The U.S. keeps warning about China’s surveillence tech threat—while cashing in on it: ‘I think we’ve been naive or complicit in the extreme’

However, the suggestions triggered considerable action from over 100 representatives of technology firms and their industry groups, who sought to influence the outcome, as indicated by disclosure filings.

The result: All four times, the proposal failed, including just last month.

With leaders Donald Trump and Xi Jinping set for a long-anticipated meeting on Thursday, the sale of American technology to China stands out as one of the most challenging concerns for the U.S., with billions of dollars and the future of tech dominance at stake. However, the firm discussions regarding China mask a more profound narrative: Despite raising alarms about national security and human rights violations, the U.S. Government, under five different Republican and Democratic administrations, has consistently permitted and even actively assisted American companies in selling technology to Chinese law enforcement, government bodies, and surveillance firms, an Associated Press inquiry revealed.

Repeatedly, and notwithstanding bipartisan efforts, Congress has ignored avenues that enable China to circumvent its own regulations, including cloud services, indirect sellers, and gaps in sanctions enacted following the Tiananmen massacre. For instance, even with U.S. Restrictions on exporting sophisticated chips, China bought $20.7 billion worth of chipmaking equipment from American firms in 2024 to strengthen its domestic sector, a congressional committee's report indicated this month.

The tech industry's immense wealth and influence, amplified by The Trump administration, explain this hesitation. Recently, the president has finalized significant agreements with Silicon Valley companies, further integrating the U.S. Economy with tech exports to China and granting taxpayers a direct share in these profits.

In August, Trump announced a deal with chipmakers Nvidia and AMD to lift export controls on sales of advanced chips to China in exchange for a 15% cut of the revenue, despite concerns from national security experts that such chips will end up in the hands of Chinese military and intelligence services. That same month, Trump announced that the U.S. Government had taken a 10 percent stake in Intel worth around $11 billion.

Zhou Fengsuo, a long-standing Chinese activist, stated that the U.S. Government is allowing American corporations to dictate policy and is overlooking their role in assisting Beijing with monitoring and censoring its population. Zhou was a student leader during the 1989 Tiananmen protests, an event where the Chinese government's actions resulted in the deaths of hundreds, and potentially thousands, of people. He was subsequently apprehended and incarcerated.

Now a U.S. Citizen, Zhou testified before Congress in 2024, is urging Washington to look into the participation of American technology firms in Chinese surveillance. An AP investigation in September revealed that American companies, to a significant extent, developed and constructed China's surveillance apparatus, contributing much more to human rights violations than was previously understood.

“It’s driven by profit, and that’s why these strategic discussions have been silenced or delayed,” Zhou said. “I’m extremely disappointed. … this is a strategic failure by the United States.”

Hundreds of millions in lobbying

There's disagreement between Republicans and Democrats regarding technology sales to China, with some advocating for a more stringent approach.

A formidable adversary is being confronted. An Associated Press review of lobbying records revealed that American technology and telecommunications firms, along with their industry groups, have invested vast sums, amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars, over the last twenty years. This expenditure was directed towards lobbyists who, in their regular reports, identified significant legislation affecting trade with China as a primary concern, alongside other matters.

Tech firms contend that additional export limitations will compel China to cultivate its own internal supply chain, thereby bolstering its standing in the worldwide competition for AI dominance.

“Continuing to ban U.S. Computing from commercial markets only benefits foreign competition and undercuts President Trump’s efforts to create jobs, reduce the trade deficit, and grow the economy,” Nvidia said in a statement.

Nvidia has stated that it doesn't produce surveillance systems or software, doesn't collaborate with Chinese police, and that its H20 AI chip wasn't developed for police surveillance purposes.

Intel, which partnered with a Chinese fingerprinting company as recently as last year, stated that it adheres to export control regulations and did not elaborate on the specifics of its agreement with the U.S. Administration.

“The U.S. Government’s investment is a passive ownership, with no board representation, governance or information rights,” Intel said in a statement.

AMD offered no reply. Multiple inquiries for statements from The White House, as well as the Commerce and State departments, also went unanswered.

An Associated Press inquiry relied on numerous public record demands, extensive congressional statements, lobbying filings, and multiple discussions with present and past business leaders, elected officials, and ex-government employees from Both China and the United States.

Loopholes revealed

Chinese firms prohibited from obtaining advanced chips can circumvent this by utilizing cloud services like Microsoft Azure or Amazon Web Services abroad for their AI model training. Both Microsoft and AWS also promote their cloud platforms' ability to store video surveillance data for Chinese clients.

SDIC Contech,, a state-owned tech firm involved with AI, looked for entry to big data analytics services from AWS and Microsoft Azure, according to procurement bids. Additionally, Shanghai Qi Zhi Institute, a government-backed research body focused on sensitive technologies like encryption, requested access to $280,000 in Azure OpenAI cloud services from Microsoft.

