"Meanwhile, members of the Chinese diaspora in Silicon Valley are feeling the strain and paranoia of geopolitical tensions pressing on their social and professional lives. One 26-year-old woman who works at a San Francisco startup said she was once called a "honeypot" by a dance partner at a local bar. "He told me he worked on a nuclear-related company," she said. "He was like, 'I cannot share anything with you. Are you looking at my phone? You don't seem like a honeypot, but I have to be careful given that you're a Chinese national.'"
As a tech worker, she has turned down AI-related job opportunities to avoid scrutiny for herself and her family from both the US and Chinese governments. She also tries to downplay her Chinese accent and cultural identity. "A lot of Chinese nationals don't agree with the Chinese government" on issues like Uyghur repression in Xinjiang, she said. "But in social situations, you have to vocalize it passionately just to lower the guard people have toward you."
We work for no government. We just want to build businesses.
Sarah affirmed this sentiment. She hoped to contribute to global AI safety work by bridging the information gap between Chinese- and English-language researchers and policymakers, but the hawkish environment has made collaboration difficult. "Whenever you say anything neutral about China, people will think, 'That's pro-China, and this person is bought by the CCP,'" she said.
Many Chinese startup founders are also deemphasizing their nationality. One founder of a consumer AI startup told me that an investor asked her to remove the word "China" from a pitch deck and replace it with "Asia." It's a notable shift from the start of the century when top venture-capital firms were eager to invest in Chinese super-apps and open China-based funds."
https://www.businessinsider.com/chinese-spies-silicon-valley-tech-companies-freaking-out-espionage-employees-2025-1
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