Keep China out of America’s nascent AI industry

As the U.S. government seeks to comply with President Joe Biden’s Executive Order to implement “safe, secure, and trustworthy development and use of artificial intelligence,” it must ensure that the contractors it partners with to reach this objective divest of their ties to the Chinese government.

The Chinese Communist Party perceives AI as paramount to its economic and military ambitions. The People’s Liberation Army’s Academy of Military Science, National Defense University and National University of Defense Technology have even said that AI and intelligent weapons could define who wins future warfare battles. For this reason, President Xi Jinping is accelerating funding for AI weapons development projects in the PLA Air Force, Army, Navy and Rocket Force. Although the U.S. Department of Defense similarly recognizes that AI “will change society and, ultimately, the character of war,” America continues to rely on Chinese-connected companies to grow and operationalize its AI industry.

Perhaps the White House recognizes the obvious national security concerns that this poses. At an event at the World Economic Forum in January, Brad Smith, the vice chair and president of Microsoft, stated that the White House categorized the plan they recently submitted on AI safety and security as “incomplete.” This description seems fair given that the company, which currently has an AI lab in China, found itself subjected to a hack last year that exposed the emails of the U.S. ambassador to China, the assistant secretary of state for East Asia and the secretary of Commerce to Beijing-linked hackers ahead of a critical U.S.-China meeting.

According to a letter by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Microsoft’s “negligent cybersecurity practices” led to the attack. Yet the company continues to maintain a strategic partnership agreement to bring advanced AI and machine learning capabilities to China’s top drone manufacturer, Shenzhen DJI Innovation Technology Co., even though the Department of Defense has blacklisted the company’s products from the U.S., citing espionage and national security concerns.

Microsoft is far from the only tech company in the AI space that retains ties with the Chinese government — most of the American tech sector does. Still, the recent hacking demonstrates just how significant of a national security threat it is for America’s AI industry to exist in such close proximity to China’s government.

China steals between $225 and $600 billion of intellectual property from the United States annually, including matters of the highest intelligence and national security sensitivity. Moreover, China’s Civil-Military Fusion laws mandate that nothing that its companies do can be independent of the state. By law, its companies have to share data and comply with the CCP’s demands. Any data and intelligence that can help the country cement its AI dominance are of the highest priority, as Beijing views AI as a revolutionary factor in military power and civil-military fusion — so much so that the CCP has said it aims to lead the world in AI by 2030.

Washington should not pass laws prohibiting the government from working with any particular U.S. contractor, but it should mandate that all current and prospective AI contractors adhere to reasonable CCP divestment standards to continue receiving the government’s business.

The Trump and Biden administrations and bipartisan coalitions in Congress have already imposed CCP-relational restrictions on many other industries. They would be foolish not to do the same with AI.

Accenture Research and Frontier Economics calculated that AI could “double annual economic growth rates” by 2035. So, it is not surprising that China is trying to become the leader in this sector by 2030. The U.S. cannot let that happen. China receiving that first-mover advantage would be catastrophic for human rights and the geopolitical balance of power on the world stage.

As the American Securities Project put it, “If the U.S. government doesn’t set guardrails now, American firms pursuing lucrative Chinese markets may vanguard the Chinese Communist Party’s transition to fifth-generation warfare.” Indeed. That is in no one’s interest. The time is now for Washington to change this paradigm — while it still can.

Jianli Yang is Founder and President of Citizen Power Initiatives and the author of “For Us, The Living: A Journey to Shine the Light on Truth” and “It’s Time for a Values-Based ‘Economic NATO.’”