China's spy agencies are investing heavily in AI, researchers say

Straits Times

7 hours ago

The Pentagon announced on June 16 that it was awarding a US$200 million (S$257 million) contract to OpenAI. PHOTO: REUTERS
WASHINGTON – Chinese spy services have invested heavily in artificial intelligence to create new tools to speed analysis, provide early warning of threats and potentially help shape operational plans during a war, according to a new report.
China, like the United States, hopes that artificial intelligence will improve the efficiency and accuracy of its intelligence analysis, allowing it to collect more intelligence and analyse it faster and more cheaply.
The study, by Recorded Future's Insikt Group, which studies cybersecurity and other threats from nation-states, terrorists and criminal groups, comes amid rising concern about how Chinese spy agencies will use AI to power covert actions, as Western intelligence services also embrace the technology.
The researchers reviewed patent applications by the People's Liberation Army, publicly available contracts and other material to better understand how China's military and intelligence services have invested in artificial intelligence.
Recorded Future found that China is probably using a mix of large language models, technology that can analyse huge amounts of data and communicate its results in human language. Meta and OpenAI are thought to be among the American models that China is using, along with Chinese models from DeepSeek, Zhipu AI and others.
The CIA and other US spy agencies have stepped up their use of artificial intelligence, both to improve analytic work and to help overseas operatives remain undiscovered. One tool developed by the CIA is designed to help analysts assess the positions of foreign leaders, creating virtual versions of the officials that are powered by artificial intelligence.
The Pentagon announced on June 16 that it was awarding a US$200 million (S$257 million) contract to OpenAI. The company, in a release, said its OpenAI for Government initiative would be used to improve administrative operations, including health care, but also improve work on military acquisition programs and support 'proactive cyberdefense'.
Former US intelligence officials have said China's large population has long given it a potential advantage over US spy agencies, but artificial intelligence could even the playing field. Generative AI models can scan huge amounts of collected communications intelligence and queue the most interesting information for human analysts to examine.
Some US officials said China's investment in artificial intelligence was of little surprise, given its potential to improve analytic assessments. But the Recorded Future report found specific examples of how China could be using large language models and generative AI to not just improve its intelligence analysis, but also help military commanders improve targeting and operational plans.
In October 2024, Ordnance Science and Research Academy of China filed a patent application to use various forms of intelligence to train a military model. The application talks about the ways the model could be used, such as by crafting operational plans and helping battlefield intelligence analysts analyze friendly and enemy forces, according to Ms Zoe Haver, the author of the study and a senior threat intelligence analyst at the Insikt Group.
'This was very broad ranging and intended to be applicable across the intelligence cycle,' Ms Haver said.
Over the past two years, China has tightened control over information about what its military and intelligence agencies have obtained. So while Recorded Future was often able to see the military's procurement of generative AI models and servers, it was not always clear how the technology would be used. But some Chinese contractors appeared to have grand ambitions.
China's military and intelligence agencies appear to have quickly pivoted from open source and Western AI to DeepSeek, which unveiled a model rivaling OpenAI's model, ChatGPT, the day after Christmas. Global interest in DeepSeek's model exploded in January. By the end of February, military procurement records appeared showing Chinese companies quickly taking up DeepSeek's technology.
At the same time, American firms have cracked down on China's use of their models.
This month, OpenAI reported that it had disrupted several operations most likely originating in China that had tried to use its artificial intelligence tools in malicious ways. The operations were a combination of influence campaigns and surveillance, according to OpenAI. One of them tried to use ChatGPT to generate comments on social media sites about the dismantling of the US Agency for International Development.
To train a model to provide meaningful insight on intelligence, a government needs to give it access to its intelligence data, which can be difficult while still keeping classified material secure.
Chinese intelligence products are often infused with the ideology of the ruling Communist Party. Haver said a model trained on such reports would produce intelligence biased in the same way. But whether the Chinese government sees that as a problem is another question.
'Some Chinese public security researchers are talking about ChatGPT being used for intelligence,' Ms Haver said. 'And they are worried about how objectivity, neutrality, neoliberalism and capitalistic values could infiltrate Chinese intelligence work if they use foreign models.' NYTIMES
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