President Trump said Tuesday his administration will investigate claims made by wealthy Silicon Valley entrepreneur Peter Thiel that Google has been compromised or infiltrated by Chinese intelligence.
“A great and brilliant guy who knows this subject better than anyone!” Trump tweeted about the billionaire tech investor. “The Trump Administration will take a look!”
“Billionaire Tech Investor Peter Thiel believes Google should be investigated for treason. He accuses Google of working with the Chinese Government.” @foxandfriends A great and brilliant guy who knows this subject better than anyone! The Trump Administration will take a look!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 16, 2019
The short Fox & Friends clip that prompted Trump’s call for a federal investigation was from Thiel’s appearance on Tucker Carlson’s show on Fox News on Monday evening. Thiel, a prominent Trump donor and the founder of Google rival and big data analytics company Palantir, harshly criticized what he claimed was Google’s decision to work on artificial intelligence efforts with the Chinese military after ending its collaboration with the Pentagon on Project Maven, the Defense Department’s AI-based drone surveillance program.
“There’s this very peculiar background where Google is working with the Chinese Communist government and not with the U.S. military,” Thiel said Monday.
“How many foreign intelligence agencies have infiltrated Google? Have the Chinese in particular infiltrated? And why are you working with Communist China and not the U.S. — what is the reason you’re doing that?” he said, calling for the FBI and CIA to investigate.
Google has said it doesn’t work with the Chinese military and that Thiel’s accusations are false.
Thiel said he believed that Chinese intelligence had likely infiltrated or compromised Google, but did not provide any specific evidence to back his claims, saying that Google’s publicly announced artificial intelligence efforts “naturally would draw the interest of foreign intelligence agencies.”
He claimed Google is working with China to avoid having its intellectual property “stolen through the back door,” as well as for political reasons.
“I think there’s a broad base of Google employees that are ideologically super left-wing and sort of woke and think that the Chinese is better than the U.S. or think that the U.S. is worse than China,” Thiel said.
Thiel first outlined many of these claims about Google on Sunday night during a splashy speech at the National Conservatism Conference in Washington D.C. Carlson spoke at the conference on Monday.