Even sanctioned Chinese companies can use AWS and Microsoft Azure to offer surveillance abilities to customers overseas. For example, despite U.S. Sanctions over human rights abuses in Xinjiang in 2019, Dahua and Hikvision, China’s two largest surveillance companies, use AWS to offer networked surveillance abroad, according to marketing material on the company websites. Hikvision markets a video surveillance platform called “HikCentral” to private companies overseas, which can be also deployed on Azure, according to a post on Hikvision’s website this year.

Microsoft has refuted claims of offering services to Hikvision or collaborating with them to supply services to third parties. OpenAI, which makes its sophisticated AI models available via Microsoft's Azure cloud infrastructure, stated that it adheres to Microsoft's guidelines and does not permit Chinese access to its offerings. AWS has not provided an official response regarding the cloud services loophole.

A persistent oversight remains in the regulations enacted following the Tiananmen Square incident, which failed to encompass contemporary policing tools like security cameras, surveillance drives, or facial recognition technology. Legislators attempted to address this gap by introducing bills in 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, and 2013, but all were unsuccessful.

The U.S. Government under both Republican and Democratic presidents has made other attempts to regulate tech surveillance exports to China. In 2008, the Department of Commerce asked for comment on whether to include “biometric devices” and “integrated security systems” under controlled exports, but ran out of time before the next administration came in. In 2014 and 2015, it tried to tighten controls on surveillance products, but most fell through. In 2024, it sought to restrict exports of face-recognition systems and bar many more military, police, and intelligence end users from receiving U.S. Goods, with no success.

Both Democrats and Republicans in Congress attribute the setbacks, to some extent, to the financial backing and political sway held by technology firms.

“I think we’ve been naive or complicit in the extreme,” said New Jersey GOP Rep. Chris Smith. The U.S., he said, has been “selling and conveying to a malevolent power the ability to destroy us and destroy like-minded Western democracies.”

Ron Wyden, a Democratic senator representing Oregon, stated, "“What do all those companies all have in common? A big wallet,”". “That is as much as anything is what’s behind the fact we haven’t made as much progress.”

A history of failures

The first round of U.S. Prohibitions on Chinese police came after the Tiananmen massacre and applied to “crime control and detection” equipment. They largely stopped U.S. Companies from exporting goods to Chinese entities such as restraints, helmets, shields and batons.

However, the restrictions were tightly limited to mostly basic items, excluding sophisticated technologies usable by law enforcement and occasionally resulting in confusing priorities. American officials cautioned adult stores against sending decorative gold handcuffs to China. Concurrently, they largely allowed tech firms from Silicon Valley to export routers, servers, software, and more recently, AI-driven surveillance tools to Chinese police forces.

Even though fingerprint recognition systems faced explicit prohibitions, American businesses could still market equipment for handling, retaining, and contrasting fingerprints.

In 2006, the Global Online Freedom Act, aimed at limiting American tech firms' participation in Chinese surveillance, was introduced by Smith with backing from both parties. Smith drew parallels with IBM’s sale of computing gear to Nazi Germany, a parallel that has been well documented by historians. In a subsequent statement to AP, IBM asserted that the assertion of IBM's conscious cooperation with Nazi Germany was “false and has been rejected by credible historians.”

Disclosures reveal that organizations advocating for the tech and telecommunications sectors, along with numerous corporations, intensified their lobbying efforts to oppose Smith’s proposal. These companies contended that the computers, servers, and routers they supplied to China were identical to those provided to other nations. Furthermore, industry coalitions and specific firms submitted a multitude of comments to regulatory bodies, aiming to shape export rules pertaining to China.

Smith’s bill went nowhere.

“Money talks … When they flood certain members on strategic committees with the money, PAC money and the like, how much easier it is to listen to their narrative that somehow they’re part of the reform?” Said Smith.

Selling to China

Sales of technology to China persisted, occasionally receiving direct backing from the government. A wealth of archived web pages indicates that the U.S. Commercial Service, which is the Commerce Department's division focused on promoting exports, was instrumental for over ten years in linking American suppliers with Chinese security organizations and important government figures, including via its prominent Gold Key Matching service.

In 2004, the Commercial Service invited American companies marketed security technologies and gear for display at a Chinese security expo. By 2006, it was advertising prospects for U.S. Companies in the “safety and security” market, and subsequently published material detailing prospects in the market for international security equipment, including inspection systems, access control, and guard communication networks. Records from archived web pages indicate that throughout the George W. Bush and Obama presidencies, the Commercial Service consistently encouraged American involvement in policing trade shows, including events featuring “biological identification technologies” or originating from The Chinese Communist Party.

Under Bush, the Commerce Department in 2007 hosted a webinar about how to sell to the Chinese security market and promote surveillance tools to China’s public sector. For just $35, the federal agency could offer attendees “market entry-strategies and long-term market penetration plans,” an archived webpage shows.

