President Trump could bar Google and other American corporations from working with China on sensitive projects, a top White House official intimated.
“Whether it’s Apple, Google, or any of the high-tech companies, any of the social media companies, they’re so desperate for market share that they’ll do things that compromise our safety here,” White House national security adviser John Bolton said Tuesday. “Not on our watch, by God.”
Bolton’s speech reinforced another high-profile request at the National Conservatism Conference in Washington for the U.S. government to impede Silicon Valley’s investments with the Chinese government. Those partnerships have aggravated American leaders and human rights activists amid a high-stakes technology race between the two countries.
PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel called for a counterintelligence investigation into Google at the conference Sunday.
“Is it because they consider themselves to be so thoroughly infiltrated that they have engaged in the seemingly treasonous decision to work with the Chinese military and not with the U.S. military … because they are making the sort of bad, short-term rationalistic [decision] that if the technology doesn’t go out the front door, it gets stolen out the backdoor anyway?” Thiel wondered.
Thiel’s suggestion caught the attention of President Trump. “A great and brilliant guy who knows this subject better than anyone!” the president tweeted Tuesday. “The Trump Administration will take a look!”
Bolton suggested the same thing earlier in the day.
“So in the case of any of the high-tech companies, when they engage in activity that benefits China and potentially harms America, I think we’re entitled to look at it very, very seriously,” he told the conference.
Bolton likened any leash put on Silicon Valley to the use of sanctions to prevent major companies from investing in Iran. “We are entitled as a country to look after our national interest by precluding companies that want to take advantage of America’s opportunities … from engaging in activity that’s harmful to the country,” he said.
Google has attracted criticism over the last two years due to parallel decisions to scrap an artificial intelligence project with the Pentagon while launching a major AI research center in Shanghai. Some U.S. officials and lawmakers have protested that such technology will be used by communist authorities to upgrade the regime’s surveillance state and modernize the Chinese military.
“When we face a competitive power … that has a different view of how society functions, we are entitled to protect ourselves against the imposition of that point of view on our own society,” Bolton said.
