uses. In August 2017, local officials said the center would support a Chinese police surveillance project called Sharp Eyes and that it could search for 100 million photos in one second. By 2018, according to the company’s disclosures, its computers could connect to 10,000 video streams and analyze 1,000 simultaneously, using artificial intelligence.
“Using cloud computing, big data, deep learning and other technologies, the intelligent video analytics engine can integrate data and police applications from video footage, dots and ‘Wi-Fi access, checkpoint information and facial recognition analysis to support the operations of different departments’ within the Chinese police, Sugon said in a 2018 article posted on an official account social media.
During a visit by local Communist Party leaders to the compound that year, he wrote on his website that computers had “improved thinking from after-the-fact monitoring to predictive policing. before the fact ”.
In Xinjiang, predictive policing is often used as a shortcut for preventive arrests targeting behavior deemed disloyal or threatening to the party. This could include a display of Muslim piety, ties to a family living abroad or owning two phones or not owning a phone, according to Uyghur testimonies and official Chinese policy documents.
The technology helps sort through large amounts of data that humans cannot process, said Jack Poulson, former Google engineer and founder of advocacy group Tech Inquiry.
“When something approaches a surveillance state, your biggest limitation is your ability to identify events of interest in your feeds,” he said. “The way you increase your surveillance is through machine learning and AI at scale”
The Urumqi complex entered development before reports of abuse in Xinjiang became widespread. In 2019, governments around the world were protesting China’s conduct in Xinjiang. That year, the Sugon computer appeared in the international ranking of supercomputers, using Intel Xeon Gold 5118 processors and Nvidia Tesla V100 advanced artificial intelligence chips.
It is not known how or if Sugon will get chips strong enough to keep the Urumqi complex on this list. But lesser technology typically used to perform harmless tasks can also be used for monitoring and deletion. Customers can also use resellers in other countries or chips made by US companies overseas.
Last year, police in two counties in Xinjiang, Yanqi and Qitai, purchased surveillance systems that run on lower-tier Intel chips, according to government procurement documents. The Kyrgyz Autonomous Prefecture of Kizilsu Public Security Bureau bought a computing platform in April that uses servers running less powerful Intel chips, according to the documents, although the agency was blacklisted by the government. Trump administration last year for his involvement in surveillance.
China’s dependence on US chips has, so far, helped the world back down, said Maya Wang, a Chinese researcher at Human Rights Watch.
“I’m afraid that in a few years, Chinese companies and government will find their own way to develop chips and these capabilities,” Ms. Wang said. “Then there will be no way to try to stop this abuse.”
Paul Mozur reported from Urumqi, China, and Don Clark from San Francisco.
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