In a rare joint statement, intelligence leaders from the Five Eyes countries accused China of intellectual property theft and using artificial intelligence for hacking and spying.
Officials from the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, the Five Eyes intelligence sharing network, made the comments following meetings recently with companies in Silicon Valley.
From quantum technology and robotics to biotechnology and artificial intelligence, China is stealing secrets in many sectors, the officials said as reported in Reuters.
“China has long targeted businesses with a web of techniques all at once: cyber intrusions, human intelligence operations, seemingly innocuous corporate investments and transactions,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said. “Every strand of that web had become more brazen, and more dangerous.”
A.I. as an Amplifier
“The Chinese government is engaged in the most sustained, scaled and sophisticated theft of intellectual property and expertise in human history,” said Mike Burgess, the Australian Security Intelligence Organization’s Director-General.
While China’s intention to innovate for its own national interest was “fine and entirely appropriate”, Burgess said “the behaviour we’re talking about here goes well beyond traditional espionage.”
The FBI’s Wray said China had “a bigger hacking program than that of every other major nation combined” that together with Beijing’s physical spies and stealing of trade secrets from private businesses and research institutions gave the country enormous power.
“Part of what makes it so challenging is all of those tools deployed in tandem, at a scale the likes of which we’ve never seen.”
The officials called for private industry and academia to help in countering those threats, chief among which they said were artificial intelligence tools.
“We worry about AI as an amplifier for all sorts of misconduct,” Wray said, accusing China of stealing more personal and corporate data than any other nation by orders of magnitude.
Not Just a Wall Street Problem
“It is a threat to our way of life in a number of ways,” Wray told “60 Minutes.” “The first is that when people talk about stealing innovation or intellectual property, that’s not just a Wall Street problem. That’s a Main Street problem.
“That means American jobs, American families, American livelihoods, and the same thing for every one of our five countries, directly impacted by that theft. It’s not some abstract concept. It has flesh and blood, kitchen-table consequences.”
Image source: 60 Minutes; NR Capital Matters
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