On Friday, President Donald Trump announced that the U.S. government would take a 10% stake in the hardware manufacturer Intel, involving the government in the private tech industry in a new, unprecedented way.
Now Forbes has learned that Intel has little known partnerships with multiple Chinese surveillance firms, including Uniview — which landed on a U.S. sanctions list last year “because it enables human rights violations, including high-technology surveillance targeted at the general population, Uyghurs and members of other ethnic and religious minority groups.” (Uniview has asked the U.S. to reconsider the sanctions.)
Intel’s Chinese-language site also includes documents referencing partnerships with Hikvision, a major surveillance camera manufacturer that has been hit with a barrage of sanctions in the last five years, and Cloudwalk, a facial recognition company which was sanctioned in 2021. Both companies have been accused by the U.S. government of allegedly enabling human rights abuses through surveillance of Uyghurs.
In promotional materials (archived here) for its “Deep Eye” smart camera on Intel’s website, Hikvision enthusiastically describes its “in-depth cooperation with Intel” and lists multiple ways Intel’s tech is integrated into its surveillance technology. “This kind of collaboration and cyclical innovation has enabled Hikvision to achieve gratifying results in promoting intelligent video surveillance,” it says. (These quotes are machine-translated.)
Intel also highlights the use of its Atom processor in Cloudwalk’s Juyan smart cameras, which it says are focused on retail (archived here).
In a statement to Forbes, Intel spokesperson Nancy Sanchez did not dispute the partnerships. “Intel is committed to adhering to all relevant laws and regulations where we operate and upholding responsible business practices which guide our actions across our operations, products and supply chain. As part of this, we adhere to internationally recognized frameworks such as the UN Guiding Principles, ILO conventions and OECD guidelines – these guide our actions across our operations, products, and supply chain.”
Sanchez noted that “most Intel products are general-purpose components distributed through third parties – and cannot always be directed in their final use,” but said the company holds “suppliers, customers and distributors to the same responsible business standards.” “If we become aware of credible misuse, we act swiftly – restricting or halting business until we’re confident our products are not enabling abuse.”
The company’s website identifies Uniview as a “titanium member partner” (archived here), and promotes its “video connected all-in-one machine” (archived here), which it describes as a security camera setup that uses Intel technology to facilitate “image/object detection/recognition/classification” and “video surveillance and analysis.” The product’s coverage area, per the website, is the Chinese mainland, Macao and Hong Kong. The Intel website also touts Uniview’s “Smart City Solution,” (archived here) which uses Intel smart cameras and vision processors in its surveillance tech. Intel’s site says Uniview’s Smart City Solution is available in China, as well as most other markets around the world, including North America.
It’s unclear when Intel’s partnership with Uniview began, but the Uniview brochure on Intel’s website advertising Uniview’s “All-In-One Machine” specified a release date of March 11, 2025. The Hikvision case study and Cloudwalk partnership website are not dated.
In 2020, reporting from the surveillance research group IPVM showed that Uniview had pioneered an “ethnicity detection” software that claimed to be able to detect people of Uyghur descent in its surveillance footage (Uniview didn’t respond to comment requests from IPVM at the time). Along with Hikvision and Dahua, another sanctioned Chinese surveillance company, Uniview helped the Chinese government write standards for race-based surveillance in 2020. The company is a major supplier of surveillance software to the Chinese government and has direct partnerships with numerous police forces across China, including for “smart prison,” “smart police,” and “smart traffic” applications. Uniview did not respond to a comment request.
Dakota Cary, a fellow at the Atlantic Center’s China Hub and China-focused consultant at SentinelOne, told Forbes: “The smart city concept in China is predicated on increasing surveillance of people in China.”
Hikvision, which has been under fire from the U.S. government for alleged complicity in the repression of Uyghurs in the Xinjiang province for more than five years, was placed on the U.S. Entity List in 2019 (meaning U.S. companies need permission to sell to it) and has been designated a threat to national security by the FCC. Earlier this year, a U.S. appeals court rejected Hikvision’s attempt to overturn a 2022 FCC ban on authorizing its equipment for use in the U.S. In June, Canada ordered Hikvision to cease operations on national security grounds, which the firm has contested.
The U.S. Treasury designated Cloudwalk as “part of the Chinese military-industrial complex” in part because its facial recognition technology “recognize[s] individuals based on skin pigmentation.”
Hikvision and Cloudwalk did not immediately respond to comment requests.
Intel’s corporate Human Rights Principles say that the company “does not support or tolerate our products being used to adversely impact human rights.” The principles continue: “Where we become aware of a concern that Intel products are being used by a business partner in connection with abuses of human rights, we will restrict or cease business with the third party unless and until we have a high confidence that Intelʼs products are not being used to adversely impact human rights.”
Intel did not respond to questions about whether its partnerships with sanctioned surveillance firms violated its Human Rights Principles.
“Sometimes, large companies don’t know what their China operations are up to,” said Cary, of SentinelOne. “I’ve interacted with a number of companies where they’re like, ‘Wait, our China office does what?’” He further noted, “With Uniview on an entity list, they should really stop working with that company.”
Earlier this month — before he decided the government should invest in Intel — President Trump called on Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan to resign, alleging that he had made numerous investments in companies with ties to the Chinese military. Tan formerly led the company Cadence Design Systems, whose Chinese subsidiary violated U.S. export controls by doing business with a Chinese military university while he was CEO. Cadence pled guilty to violating the sanctions and agreed to pay a fine of more than $140 million. After Trump’s statement, Intel released a statement standing by Tan and touting investments aligned with President Trump’s agenda.
Intel has had a strained relationship with the Chinese government in recent years. In 2023, China was Intel’s largest market. But in 2024, Chinese regulators issued guidance to government agencies that they should phase out use of Intel processors in Chinese government systems. An FT report showed that local governments were still buying Intel processors in 2024, but that they were beginning to wean themselves off of foreign tech.
In 2024, 76% of Intel’s sales occurred outside the U.S. The company is largely considered a bluechip American technology company and key to the government’s efforts to revitalize chip manufacturing domestically, though it has struggled in recent years to compete with the likes of Nvidia and AMD. Intel has been one of the primary recipients of Chips Act funds, some of which will now be converted into the government’s new 10% equity stake. Tan, who previously served on the board, was brought in as CEO in March after former chief executive Pat Gelsinger was pushed out at the end of last year.
In a Monday SEC filing, Intel warned that Trump’s choice to invest public U.S. funds in the company could cause “adverse reactions” from “investors, employees, customers, suppliers, other business or commercial partners, foreign governments or competitors.”
Thomas Brewster contributed reporting.
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