Supporting Evil

I have never understood the concept that a treaty, an organization, an agreement, or an idea is imbued with legitimacy when it is promoted by the United Nations (UN). The UN is made up of 193 member nations, that vast majority of which are represented by dictators, authoritarians, crime syndicates, corruptocrats, and mass-murderers. If you are looking for answers to the world’s problem from Russia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba, Somalia, Eritrea, Myanmar, North Korea, Iran, Saudi Arabia, et al., you are likely asking the wrong questions.

When it comes to corrupt, authoritarian regimes, it’s hard to top the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The list of the CCP’s transgressions is seemingly endless, but here are a few of the highlights.

• The acquisition and oppression of Tibet, beginning in the 1950s.

• Mao’s purge (mass-murder) of untold millions of Chinese during the cultural revolution (1950s through early 1970s). No one knows for sure how many were killed in the effort to eliminate the ideas that contradicted Mao’s vision of Marxist utopia.

• Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989. Again, no on knows how many pro-Democracy activists were killed.

• The oppression of the Christian church and outlawing unauthorized church gatherings.

• The enforced one-child policy and the forced abortions on those who were caught attempting to violate that policy.

• Imprisonment, torture, and execution of untold Chinese citizens that did not sufficiently bow before the CCP.

• The acquisition and oppression of Hong Kong, beginning in the last decade, despite signing a treaty that ensured Hong Kong’s sovereignty.

• The suspected development of the Covid-19 virus, its accidental release, the coverup of their own culpability, and a world-wide pandemic.

Beginning in 2010, the CCP set out to establish the most technologically advanced surveillance state in human history. They have been wildly successful. Up until that time, mass surveillance of a population was limited to the human assets that were available to monitor and analyze the gathered data. At the height of Russia’s KGB and East Germany’s Stasi, the quantity of actionable intelligence gathered was dependent on the number of agents they had to analyze their collected surveillance. Every audio tape had to be listened to, every video had to be watched, and every document had to be viewed.

With technological advances in electronic data collection methods, data aggregation, mass storage, video facial recognition, and artificial intelligence (AI) the CCP is successfully implementing a highly advanced police state that can monitor and control every one of its roughly 1.4 billion citizens, 24-hours per day, 7-days per week. In parallel with the technical infrastructure of the system, they have rolled out a Social Credit scoring system to evaluate and rate the “trustworthiness” of each individual. The social credit score can be increased by doing things the CCP approves of, such as attending rallies, reading party propaganda, or reporting the suspicious activity of your neighbor. The score goes down should you meet with an untrustworthy person, get reported for suspicious activity, have an unapproved child, or get caught with unapproved reading materials, such as a Bible. Individuals with high trustworthiness are allowed special privileges. Individuals with low trustworthiness may be denied access to even basic necessities. As such, the CCP has successfully established behavioral control over the vast majority of the population.

Between 2016 and 2018, the system was widely deployed in the Xinjiang province in far western China, home of many of the country’s Uyghur Muslims. Over the past four years, many Uyghurs have been forcefully placed in reeducation centers for being too untrustworthy, incarcerated for future crimes that the AI systems predicted they would commit, sent to concentration camps to be cleansed of their wrong thoughts, forced into slave labor to break their spirits and promote social harmony, and even “disappeared” if they are found to be beyond redemption. Many of their women have been forcefully sterilized, or unwillingly placed on chemical birth control in the name of promoting “women’s health” (sound familiar?).

How were they able to achieve this? Good ol’ American know-how, with the funding of good ol’ American dollars. Ostensibly American companies have been complicit with the CCP in developing and deploying the technologies used and have willingly partnered with the CCP to share in the financing of, and profiteering from, the infrastructure necessary to implement the system. Microsoft helped develop voice recognition technology and AI. Yahoo! and Google willingly complied with the CCP’s control and censorship rules for their China search engines. Apple willingly removed encryption technology from their phones and tablets, and allowed the CCP to install apps to track and surveil users. This is the same Apple that refused the FBI’s request to unlock the terrorist’s iPhones after the 2015 attack that killed 14 people in Riverside, CA. Nvidia worked with Chinese firms to develop facial recognition technology, build the Urumqi Cloud Computing Center, and developed the AI necessary to track millions of people per day through video surveillance. Much of the foundational research and development work for all these technologies was performed at American universities.

The potential Chinese market of over 1.4 billion people has long been a temptation for international corporations to establish a new customer base and inexpensive manufacturing centers. The profit motive has proven sufficient for many American companies to overlook obvious ethical concerns and form shady partnerships with CCP run businesses. Many of the Uyghurs that were forced into slave labor ended up being shipped to work in the factories of American companies and their partners. These companies include Amazon, Adidas, Calvin Klein, Gap, Tommy Hilfiger, Apple, and Nike*. Nike’s CEO, John Donahoe, recently stated, “Nike is a brand that is of China and for China.”

In January of this year, the US State Department declared the situation in Xinjiang province to be genocide. China’s treatment of their ethnic minorities is on the same moral plane as Germany’s attempted extermination of European Jews during the 1940s. The slogan “Never Again” became popular when the world learned of the Jewish Holocaust. And yet today, as we go about trying to get our own daily lives back to normal, it is happening again. And the world is doing absolutely nothing about it.

The reason I felt led to write this was to simply make people aware. Many of the media companies that Americans rely on to get their information are the same corporations that now have a vested interest in building a market in China. Criticizing the CCP can have a significant impact on their prospects and their bottom line. Most Americans have no idea that at this very moment, a government is actively pursuing the elimination of an inconvenient people group. Now you know.

The very tools that the CCP used to establish their police state are the same tools that we willingly install in our homes for the sake of convenience. Our Ring cameras, our Google Assistants and Echo Dots, our “free” email accounts and search engines, and our “free” social media accounts. We’ve willingly established the infrastructure necessary for our own surveillance and future persecution by those who are willing to leverage technology to acquire power. I expect that we will come to regret this.

* Australian Strategic Policy Institute, “Your favorite Nikes might be made from forced labor”

For additional information, you can check out the following:

• Geoffrey Cain's The Perfect Police State