Alan W. Dowd is a Senior Fellow with the American Security Council Foundation, where he writes on the full range of topics relating to national defense, foreign policy and international security. Dowd’s commentaries and essays have appeared in Policy Review, Parameters, Military Officer, The American Legion Magazine, The Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations, The Claremont Review of Books, World Politics Review, The Wall Street Journal Europe, The Jerusalem Post, The Financial Times Deutschland, The Washington Times, The Baltimore Sun, The Washington Examiner, The Detroit News, The Sacramento Bee, The Vancouver Sun, The National Post, The Landing Zone, Current, The World & I, The American Enterprise, Fraser Forum, American Outlook, The American and the online editions of Weekly Standard, National Review and American Interest. Beyond his work in opinion journalism, Dowd has served as an adjunct professor and university lecturer; congressional aide; and administrator, researcher and writer at leading think tanks, including the Hudson Institute, Sagamore Institute and Fraser Institute. An award-winning writer, Dowd has been interviewed by Fox News Channel, Cox News Service, The Washington Times, The National Post, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and numerous radio programs across North America. In addition, his work has been quoted by and/or reprinted in The Guardian, CBS News, BBC News and the Council on Foreign Relations. Dowd holds degrees from Butler University and Indiana University. Follow him at twitter.com/alanwdowd.

ASCF News

Scott Tilley is a Senior Fellow at the American Security Council Foundation, where he writes the “Technical Power” column, focusing on the societal and national security implications of advanced technology in cybersecurity, space, and foreign relations.

He is an emeritus professor at the Florida Institute of Technology. Previously, he was with the University of California, Riverside, Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute, and IBM. His research and teaching were in the areas of computer science, software & systems engineering, educational technology, the design of communication, and business information systems.

He is president and founder of the Center for Technology & Society, president and co-founder of Big Data Florida, past president of INCOSE Space Coast, and a Space Coast Writers’ Guild Fellow.

He has authored over 150 academic papers and has published 28 books (technical and non-technical), most recently Systems Analysis & Design (Cengage, 2020), SPACE (Anthology Alliance, 2019), and Technical Justice (CTS Press, 2019). He wrote the “Technology Today” column for FLORIDA TODAY from 2010 to 2018.

He is a popular public speaker, having delivered numerous keynote presentations and “Tech Talks” for a general audience. Recent examples include the role of big data in the space program, a four-part series on machine learning, and a four-part series on fake news.

He holds a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Victoria (1995).

Contact him at stilley@cts.today.

Report: China Likely Using Uyghur Slave Labor to Build Solar Panels

Thursday, April 29, 2021

Categories: ASCF News Emerging Threats

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Ethnic Uyghurs from China’s western Xinjiang region are likely manufacturing Chinese-made solar panels through slave labor, the human rights magazine Bitter Winter reported Wednesday.

Most photovoltaic cells (PVC) used in the manufacture of solar panels are made with polysilicon components, according to Bitter Winter. About 82 percent of the world’s polysilicon “is produced in China, overwhelmingly in Xinjiang,” the magazine noted, citing an April 19 report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

“Almost all solar panels produced in China use Xinjiang-produced polysilicon. But in fact, even solar panels produced outside China, if they use polysilicon, likely include polysilicon from Xinjiang,” Bitter Winter wrote.

“Four factories in Xinjiang account for half of the world’s production of polysilicon,” the magazine pointed out, citing an April 13 report by Bloomberg News.

“Bloomberg’s report showed that polysilicon factories are located suspiciously close to transformation through education camps, making it likely that inmates are forced to work there,” the magazine further noted.

Chinese Communist Party (CCP) authorities operate “transformation through education camps” in Xinjiang officially to provide Marxist and vocational education to the territory’s minority ethnic Uyghurs. Human rights groups and foreign governments accuse the CCP of forcibly detaining 1-3 million Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in the concentration camps since 2017 and using their slave labor to farm or manufacture materials used to make Chinese goods, most notably cotton. Many have been shipped out of the camps, some studies have found, and sold as slaves to factories across the country.

“Bloomberg also quoted researchers Nathan Picarsic and Adrian Zenz, who analyzed Chinese data on polysilicon factories to conclude that slave labor is at work there, noting that the CCP is trying to discredit them,” Bitter Winter wrote of the polysilicon factories’ connection to Uyghur slave labor.

“Both Bloomberg and the CSIS commented that it is difficult for consumers to know whether Xinjiang polysilicon is used in the solar panels they buy. Certainly, when it comes to solar panels manufactured in China, that Xinjiang-produced components are there is almost certain,” the magazine concluded.

Uyghurs are a Turkic-speaking, Sunni Muslim ethnic group native to Central Asia, which borders Xinjiang to the west. The cultural and religious differences between Xinjiang’s native Uyghur minority and its ruling Han Chinese majority have long caused simmering ethnic tensions between the two groups in the frontier region.

The United States, the European Union, Britain, and Canada jointly imposed sanctions on Chinese government officials on March 22 over human rights abuses in Xinjiang. The abuses include forcing Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities to harvest cotton through slave labor. China reacted by imposing its own sanctions on British government officials and institutions on March 26. Many foreign retailers that use Xinjiang cotton publicly denounced the slave labor conditions in the region shortly afterward. The backlash elicited a secondary retaliation by China’s ruling Communist Party, which subsequently tried to erase foreign brands critical of Xinjiang cotton from the Chinese internet, including the Swedish fast-fashion brand H&M.

Photo: Guang Niu/Getty Images

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