Exclusive | Microsoft launches incubator for Chinese tech startups reigniting fears about cozy Beijing ties: Makes no sense

Microsoft is quietly helping launch an incubator to boost Chinese startups with cutting-edge AI – and the bizarre project is reigniting fears in Washington that the tech giant is getting too cozy with Beijing, The Post has learned.Last month, local Chinese Communist Party officials stood alongside Microsoft executives when the “Shenzhen Global Expansion Center” was unveiled, touting it as a “one-stop platform for international business expansion.”The software giant co-founded by Bill Gates will provide local firms with its “AI technologies, platform capabilities, and access to its global ecosystem network,” according to a May 8 press release.US lawmakers have grown increasingly concerned about Microsoft’s decades-long presence in China, where it has two major AI labs and more than 10,000 employees – all of whom remain under close watch by the CCP.Aside from its role as the largest software provider to the US government, Microsoft, led by CEO Satya Nadella, is a key player in the winner-takes-all race to develop advanced AI.A spokesperson for the Republican-led House Select Committee on China, which held a hearing on April 16 on “China’s Campaign to Steal America’s AI Edge,” told The Post that “Microsoft should seriously reconsider the wisdom of helping China’s AI technology efforts.”Lawmakers are concerned “particularly given the dangers for American national security, and the company’s recent failures outsourcing defense work to China,” a Select Committee spokesperson told The Post.“It makes no sense that some of the American companies most ruthlessly mistreated by the CCP persist in pursuing futile partnerships in China,” the spokesperson added.The little-noticed project also could put Microsoft at odds with the Trump administration.

Last year, the White House blasted the company for allowing China-based software engineers to maintain Pentagon computer systems and warned as recently as April that China was engaged in “i...