Jeanette Chu, formerly with the U.S. Embassy in Beijing and involved in the 2007 webinar, admitted to occasional worries.

“I used to ask myself all the time, ‘what is the scary potential of each item?’” said Chu, now a national security and trade expert advising industry.

Even though President Barack Obama pledged to stop the constant movement of individuals between government and industry, he, similar to other presidents, appointed former industry lobbyists and supporters to prominent positions. One such appointee was Eric Hirschhorn at the Commerce Department, who had previously represented a trade association advocating for technology firms engaged in international sales. Hirschhorn once stated that Beijing's surveillance capabilities were insignificant when contrasted with the half-million surveillance cameras installed throughout London. He was subsequently assigned to oversee the department responsible for managing U.S. Export regulations.

Hirschhorn stated in an interview that export controls by themselves were an ineffective method for protecting human rights.

“You can use a computer to type an order or type a love note,” he told AP. “Are you not going to sell computers to China because one out of every 10,000 of them will be used to store data about a dissident?”

‘Smart city’ cooperation

In 2010, the U.S. State Department’s human rights report warned of “police surveillance, harassment and detentions of activists.” Yet U.S. Ambassador Jon Huntsman led a mission to promote American business interests in the far-west region of Xinjiang, where authorities had arrested thousands of ethnic Uyghurs and cut internet access after deadly unrest the year before. Huntsman did not respond to requests for comment.

In that same year, the Commercial Service highlighted chances for American businesses to sell equipment directly to China's central government “ to install a city-wide infrastructure of security, surveillance, and alarm systems ” via its website.

A 2015 State Department draft plan for “smart city” cooperation obtained by AP proposed that China and the U.S. Collaborate on joint research, such as on crime and “urban security,” and include private sector players such IBM. Additional documents AP obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request show the U.S. Government also sought active counter-terrorism cooperation with China, which gave tech companies a chance for closer contact with Chinese authorities even as Beijing broadly labelled protest or dissent among Uyghurs as terrorism.

Kevin Wolf, then an assistant secretary in charge of export controls at Commerce, said as news about human rights abuses inside China kept surfacing, he worried about U.S. Innovations falling into the wrong hands. Wolf said he began drafting a rule to regulate certain surveillance gear sales in early 2016.

“The problem I was struggling with was, mass surveillance can involve everyday ordinary common items: it’s cameras, it’s software, it’s facial recognition stuff and 99 percent of all of those applications are perfectly benign,” said Wolf, now a compliance attorney for industry. “So if you were to say, ban cameras that can read someone’s face, you blow up international trade.”

Wolf’s colleagues told him the draft rule was too complicated, Wolf said, and it foundered.

The Export Control Reform Act, enacted by Congress in 2018, granted Commerce the power to establish regulations for the export of cutting-edge technologies. During 2019 and 2020, the Trump administration imposed sanctions on certain Chinese officials and surveillance companies due to human rights abuses in Xinjiang. Nevertheless, sales of surveillance gear persisted, though at a reduced rate, and mentions of collaboration with Chinese law enforcement ceased appearing in the Commerce Department's annual reports for American businesses.

In 2021, President Joe Biden issued an executive order that identified Chinese surveillance technology firms as “unusual and extraordinary threats” responsible for severe human rights violations. During his last months in office, Biden's administration developed extensive regulations for exporting sophisticated computer chips essential for AI system development. The Commerce Department also proposed a revised version of Wolf's draft rule to prevent facial recognition and other mass surveillance technologies from being supplied to military and intelligence agencies, as well as companies, particularly in China.

But once again, Washington lobbyists, lawyers and politicians pushed back. “The result would slow business considerably and likely result in the loss of customers that do not present any national security or human rights concerns,” said a Chamber of Commerce filing from late last year.

The proposed rule, in the end, stalled out.

Few changes

Gulbahar Haitiwaji, an ethnic Uyghur residing in France, states that not much has changed since she testified to Congress in 2023 encouraged the U.S. Government to “stop American companies from continuing to be complicit in surveilling our people”.

Haitiwaji spent over two years in internment camps in Xinjiang following her identification by Chinese authorities as a “terrorist.” Due to policing systems utilizing U.S. Technology. She endured relentless, agonizing surveillance, including cameras present even in restrooms. Upon her release in 2019, she continued to live under what she described as “an open-air prison,”, with all her actions tracked, until her eventual departure from Xinjiang later that year.

She said U.S. Tech companies show little accountability.

“It’s truly disappointing that the United States, one of the most powerful countries in the world, would sell such technology to China despite knowing the potential for serious consequences,” Haitiwaji said.

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San Francisco and Washington were Burke's reporting locations, while Kang reported from Beijing and Tau from Washington. Trenton Daniel, a former AP journalist, also contributed to this report from New York.

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Contact AP’s global investigative team at [email protected] or https://www.ap.org/tips/