Uyghur Exploitation and AI Evolution

The scientific community is caught in the grips of a desire to utilize and harness this newfound power — artificial intelligence. What started off as an exciting new innovation, a way to easily turn on music from the comfort of your bed by simply yelling out to Alexa, has quickly turned into one of the hottest topics in both America and throughout the rest of the world. Alexa became Roomba became Tesla became a possibility of assisting the international arms races using A.I. boosted weaponry and defense systems. The possibilities are truly endless. However, the question that Henry Kissinger, a giant in the field, asks, introduces a huge doubt in the enthusiasm: “what will be its impact on our cultural and, in the end, our history?”

Really, at what point do we draw the line? An exponential growth of the technology brings with it great potential for growth and simultaneously a great potential to be abused and misused. Countries such as China are at the forefront of the innovation, but the cost is hefty. The debateI lies in A.I. being used to exploit the minority Uyghur population in Xinjiang. While it’s evident that continuous Chinese developments in artificial intelligence are benefitting the global community, China’s usage of artificial intelligence and AI-supported surveillance is a clear indication that AI must be regulated internationally, specifically in China.

Officially labeled a genocide by the United States, the Chinese government has been systematically oppressing and weeding out the Uyghur Turkic population in Xinjiang for over 4 years. China placed upwards of 1 million of the total 11.6 million Uyghurs into “re-education” programs. These so-called programs target those who the government has identified as Muslims based on attributes deemed “Islamic” including growing a beard or contacting foreigners. The programs aim to pinpoint Muslims in the Xinjiang region and use labor and education to minimize extremism and terror in China. To accomplish this, Uyghur Muslims are held in these internment camps and are subject to political indoctrination, sexual harrassment and assault, mandatory sterilization, electrocution and torture, and forced labor, among many others. The region has thrived and become an essential labor source, leading the country’s oil, natural gas, cotton, and tomato industries. What is important to note is that the remaining Uyghurs in the Xinjiang population are not left alone, either. Instead, they are surveilled through what is called the Joint Operations Platform, a system of monitoring the populations with Artificial Intelligence. Joint Operations Platform presents itself in multiple forms such as facial recognition, language identification, and location tracking in order to further China’s detention of Uyghurs.

But the Joint Operations Platform is a China-wide program. The surveillance used for the Uyghurs goes above and beyond the common surveillance used for the rest of the country. In fact, the situation is so extreme that “China has recently turned the region into a laboratory for new surveillance technology.” After China started locking down on Xinjiang, the Uyghyrs have been under an extreme amount of monitoring. Fantastical stories about drones and robot surveillance became a reality in the region with armed city checkpoints chock full of security cameras and facial recognition, bird lookalike drones that can be seen flying throughout cities, and apps designed specifically for Uyghur control. Surveillance and monitoring, in this case, specifically “refers to ‘any collection and processing of personal data, whether identifiable or not, for the purposes of influencing or managing those who data has been collected.” The development of Artificial Intelligence technologies and its employment in Xinjiang allows the Chinese government to grow an incredible source of data. Through the collection of biological data, China is able “to control people and manipulate the workforce,” in this case, the Muslim majority population. The amount of information and data available about the lives on the Uyghurs fills in the disconnect between technology and the personal, private lives of Uyghurs. A.I. essential works to exacerbate social stratification as the technology continues to grow and become normalized.

What does knowing of the private lives of Uyghurs do for China? The answer lies with terror capitalism. As defined by Byler and Sanchez Boe (2020), “Terror capitalism justifies the exploitation of subjugated populations by defining them as potential terrorists or security threats.” Essentially, terror capitalism subjugates a population of a specific group of labor and exploits them as a cheap source of labor. In China, this can be seen in a 3-step process. First, the technology is used to track and keep tabs on the people in question. Then, the data both improves the technology used to collect it and is sold to institutions that benefit from the information. Last, the population is pushed into labor, targeting them to further capitalistic initiatives. China gains both a valuable, vendable asset in the form of the data and information collected and a free, or almost free, human labor. The gains are seen twofold: China’s booming natural resource export industries that are produced predominantly in Xinjiang and the surveillance industry. It is evident that the using the guise of abolishing extremism has benefits for China more than just suppressing potential terror. Rather, it is an excuse to exploit a slave labor.

