(GoRealNewsNow.com) – The House Judiciary Committee recently unveiled findings indicating China is employing artificial intelligence (AI) to misappropriate American technology and data.
This revelation came closely on the heels of international warnings, cautioning tech magnates from Silicon Valley to be vigilant of China’s technological espionage.
China’s history of cyberespionage has been a long-standing concern for U.S. authorities.
U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) emphasized the pressing need for individuals to brace themselves for an era dominated by influential supercomputers, predicting opponents’ every strategy.
He stated, “One of the key activities that we see the Chinese government doing is, in fact, predictive use of AI to both steal real intellectual property and also to box-off and in fact deny real inventors their intellectual property.”
As part of its inquiry, the Judiciary Committee’s intellectual property segment sought insights from former U.S. intelligence experts, including ex-CIA officer William C. Hannas. Currently an analyst at Georgetown University, Hannas shared that he had designed a program for the CIA to monitor China’s technological transfers. Tracing the origins of China’s tech transfer initiatives back to 1956, he highlighted the growing peril associated with the emergence of AI.
He wrote, “China will soon — if it has not already — used AI for cyber exploits to further its transfer agenda, an unholy marriage in which advances in the one promote progress in the other, multiplying existing threats to U.S. and allied security.”
The increasing threat of China’s technological theft has global implications. FBI Director, Christopher A. Wray, convened with intelligence chiefs from Australia, Britain, Canada, and New Zealand in California, marking their inaugural public collaboration. Wray noted the Chinese Communist Party’s intentions of utilizing stolen AI to amplify its hacking capabilities.
Rep. Hank Johnson (D- GA) pointed out AI’s role in escalating China’s capacity to orchestrate intricate cyber-attacks affecting U.S. federal agencies, military establishments, and businesses.
Notably, China’s purported objectives encompass more than just America’s tech industry; they directly impact ordinary citizens. Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) emphasized China’s relentless efforts to procure American data to fuel its AI mechanisms illicitly, adding, “Chinese-affiliated actors are buying data from commercial data brokers… They are also collecting data on U.S. persons through Chinese-owned software applications such as TikTok and medical diagnostic platforms like the DNA sequencing company AGI.”
In light of AI enhancing China’s proficiency, U.S. policymakers are seeking countermeasures. Hannas suggested the creation of a National Science and Technology Analysis Center, distinct from the intelligence sector, to foresee, assess, and counter foreign threats to U.S. science and technology.
He asserted, “The United States Intelligence Community, USIC, of which I was a part — and to that extent responsible — should also be held accountable for its failure to seriously pursue so-called science and technology, S&T, intelligence, that is, identifying and monitoring foreign S&T threats.”