Thiel calls for federal investigation of Google

Billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel is calling for a federal investigation of Google over its alleged ties to China, Axios reported.

Thiel, who is a Facebook board member and prominent conservative, reportedly said at a conference on Sunday that the CIA and FBI should ask Google three questions about its relationship with the Chinese military.

“Number one, how many foreign intelligence agencies have infiltrated your Manhattan Project for AI?” he asked, according to Axios.

“Number two, does Google’s senior management consider itself to have been thoroughly infiltrated by Chinese intelligence?” he added.{mosads}

“Number three, is it because they consider themselves to be so thoroughly infiltrated that they have engaged in the seemingly treasonous decision to work with the Chinese military and not with the U.S. military?” he concluded.

Thiel added that the questions need “to be asked in a not excessively gentle manner,” according to Axios.

Thiel also reportedly questioned if Google is “making the sort of bad, short-term rationalistic [decision] that if the technology doesn’t go out the front door, it gets stolen out the back door anyway.”

Thiel, an adviser to President Trump, was likely referring to Google’s work in China, which was recently panned by top defense officials speaking before Congress.

Gen. Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and then-acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan in March raised concerns over whether Google’s work is benefiting the Chinese military.

Google last year pulled out of the race for a $10 billion cloud computing contract with the Pentagon amid pushback from its employees, and it also announced last summer that it would drop its military drone contract. While the company says it is no longer working on creating a search engine for China, which was panned internally and faced intense scrutiny from outside critics and lawmakers, Google still has some work in China.

Thiel founded PayPal and Palantir, a software company that has faced ongoing protests over its work for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.