There is a caveat, however. For China to be able to benefit from its usage of Uyghur labor and the collection of their private data information, there has to be a recipient of the assets. On a more surface-level of analysis, China exports 20% of the world’s cotton and tomatoes (Byler, 2021), meaning every country that imports from China benefits from Uyghur labor. But on the other hand, the booming A.I. and surveillance industry is providing many economic advantages for the rest of the world. China’s investment in AI enough that their global share of research “vaulted from 4.26% (1,086) in 1997 to 27.68% in 2017,” ensuring that there are “large economies of scale to the ICT industry, meaning investments that push the technology pay off quickly.” The firms involved in technological advancement become more motivated to solve challenges in the field. Thus, AI became a lucrative investment and research opportunity for countries around the world.

In part, the United States’ lack of immediate action could be explained by the benefits the current Uyghur situation has on the rest of the world. While the Uyghur genocide’s lifespan has been over 4 years, only in December of 2021 did America take initiative and ban all imports made with Uyghur labor. Previously, the United States’ preventative measures stopped at attempting to disable technology firms only. After the passing of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, all imports of goods produced in the Xinjiang region by Uyghur slave labor have been banned. The unanimously passed bill was a costly signal imposed by the United States to coerce China into discontinuing its treatment of the Uyghurs.

The effectiveness of such sanctions is another topic of contention, however. China’s involvement with Uyghurs and the exports produced by forced labor are not limited to the United States. In fact, the United States only makes up a very small proportion of where the goods are going. Numerically speaking, “Last year, Xinjiang’s exports to the United States accounted for about 4% of the region’s outbound shipments by value, up from less than 2% in 2019.” This illustrates the minimal impact America’s sanctions have in the grand scheme of things. A costly signal, yes, but the cost seems far greater for the U.S. than it is for China. The other countries importing Xinjiang goods makes up 96% of its shipments. Clearly, while current sanctions against China may be all-encompassing and relatively extreme in comparison to previous sanctions and regulations, the tangible results are minimal.

To maximize tangible results, the international community must decide upon rules and guidelines regarding the development of Artificial Intelligence and the Internet of Things. While countries such as Britain may be implementing laws within their nation to increase accountability for the use of AI, it emphasizes that “oversight for people to follow the guidelines will need to be assigned to a governing body.” Yes, AI should not be weaponized, have an “off-switch,” be governed under human rules, and follow general ethics mandates, but an overarching board must be responsible for implementing such regulations. Creating a commission similar to the 9/11 commission focusing on public hearings would “would be to help launch and nurture a nationwide public dialogue about what course the nation’s people favor, or can come to favor.” In line with international relations theory, guilt and shame from China would encourage corporations and coordination with the rest of the world. If put into effect through the United Nations, a costly signal sent solely by the United States would not feel so small in comparison to the actions taken by the rest of the world.

What makes the situation worse is the lack of enthusiasm to stem China’s actions from the rest of the world. In fact, the AI-assisted surveillance that is employed and developed by China has spread outside of Chinese borders as well. One of the largest technological firms in China, Huawei, has developed facial recognition cameras that were put to use in Uganda to identify protestors and political opponents. Similarly, in Zimbabwe, state funding was given to build a facial recognition program to tackle security issues in the area. Furthermore, Europe, North America, and the Western Hemisphere as a whole have also benefited from China’s surveillance tools. The guise of “anti-terrorism” is used to monitor asylum seekers from countries across the globe, justifying “terror-capital surveillance tools” that “have placed hundreds of thousands of Muslims on watchlists as part of Countering Violent Extremism programs.” It is easy to see how nations would be hesitant to apply such strict sanctions against China or be motivated to push for the end of current Uyghur treatment.

In response to Henry Kissinger’s question, the answer still seems to be unclear. The advancements in the field of Artificial Intelligence has the potential to change the course of history, but with this potential comes an increased need for responsibility. Will AI cause governmental authoritarianism to rise and exploit minority and target populations? Where do we draw the line, and how? These questions remain unanswered, but one thing is for certain: with increased knowledge comes increased responsibility and the need to act morally.