US tech firms helped build China’s surveillance apparatus that enabled mass detention, AP investigation finds

Yang Guoliang says a body camera recorded the slightest twitch of his arms as he lay bloody and paralyzed in a hospital bed after a police beating. He and his family live under constant monitoring: dozens of cameras around their home, their phone calls and purchases forwarded to authorities, and repeated detentions when they try to petition Beijing over seized farmland.

An Associated Press investigation found that much of the surveillance infrastructure that ensnared the Yangs and hundreds of thousands of other Chinese was built with American technology. Over the past quarter century, U.S. companies sold and licensed hardware and software that Chinese police and defense contractors used to assemble a nationwide policing system—one that analysts say enabled mass detention campaigns in Xinjiang and broad, predictive policing across the country.

The investigation, based on leaked government and corporate documents, procurement records, internal emails and interviews with more than 100 engineers, executives and officials, traces how foreign-made servers, database software, storage devices, chips and analytics tools were integrated into systems known inside China by names such as the Golden Shield, Sharp Eyes and the Integrated Joint Operations Platform (IJOP). Those systems combined travel records, financial transactions, telecom metadata, camera feeds, DNA and fingerprint data, and other sources to create dossiers and risk scores that could trigger detention.

Companies named in AP reporting include IBM, Dell, Cisco, Oracle, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Intel, HP, Seagate, Western Digital, Thermo Fisher Scientific, VMWare (later part of Dell and now Broadcom), Motorola and Esri. Some firms promoted products in China by citing policing needs and Communist Party priorities such as “stability maintenance” and “key persons.” Marketing posts and conference material documented public pitches to police agencies and other state clients.

The files and interviews show commercial ties dating back to the 2000s. In several cases, U.S. firms licensed or sold analysis software, mapping tools, servers and storage that Chinese integrators and defense contractors combined with domestic hardware to run national and regional databases. AP reporting cites a 2009 collaboration involving IBM and a Chinese defense contractor, Huadi, on projects tied to Beijing’s intelligence and policing architecture. IBM says it does not have knowledge that older systems are being abused today and that any past interactions were lawful; the company said it cut ties with some partners and prohibited certain sales to Xinjiang and Tibet from 2015 onward.

Those systems played a central role in Xinjiang’s crackdown on Uyghurs and other mostly Muslim minorities. AP reporting and leaked materials show the IJOP and related platforms ingested disparate data streams and produced risk scores used to justify mass detentions, which analysts estimate swept up hundreds of thousands and, by some counts, around a million people into camps and prisons. Documents and interviews describe rules and scoring systems that penalized ordinary behaviors—age, beards, travel, or religious practice—and in some cases explicitly targeted ethnicity. Marketing and procurement records show some vendors addressed racial or population-specific uses when promoting products in China.

Chinese surveillance expanded rapidly after unrest in Xinjiang in 2009 and again after violence in 2014. The state wired thousands of police outposts, installed millions of cameras and deployed software to fuse records from banks, railways, utilities and telecoms into centralized databases. Vendors supplied a wide range of components: chips from NVIDIA and Intel for AI-powered video analysis; servers and storage from Dell, HP, Seagate and Western Digital; mapping and geographic information software from Esri; and enterprise database and cloud software from Oracle, Microsoft and VMWare.

Several companies told AP they comply with U.S. export laws and sanctions and that they do not condone human rights abuses. NVIDIA has said it does not make surveillance systems and does not work with police in China; Intel, Oracle, Microsoft, Thermo Fisher, Seagate and others said they adhere to relevant laws and policies. Some firms have taken steps to restrict sales: IBM said it stopped sales to police in Tibet and Xinjiang in 2015 and suspended relationships with certain defense contractors in 2019. However, procurement records and maintenance contracts reviewed by AP show that legacy systems built with foreign technology often remain in place and continue to be serviced by third parties.

Legal and export-control experts say the transactions sit in a complex, sometimes ambiguous regulatory environment. U.S. laws enacted after the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown restrict certain military and policing exports, but they do not always anticipate dual-use or general-purpose technologies that can be repurposed for repression. Four practicing lawyers consulted by AP said the sales documented could raise compliance questions and fall into gray areas of law, though they stopped short of asserting specific violations without more facts.

Chinese authorities defend their programs as necessary for national security and say they respect legal rights. Xinjiang officials told AP they use technology to “prevent and combat terrorist and criminal activity” and rejected allegations of large-scale human rights abuses. Beijing’s public statements also point to surveillance in Western democracies and argue that many countries deploy similar tools.

The investigation points to specific mechanisms through which U.S. technologies were folded into Chinese systems. Leaked blueprints, emails and vendor materials show how software such as IBM’s i2 analytic tool informed Chinese integrators and how a Shanghai firm that once licensed i2 later produced software that behaved like an offshoot of that platform. Landasoft, the Shanghai firm, appears in procurement and leaked internal files as a supplier of software used in Xinjiang; AP reporting documents how its products were tied to the IJOP and the identification and detention workflow.

Human accounts illustrate the consequences. Teachers, civil servants and ordinary residents who were flagged by the systems were detained, interrogated or sent to detention facilities where detainees described constant surveillance and abuse. In one documented case, a pharmacist was detained after the IJOP flagged travel to neighboring Kazakhstan. In another, an elderly petitioner was seized outside Beijing, jailed, strip-searched and reportedly denied medical care. Families such as the Yangs contend they have been treated as troublemakers for years as the systems identify and restrict their movements.

After international outcry and the imposition of sanctions beginning in the late 2010s, some direct sales slowed and certain vendors withdrew or curtailed partnerships. Still, industry observers and former officials warn that components, chips and cloud services continue to appear in Chinese policing systems, and that maintenance contracts and third-party supply chains create pathways for technology to remain embedded. In 2024, a group of former U.S. officials urged caution over proposed sales of advanced AI chips to China, arguing such hardware could ultimately be used by military or intelligence entities despite restrictions; NVIDIA and others have rejected characterizations that their products are purpose-built for surveillance.

The AP investigation underscores broader questions about how general-purpose technology is controlled and how commercial relationships intersect with state surveillance. Analysts say the Chinese case is a cautionary example as AI and sensor systems proliferate worldwide: tools marketed for crime prevention and public safety can be repurposed for censorship, ethnic profiling and preventive detention.

The files reviewed by AP include tens of thousands of internal emails and corporate and government documents, procurement records and interviews with current and former engineers, executives and officials. The reporting found that while Chinese firms now build much of the hardware and many domestic companies have taken larger roles, the earlier infusion of foreign software, chips and enterprise systems provided critical interoperability and performance that accelerated the development of a nationwide surveillance apparatus now exported in part to other countries.

For the Yang family and others caught in those systems, the technology is a continuing reality: their movements restricted, their appeals dismissed, and the infrastructure that identifies and tracks them maintained in part by products and services that originated outside China. The investigation leaves open questions about responsibility, corporate due diligence and the reach of export controls as governments and companies weigh how to prevent the transfer of technologies that can be used for repression while preserving legitimate commercial and research activity.