Research: Foes bash Google with Chinese spying claim
Billionaire investor Peter Thiel seems to have opened up “a new front in the war between Trump’s Washington and Silicon Valley,” said Scott Rosenberg in Axios.com. Thiel suggested on Fox News last month that Chinese intelligence agents had “infiltrated” Google, calling on the FBI and CIA to investigate. He followed that up with an op-ed piece in The New York Times last week questioning why Google has expanded its artificial intelligence research in China while it eschews working with the Pentagon. A libertarian who supports President Trump, Thiel is the chairman of Palantir, a datamining company that works extensively with the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence agencies. But “neither Thiel nor anyone else has backed up these charges with evidence,” and Google—unlike Microsoft—actually pulled its search engine from China in 2010 over censorship concerns. “By raising the issues as questions, the accusers get to spread suspicions without being accountable.”
Google’s activities in China might not be unlawful, said Gordon Chang in The Washington Times, but that does not mean they aren’t “highly injurious to American national security.” The company first established the Google AI China Center in 2017 and participates in AI research at Tsinghua University and Peking University. On the surface, these ventures seem innocuous. But Chinese President Xi Jinping has “vigorously promoted a trend” of civil-military fusion, whereby “technology that is developed in the civil world transfers to the military world.” Google’s plans in China are for the long term: It wants to use its AI research lab and the university collaborations to bolster its cloud computing and quantum computing capabilities. But it should know that, “with each investment Western firms make into China, the People’s Liberation Army benefits.”
Come on, is this really “the level of intellectual rigor Thiel brings to his investments?” asked Owen Thomas in the San Francisco Chronicle. “The claim Thiel advances about Google doing business with the Chinese military, which Google specifically denies, is outright false.” It’s based on a thin speculation that some of the Google AI work done in China could leak to the Chinese military. Bashing Google is a long-standing hobby for Thiel. “And given his obvious conflicts, should we believe anything he says about his business rivals?” Thiel’s outlandish accusations are really intended for an audience of one, said Lizette Chapman in Bloomberg.com. His investments in Chinese companies have all failed. But three of his most promising investments rely heavily on federal spending, including Palantir, which competes with Google for government cloud software contracts. Of course, “federal contract approvals are supposed to be an objective process.” But his suddenly protectionist rhetoric and patriotic messaging “won plaudits from President Trump and could return benefits to his companies.”