In his Twitter bio, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger declares: “Values are most enduring thing leaders create.” He proudly proclaims how he’s a “philanthropist, Christian, farm boy at heart.” On Sunday, Gelsinger tweeted a biblical verse referencing a great Christian virtue: the need for moral action.
Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. – 1 John 3:18
— Pat Gelsinger (@PGelsinger) January 9, 2022
This revolt of thine, methinks, is like another fall of man.
Unfortunately, this Christian farm boy is an ally of genocide and slave labor on the Xinjiang farms.
The facts are clear. About 1 million to 2 million innocent Uyghur men, women, and children have been thrown into a vast network of Chinese Communist Party concentration camps across China’s northeastern Xinjiang province. They have been brutalized, reeducated, and stripped of dignity, faith, and even life. On release from the camps, hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs have been deployed as forced labor in service of the CCP export behemoth.
Gelsinger isn’t terribly bothered. Not only is Intel a top sponsor of the 2022 Beijing Olympics, a member of the American Chamber of Commerce in China’s supplicant “Chairman’s Circle,” but it is now a partner to genocide.
We learned this in December when Intel reminded its suppliers of a need to comply with evolving U.S. laws against the import of goods from Xinjiang — goods that may have been made with Uyghur forced labor. This sparked predictable CCP outrage. But rather than explaining its duty to uphold U.S. federal law, Gelsinger had Intel take to social media website Weibo and “deeply apologize” for offending the communists. Perhaps considering its highly lucrative Chinese market, Intel pledged to do better for Chinese President Xi Jinping’s regime.
On this, at least, Gelsinger is true to his word.
As National Review’s Jimmy Quinn reported, Gelsinger at an Atlantic Council meeting on Monday said: “We found that there was no reason for us to call out one region in particular anywhere in the world because there’s many regions in the world that are having issues of such a matter.”
Those “many regions” were left unidentified. Still, Quinn pushed the broader point. He posed a question to Gelsinger on Intel’s appointment of Lenovo CEO Yuanqing Yang to its advisory committee. As Quinn reported last October, Yang supports the People’s Liberation Army’s war-fighting capabilities. But again, Gelsinger was clear. “I deeply respect [Yang],” Intel’s CEO explained. “He’s been a friend, a business leader. … I needed someone on the government affairs advisory committee for us who represented that view.”
That defense of Yang raises another concern for the Christian farm boy’s credibility. After all, in its December apology statement, Intel said it is “committed to becoming a trusted technology partner and accelerating joint development with China.”
Considering Gelsinger’s unashamed advocacy for Yang, we now have another indication that Intel might, even if indirectly, be willing to help China perfect the means to kill American sailors, Marines, and aircrews in and over the South China Sea. This is not hyperbole: Men like Yang serve the CCP first. And the CCP salivates for technology like what Intel possesses, which can help better drive its ballistic missiles into U.S. aircraft carriers.
One final note. As the Wall Street Journal also reported on Monday, Intel has scrubbed all references to Xinjiang from the supplier guidance note that originally sparked China’s ire.
Where does this leave us?
History will tell. But were I an Intel employee, I would shudder at the notion that values are the most enduring thing leaders create. They might even consider another quote, Proverbs 21:26: “He coveteth greedily all the day long: but the righteous giveth and spareth not.”
