The top US military officer is to meet with Google representatives next week amid growing concerns that US companies doing business in China are helping its military gain ground on the US.
General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, on Wednesday said that efforts like Google’s artificial intelligence (AI) venture in China allow the Chinese military to access and take advantage of US-developed technology.
“This is not about me and Google,” Dunford told an audience at the Atlantic Council.
“This is about us looking at the second and third order of effects of our business ventures in China, Chinese form of government and the impact it’s going to have on the United States’ ability to maintain a competitive military advantage,” he said.
Google says that its AI activities in China are focused on “education, research on natural language understanding and market algorithms, and development of globally available tools.”
In a statement last week Google said it is not working with the Chinese military.
The company said that it continues to work with the US government, including the US Department of Defense, in many areas, including cybersecurity, recruiting and healthcare.
Dunford’s comments reflect widespread US government worries that any information or data a US company has or uses as it does business in China is automatically available to the Chinese government and its military.
US companies in China are required to have a cell of the Chinese Communist Party present, Dunford said, adding: “That will lead to that intellectual property from that company finding its way to the Chinese military.”
‘GREAT CONCERN’
Last week he and Acting US Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan expressed similar concerns at a US Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.
“We watch with great concern when industry partners work in China knowing that there is that indirect benefit,” Dunford said at the hearing.
“And frankly, indirect may be not a full characterization of the way it really is. It’s more of a direct benefit to the Chinese military,” he said.
Shanahan also said that Google is stepping away from some Pentagon contracts.
Internal protests by workers at Google led the tech company to say last year that it is dropping out of Project Maven, which uses algorithms to interpret drone video images from conflict zones.
Employees had complained that Google was helping with technology that could improve lethal targeting.
Shanahan told senators that US$5 trillion of China’s economy is state-owned enterprises, “so the technology that is developed in the civilian world transfers to the military world.”
‘DIRECT PIPELINE’
“It’s a direct pipeline. Not only is there a transfer, there’s also systemic theft of US technology that also facilitates even faster development of emerging technology,” he said.
As a result, Shanahan said that the US military needs to continue to invest in AI and funding would double in the proposed budget for next year.
CONDITIONS: The Russian president said a deal that was scuppered by ‘elites’ in the US and Europe should be revived, as Ukraine was generally satisfied with it Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday said that he was ready for talks with Ukraine, after having previously rebuffed the idea of negotiations while Kyiv’s offensive into the Kursk region was ongoing. Ukraine last month launched a cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, sending thousands of troops across the border and seizing several villages. Putin said shortly after there could be no talk of negotiations. Speaking at a question and answer session at Russia’s Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Putin said that Russia was ready for talks, but on the basis of an aborted deal between Moscow’s and Kyiv’s negotiators reached in Istanbul, Turkey,
SPIRITUAL COUPLE: Martha Louise has said she can talk with angels, while her husband, Durek Verrett, claims that he communicates with a broad range of spirits Social media influencers, reality stars and TV personalities were among the guests as the Norwegian king’s eldest child, Princess Martha Louise, married a self-professed US shaman on Saturday in a wedding ceremony following three days of festivities. The 52-year-old Martha Louise and Durek Verrett, who claims to be a sixth-generation shaman from California, tied the knot in the picturesque small town of Geiranger, one of Norway’s major tourist attractions located on a fjord with stunning views. Following festivities that started on Thursday, the actual wedding ceremony took place in a large white tent set up on a lush lawn. Guests
Four days after last scanning in for work, a 60-year-old office worker in Arizona was found dead in a cubicle at her workplace, having never left the building during that time, authorities said. Denise Prudhomme, who worked at a Wells Fargo corporate office, was found dead in a third-floor cubicle on Aug. 20, Tempe police said. She had last scanned into the building on Aug. 16 at 7am, police said. There was no indication she scanned out of the building after that. Prudhomme worked in an underpopulated area of the building. Her cause of death had not been determined, but police said the preliminary
‘DISCONNECTED’: Politics is one factor driving news avoidance, a professor said, adding that people who do not trust the government are more likely to tune it out Hannah Wong cried when the Hong Kong government effectively forced the territory’s Apple Daily and Stand News out of business three years ago. Among the last news firms in the territory willing to criticize the government openly, many saw their end as a sign that the old Hong Kong was gone for good. Today, the 35-year-old makeup artist says she has gone from reading the news every day to reducing her intake drastically to protect herself from despair. Four years into a crackdown on dissent that has swept up democracy-leaning journalists, rights advocates and politicians in the territory, a lot of people
RSS