Big Tech Connections to the PRC Government
An OSINT and CSINT analysis in response to the following question: Using open source information, is it possible to show direct, observable connections between China’s big tech firms and the PRC government?
Using the 2430 Group model of aligning questions/projects with our most capable partner for the task at hand, 2430 Group selected Govini and their National Security Knowledge Graph (NSKG) to analyze Alibaba and determine if any direct lines to the PRC are observable in OSINT/CSINT sources.
2430 Group experts guided Govini’s analysts through a detailed review of Alibaba’s key management personnel (KMPs) and the mapping of Alibaba’s partnerships, subsidiaries, and joint ventures. This analysis uncovered numerous direct fiduciary and controlling ties between Alibaba and majority Chinese State Owned Enterprises (SOEs).
Alibaba current executives, featuring enrichments to highlight characteristics such as party owned company affiliation, military company affiliation, state owned company affiliation, and forced labor affiliation
We focused on the President of Alibaba Cloud lntelligence, Jeff Zhang (see chart 2), because of his longstanding, deep, and current PRC military/government ties, and the extraordinary advantage the PRC would gain from direct access to the data held by Alibaba Cloud. Though we cannot, at this stage, show evidence of actual data moving between Alibaba Cloud and these PRC military/government owned entities, all the relationships, personnel, and infrastructure are in place to make movement of such data a seamless activity.
President of Alibaba Cloud lntelligence,Jeff Jianfeng ZHANG's expanded network graph. This includes his relevant relationships including: direct ownership, beneficial ownership, executive positions, and education.
Wasu Media and Yunli Intelligent Technology Company are both SOEs with connection to party and military affiliated companies. Their networks' have been expanded to show additional connections between Alibaba, the Government of China, and the United States.
As an example of significant risk, Alibaba owns AutoNavi, a navigation services provider (see chart 4). AutoNavi is the navigation provider and data aggregator for Samsung's health app, which came pre-installed on the 900 million Samsung phones worldwide. Additionally, AutoNavi executives have their own unique direct connections to Chinese SOEs as well.
AutoNavi, and thereby Alibaba, has legitimate access to 19 different permissions on Samsung phones, such as location and health info, and this level of access exists even on official phones used by numerous U.S. military personnel. It is not hard to imagine how the PRC could make major predictions about the U.S. Military activity, solely with data to which they have legal and legitimate access.
AutoNavi's connection to Alibaba and the Government of China
