Intel partnerships with sanctioned Chinese facial recognition companies revealed

It’s a classic case of tech company partners with foreign company, government sanctions foreign company for rights abuses, government buys a stake in sanctioned company’s partner. The U.S. government announced plans to pick up a 10 percent stake in American chip-maker Intel last week.

Forbes reports that it has discovered Intel has a partnership with video surveillance provider Univision, which was added to the sanction entity list last year. Uniview has requested its inclusion on the list be reviewed.

The American company’s Chinese-language website also references partnerships with security camera giant Hikvision and Cloudwalk, both of which were already on the entity list for aiding the suppression of China’s Uighur minority with targeted facial recognition tools. Hikvision, like Intel, touts a partnership between the two companies.

Hikvision has also been singled out as a security threat in the UK, being referred to as “digital asbestos” for its largely unobserved prevalence in government buildings by former Biometrics and Surveillance Camera Commissioner Fraser Sampson, and in Canada.

China was Intel’s largest market in 2023, according to the report, before a government edict began to reduce its market share.

Intel has been in a similar position before with new additions to the entity list, specifically with surveillance camera and facial recognition supplier Tiandy Technologies in 2022.

The American company spun out its 3D camera maker RealSense with plans to expand its biometrics portfolio at the beginning of this year.

Article Topics

China  |  CloudWalk Technology  |  facial recognition  |  HIKVISION  |  Intel  |  U.S. Government  |  Univision