The U.S. government is investigating the cloud business of Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba to determine whether the unit poses a national security risk, Reuters reported Monday.
Reuters cited sources that say the Department of Commerce’s office of intelligence and security is leading the probe into Alibaba Cloud to determine how the business stores personal information, intellectual property and other data of U.S. customers and whether the Chinese government could secure access to those data.
The office at the Commerce Department was established during the Trump administration as part of efforts to create authorities to prohibit U.S. firms from doing business with tech companies from Russia, China and other “foreign adversary” countries.
One of the sources said the office has focused on Chinese cloud companies over concerns of potential data access disruption and data theft.
