Alibaba sues Pentagon to denounce being classified as a Chinese military affiliate

Filed 55m ago · Via Global Voices · The Buffoon Desk

THIS STORY IS SCORED

Scheming Weasel faster

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: Alf van Beem · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons

The Pentagon added Alibaba, Baidu, and Tencent to its list of Chinese military-affiliated companies, triggering a procurement ban and the risk of further sanctions. Alibaba sued, arguing the designation has no basis in fact or law and violates its right to contest the listing before being punished for it.

The Pentagon's court filing leans heavily on public record: Chinese censorship laws Alibaba must comply with, a content-moderation product called Green AI that it sells abroad, a joint venture with a sanctioned state arms maker that built a satellite positioning company, and a cloud partnership with state-owned China Mobile. Alibaba says following Chinese law, like every company operating there must, is not evidence of military fusion.

The filing also revisits Jack Ma's 2020 disappearance after he criticized China's banking regulators, alongside the collapse of Ant Group's IPO and the company's subsequent antitrust fine. Alibaba gave up its stake in the satellite-positioning venture in 2018, though its executives reportedly still hold a large interest in it.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

You can see both sides squinting at the same pile of facts and reading them differently. Alibaba says it just followed the law like every company in China has to, and the Pentagon says that law itself is the problem. Whatever the court decides, it is a strange kind of defense to argue that your compliance with a surveillance state's rules should not count against you.

Source: Read the original at Global Voices → Scored: Scheming Weasel faster · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0