U.S. attorney general: Hollywood, tech companies “pawns of Chinese influence”
There is so much to unpack here that it's difficult to even get started. The US government has encouraged companies to work with China for decades. I remember it being big news when GM opened a joint venture in China in 1997.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAIC-GM" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAIC-GM</a><p>The Clinton administration pushed hard to increase trade with China and make it easier for American companies to outsource manufacturing.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States%E2%80%93China_Relations_Act_of_2000" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States%E2%80%93China_Re...</a><p>This continued unabated through the Bush and Obama presidencies, even as it became increasingly clear that US relations with China were going off the rails. There were significant signs that the Chinese government was not playing fair, particularly around IP theft, but the legislative and executive branches did <i>nothing</i> visible about it. Hundreds or thousands of American companies (including google) were hacked into or had intellectual property stolen with no legal recourse.<p><a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/fbi-probes-hundreds-of-china-spy-cases" rel="nofollow">https://www.thedailybeast.com/fbi-probes-hundreds-of-china-s...</a><p>Chinese military groups also hacked into the employee database for the US federal government.<p><a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/exclusive-25-million-affected-opm-hack-sources/story?id=32332731" rel="nofollow">https://abcnews.go.com/US/exclusive-25-million-affected-opm-...</a><p>Tech companies, like google, are acutely aware that the current Chinese government is extremely capricious and will block an entire company from the country to incubate their own competitor. Many tech companies want to work in china, but of major american companies, they seem to be the <i>most</i> cautious.<p>Given all this context, for Barr to turn around and say that US tech companies are "pawns" is infuriating. Virtually every large american company needs clear laws on working with China. They are not getting those laws out of Congress or the Justice Department, and everyone is the worse for it.