Daniel Corvell has an excellent analysis of the U.S.-China collaboration on what amounts to the creation of a coming globalized surveillance state. Of course it all hinges on countries adopting biometric digital IDs, tied to our bank accounts and tokenization. Once that’s in place, it’s game over for freedom. Below is an excerpt from the article, at The Conservative Playbook, which is a must read for understanding the symbiotic relationship between communist China, Silicon Valley, and “democratic” Washington.
China’s surveillance regime is often depicted as a uniquely authoritarian system — a dystopian fusion of cameras, algorithms, and totalitarian ambition. But a growing body of evidence shows that the foundation of Beijing’s digital panopticon was not built in isolation. It was quietly funded, equipped, and technologically enabled by the very institutions that claim to defend freedom: American corporations and the U.S. government.
According to a recent report by the NGO C4ADS and the Intercept, American tech giants and defense-linked suppliers have been directly feeding China’s expanding surveillance apparatus through sophisticated biometric, semiconductor, and AI technologies.
The report maps out how dozens of U.S. companies, some operating through intermediaries or “shell” distributors, have supplied the Chinese Communist Party’s surveillance infrastructure — from facial recognition components to data-processing software that powers state monitoring of its 1.4 billion citizens.
At the center of this web are biometric technologies — tools that scan faces, track movements, and identify individuals in real time. Many of these systems were originally designed for security or retail analytics but have been absorbed into China’s “public safety” network, a euphemism for omnipresent state surveillance. In regions such as Xinjiang, these tools have been weaponized to monitor and detain Uyghur Muslims, tracking everything from gait patterns to smartphone activity. But the scandal is not only what China has done with the technology — it’s how easily American firms helped make it possible.
Researchers discovered that many U.S. suppliers, including major chipmakers and sensor producers, continued selling hardware and software to Chinese entities long after Washington imposed export restrictions. They did so indirectly — by routing shipments through subsidiaries or rebranding products under “neutral” names. Some contracts were even facilitated through government-backed programs encouraging “U.S.-China technological collaboration,” showing that the American national security establishment has, at times, spoken out of both sides of its mouth.
It is a hypocrisy that runs deep. Publicly, Washington condemns Beijing’s human rights abuses and warns about “digital authoritarianism.” Privately, many agencies and corporations have viewed China as too profitable to restrain. The result is a moral paradox: American taxpayers fund defense and intelligence programs to “counter Chinese influence” while their own technology firms supply the infrastructure for the CCP’s surveillance state.
Unfortunately, it’s far worse than just hypocrisy that’s affecting the Chinese people. The same tech deployed in China is quickly integrating with America’s burgeoning Surveillance Industrial Complex. It’s as if they’re testing it in a known authoritarian state ahead of becoming our own authoritarian state.
Hellbound and Down 