AI companies risk US national security by working with China. Time to choose sides

This month, 79 years ago, Allied troops stormed the beaches of Normandy in World War II. The greatest amphibious invasion in human history was a product of unprecedented levels of planning, heroism, sacrifice, and new technology. 

Scientists, service members, and industrialists came together to develop and build underwater pipelines, artificial harbors, specialized landing craft, and tide prediction equipment. Everyone had a job to do – and everyone did it as one team in the fight. 

Today, America is at a critical period in our strategic competition with China, and technology – especially Artificial Intelligence (AI) – will again play a central role.

China’s spy balloons fly over our nation while its hackers relentlessly attack our critical infrastructure. Even so, some U.S. technology companies remain entranced by access to China’s vast consumer market and willing to at best ignore – and at worst support – China’s military and human rights abuses. 

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As someone who served on the Cybersecurity Solarium Commission with fellow veteran and chairman of the China Oversight Committee, Congressman Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., we’ve looked at potentially decoupling America’s economy with China. 

For example, Microsoft Research Center has boosted China’s AI achievements for a quarter-century, developing strategic AI technologies such as computer vision, natural language processing, speech, and intelligent multimedia in China. Microsoft even discloses cybersecurity vulnerabilities in its software to the CCP, which turns around and uses those same vulnerabilities to attack the U.S. government, according to Microsoft's own research. 

Microsoft is not alone – IBM and Dell have significant footprints in that same market. We need them as partners advancing America’s interests as it relates to America’s fiercest competitor, who happens to be three times our size geographically and via population. 

Microsoft and other U.S. companies with deep investments in China may argue that they are simply complying with China’s laws, that their investment in the country predates the souring of the bilateral relationship, or that their customers have no connection to China’s police state, military or human rights abuses. But these pleas expose an underlying motivation, driven by profits and the need to access China’s vast economy. 

American values demand that these companies not look the other way when over a million people are being held in concentration camps in China. It was America that stood against ethnic cleansing in towns like Srebrenica in Bosnia. I know because I deployed there as an American soldier after 9/11.

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We should have no illusions about what China intends to do with advanced technologies like generative AI. 

China is aggressively pursuing AI and technological development using a whole-of-government, industrial collaboration policy. This includes research into AI’s military applications, particularly in advanced decision-making. 

China’s Next-Generation AI Development Plan set out to establish an AI industry to reach parity with leading countries by 2020, lead in some areas by 2025, and lead the world by 2030. It coincided with the People’s Liberation Army’s "Revolution in Military Affairs," transitioning from "informatized" to "intelligentized" warfare.

Chinese investment in AI pairs with its Military-Civil Fusion (MCF) strategy: a "whole-of-society" approach to enable China to develop the most technologically advanced military in the world. 

Now, it’s time for American companies to choose a side: the CCP or the national security of the American people. When it comes to powerful technologies like generative AI, they can either develop those technologies in America and allied countries that share our democratic values, or they can develop them in China, and risk those technologies being exploited by the CCP. 

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America, while young and imperfect, understands the moral responsibility that comes with great power. We must keep pace in the AI race in the long term, not just because of the significant investment American taxpayers have made in AI research and development here in the United States, but because our nation is anchored in the core values of freedom and opportunity. 

We must reinforce the vibrant, open innovation ecosystem that fuels the American AI advantage and create a seamless public-private sector match as we did during World War II. 

The vibrant private sector is our distinctly American asset, but it needs guidance and direction. At the same time, the government must also take steps to prevent companies like Microsoft from giving the crown jewels to China. I’m glad to see the administration and Congress both considering new restrictions on outbound investment into strategic sectors in China like AI and quantum computing, and semiconductors. 

Nothing would provide that market signal more clarity than a well-articulated National AI Strategy so that issues like national security, ethics and social cohesion are not subordinated to profit-seeking but also so that private capital can flow to public strategies. It should include tools that leverage the power of federal procurement, especially through the Defense Department, to incentivize investment at home and neutralize it in China and other competitors. 

When I was the 32nd under secretary of the Army, I was struck by how much the purchasing power of our military can be market-shaping; with the carrot of billions of dollars in federal IT contracts, it’s time to bring that muscle to bear in the AI race: if you’re providing advanced technology to Uncle Sam, you shouldn’t also be selling it to an adversary that can use it against us.

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This is our Normandy moment, and patriotism demands that we’re all in on the same side together to make sure that these breakthrough technologies reflect democratic and American values. Those of us who’ve seen combat don’t want our children to fight unnecessary wars, especially against an AI-enabled military that could eliminate America’s technological and moral advantage. 

The billon Chinese people are good, but the totalitarian regime that governs them will do us harm if given the chance. American tech companies can’t continue to allow that to happen. 

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