The US FBI suspects Chinese intelligence services of using artificial intelligence technologies to spy on American citizens on a large scale.
What is known about the threat from China's use of AI
According to the publication's journalists, back in July 2018, Apple employee Xiaolan Zhang tried to fly to Beijing from San Jose, California.
In particular, he managed to get through the checkpoint at Terminal B, but the FBI did not let him out.
According to Apple's security service, the employee was arrested on charges of stealing trade secrets related to the company's autonomous driving technology.
It was a clash in the ongoing shadow war between the US and China for superiority in artificial intelligence. Both rivals are trying to get ahead of each other in the development of technologies that could change the economy, geopolitics and warfare, the publication notes.
The authors of the article emphasise that AI is on the list of technologies critical to the US that the FBI is protecting from foreign states and individuals, especially from China, which is doing the same.
China's AI capabilities are already considered to be enormous, but recently, US intelligence agencies have issued new warnings that go beyond the threat of intellectual property theft.
Can China conduct large-scale spying on US citizens?
The FBI and other agencies believe that instead of simply stealing trade secrets, China can use artificial intelligence to collect and accumulate data on Americans on a scale that has never been possible before, the newspaper writes.
The authors of the article emphasise that over the past year, the problem has become so acute that in October, the FBI and intelligence chiefs of the US partner countries met with leading AI developers.
The United States believes that the Chinese authorities may use the collected personal data to identify American spies and to monitor officials in the White House.
China could use artificial intelligence to create a dossier on virtually every American with details ranging from medical records to credit cards to passport numbers, names and addresses of parents and children. Take these files and add a few hundred thousand hackers working for the Chinese government, and we have a terrifying potential national security threat, warns former National Security Agency General Counsel Glenn Gerstell.
