FILE - Dr. Mehmet Oz, Republican Senate candidate in Pennsylvania, speaks in Springfield, Pa., Sept. 8, 2022. (AP Photo/Ryan Collerd, File)

CORRECTION: A previous version of this story stated that Dr. Mehmet Oz founded Sharecare in 2009 with Kai-Shing Tao and that Tao currently sits on the board of directors for Sharecare. Both statements were found to be inaccurate; Tao was not the CEO of the affiliated founding technology company of Sharecare at the time, and he does not currently hold a board seat and never did since the company went public. Sharecare does not have any current affiliation with Tao or Remark Holdings. We regret the errors and have since updated the text to reflect the facts. 

Pennsylvania Senate candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz founded a company in 2009 that later affiliated itself with Kai-Shing Tao, the CEO of a firm that sells invasive surveillance technology.

Oz, Jeff Arnold and a group of investors founded Sharecare in 2009, a digital service that provides personalized health care advice based on information collected from users. Although Oz apparently has not been actively involved in Sharecare since 2019, he and his wife still own anywhere between $6 and $35 million in Sharecare stock, personal finance disclosure documents show. Tao previously served on the board for Sharecare, and his company previously owned a private 4.5% ownership stake as recently as 2020, an SEC filing shows (the share shrunk to less than 3% when the company went public last year, and they since do not own any share.)

“We are proud to have been a founding technology partner of Sharecare, supporting Jeff Arnold, Dr. Oz and the team they have assembled in building Sharecare, whose recent round of financing from a key strategic partner further demonstrates the value that has been created,” Tao said in a 2019 press release.

Tao is also the chairman and CEO of Remark Holdings, a holding company which specializes in AI analytics and surveillance technology. According to a press release from Remark last year, its headquarters is located in Las Vegas but has additional locations in the Chinese cities of Shanghai, Chengdu and Hangzhou.

Most of the revenue Remark brings in is from Chinese clients that use the products primarily for their facial recognition capabilities. The Chinese government has been using similar equipment to spy and collect data on its citizens for years.

Remark has been trying to expand its sales to clients in the United States. A system that can scan the body temperature of up to 120 people a minute has already been implemented in a K-12 school in Las Vegas.

WIRED senior writer Tom Simonite asked Tao in 2018 whether he had any regrets about furthering the invasive surveillance state that the Chinese government operates. Tao expressed eagerness and said that he wants to help his customers.

“We’re not breaking any rules,” Tao said.

According to his campaign website, one of Oz’s goals is to “get tough on China” as he believes that the United States is failing to stand up to China “as they steal our intellectual property and manipulate our currency.”

Remark’s facial recognition technology has been criticized by U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) for being a threat to national security.

“The Chinese Communist Party is devoting significant resources to firms willing to help them develop the most invasive surveillance state in the world,” Rubio said in a May interview with Protocol. “Those same firms should not be allowed anywhere near critical infrastructure in America.”

The Oz campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.