White House memo accuses Alibaba of supporting the PLA
What happened: On November 15, the FT reported on a White House memo that accuses Alibaba of giving the Chinese military access to US user data.
- “Alibaba provides the Chinese government and PLA with access to customer data that includes IP addresses, WiFi information and payment records, as well as different AI-related services.”
Alibaba called the allegations “complete nonsense,” while Liu Pengyu, spokesman of the Chinese Embassy in the US, posted this on X:
- “It is extremely irresponsible and is a complete distortion of facts. China firmly opposes this.”
Why we care: True or not, the fact that the memo raised AI-related services as a vector for military intelligence gathering is notable.
- Alibaba is already one of the world's leading open-source model providers – and its Qwen family of models have been used by several major US tech companies.
More broadly, there is growing concern in DC about international adoption of Chinese open source LLMs, particularly considering there are no US alternatives with equally permissive licensing structures.
This raises the question: Is the US looking for a reason to come after open source model providers like Alibaba?
- Ali has thus far largely managed to avoid becoming a primary target of US controls, but its success in model development may change the game.