Google's AI center in Beijing is not the only project of concern. "Google is partnering with several state entities for various projects to expedite their research," Brandon Weichert, a national security analyst specializing in emerging technology, told The Daily Beast.
Google's work with the University of Science and Technology of China is perhaps the most sensitive. Weichert, who publishes the Weichert Report, told radio host John Batchelor in October that Google has expressed interest in investing in and contributing personnel to a new Chinese quantum computer center in Anhui province, slated to be operational next year.
The National Laboratory for Quantum Information Sciences, a multi-billion-dollar facility taking up 86 acres, will conduct both civilian and military research and, according to Weichert, has close links with the People's Liberation Army. The University of Science and Technology of China is a participant in the lab's projects.
Google's AI efforts in China, Weichert says, will require the company to expand its cloud computing capabilities in the country—it is exploring cooperation with China's Tencent in this area—and it will need quantum computing. Google will be making substantial contributions to China's advancement of these critical technologies.
Google must know that China's military, which reports to the Party, will benefit directly from its research.
"The Chinese," he said, "are replicating the very same behavior they used to gut the manufacturing sector from the United States, and they are applying those techniques and capabilities in gutting America's high tech sector." Enticement, theft, and forced transfer are commonplace in both multi-decade efforts.
As Google moves closer toward work with China's military, it is distancing itself from the U.S. military. The company bowed to protests from thousands of its employees last June, issuing a statement committing itself not to "design or deploy AI" for "weapons or other technologies whose principal purpose or implementation is to cause or directly facilitate injury to people."
As a result, Google is walking away from the Pentagon. It is not renewing the Project Maven contract, an AI project, and it has decided not to compete for the JEDI cloud computing project.
"By refusing to help the U.S. government to obtain necessary advantages to defend freedom, Google is only accelerating the day in which China achieves its goal of a global digital dictatorship," Richard Fisher of the Virginia-based International Assessment and Strategy Center told The Daily Beast.
So Google is helping the Chinese military in applications that are certainly lethal while not participating in similar American efforts. The company deserves condemnation for this choice.
As questionable as Google's decision appears, this matter is ultimately not a Google issue. Corporate executives are not charged with defining and implementing national security policy.
This is a U.S. leadership issue. Until the American political system identifies China as an enemy or merely a foe—something that should have been done some time ago—Google is free to work for Beijing, however wrong that cooperation is.
President Donald Trump has mentioned the problem on Twitter, but what's required is far more comprehensive than a tweet.
The way to get Google to stop working for China is to make it illegal to do so. That's up to 536 individuals who are often found in Washington, D.C.: President Trump, 100 senators, and 435 members of the House of Representatives.