Millions of Americans are inadvertently sending their internet traffic to Chinese companies—including several tied to the People’s Liberation Army.
Headline should read, “Apple Offers Apps With Ties to Nearly Every Major Military On Earth”
technology crowd: “damn apple and their closed ecosystem!”
technology crowd: “damn apple and their ecosystem not being closed enough!”
Authoritarian sheep: “Apple must provide backdoors into their software.”
Authoritarian sheep a week later: “Apple is providing backdoors into their software to any nation that asks politely! 😭”
“Let the free market rule. Let’s consider corporations super citizens that have limitless influence on governments.” ::newly ominpotent corporation does something that doesn’t benefit them::. “No not like THAT!”
TBH Apple is closed mainly because it makes them boatloads of money, not because of security. It could still be open and responsible.
Let’s not get it twisted, any Chinese company is tightly controlled by the government.
Several of the apps traced back to Qihoo 360, a firm declared by the Defense Department to be a “Chinese Military Company." Qihoo did not respond to questions about its app-related holdings.
I have to wonder if this headline would be received the same way if it was “US State Department Accuses Chinese Internet Security Company of Conspiring With Chinese Government”, as all this seems to go back to a claim by Trump’s 2020 department that Qihoo leaked info to the Hong Kong police during the protests five years ago.
Still… Qihoo 360 appears to have been an active investor and developer in Silicon Valley since 2014. Chinese investment in the US isn’t new or even undesireable, as of a decade ago.
But consider how the US has also recently attempted to seize the US branch of TikTok and block domestic sale of Huawei phones. Add in the domestic freak out over Chinese AI companies outperforming their US peers. This could easily be American tech companies trying to freeze out their competition on national security grounds rather than Chinese tech companies posing a military threat to US domestic interests.
