The Five Eyes countries’ intelligence chiefs on Tuesday came together to accuse China of intellectual property theft and using artificial intelligence (AI) for hacking and spying against the nations, in a rare joint statement by the allies.
The officials from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the US — known as the Five Eyes intelligence sharing network — made the comments following meetings with private companies in Silicon Valley.
FBI Director Christopher Wray said the “unprecedented” joint call was meant to confront the “unprecedented threat” China poses to innovation across the world.
Photo: Reuters
From quantum technology and robotics to biotechnology and AI, China is stealing secrets in various sectors, the officials said.
“China has long targeted businesses with a web of techniques all at once: cyberintrusions, human intelligence operations, seemingly innocuous corporate investments and transactions,” Wray said. “Every strand of that web had become more brazen, and more dangerous.”
Chinese embassy in Washington spokesman Liu Pengyu (劉鵬宇) said that Beijing is committed to intellectual property protection.
“We firmly oppose the groundless allegations and smears towards China and hope the relevant parties can view China’s development objectively and fairly,” Liu said in a statement.
The US has long accused China of intellectual property theft and the issue has been a key sore point in US-China relations, but this is the first time the Five Eyes members have joined publicly to call China out on it.
“The Chinese government is engaged in the most sustained scaled and sophisticated theft of intellectual property and expertise in human history,” Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Director-General Mike Burgess said.
While China’s intention to innovate for its own national interest was “fine and entirely appropriate ... the behavior we’re talking about here goes well beyond traditional espionage,” Burgess said.
Last month, his department uncovered a Chinese plot to infiltrate a prestigious Australian research institution that involved planting an academic there to steal secrets, he said.
“This sort of thing is happening every day in Australia, as it is in the countries here,” Burgess said.
Wray said China had “a bigger hacking program than that of every other major nation combined,” which 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,” Wray said.
The officials called for private industry and academia to help in countering those threats, chief among which they said were AI tools.
School bullies in Singapore are to face caning under new guidelines, but the education minister on Tuesday said it would be meted out only as a last resort with strict safeguards. Human rights groups regularly criticize Singapore for the use of corporal punishment, which remains part of the school and criminal justice systems, but authorities have defended it as a deterrent to crime and serious misconduct. Caning was discussed in the parliament after legislators asked how it would be used in relation to bullying in schools. The debate followed stricter guidelines on serious student misconduct, including bullying, unveiled by the Singaporean Ministry of
‘GROSS NEGLIGENCE?’ Despite a spleen typically being significantly smaller than a liver, the surgeon said he believed Bryan’s spleen was ‘double the size of what is normal’ A Florida surgeon who is facing criminal charges after allegedly removing a patient’s liver instead of his spleen has said he is “forever traumatized” by that person’s death. In a deposition from November last year that was recently obtained by NBC, 44-year-old Thomas Shaknovsky described the death of 70-year-old William Bryan as an “incredibly unfortunate event that I regret deeply.” Bryan died after the botched surgery; and last month, a grand jury in Tallahassee indicted Shaknovsky on a charge of manslaughter. “I’m forever traumatized by it and hurt by it,” Shaknovsky added, also saying that wrong-site surgeries can happen “during
A MESSAGE: Japan’s participation in the Balikatan drills is a clear deterrence signal to China not to attack Taiwan while the US is busy in the Middle East, an analyst said The Japan Self-Defense Forces yesterday fired a Type 88 anti-ship missile during a joint maritime exercise with US, Australian and Philippine forces, hitting a decommissioned Philippine Navy ship in waters facing the disputed South China Sea, in drills that underscore Tokyo’s rising willingness to project military power on China’s doorstep. The drill took place as Manila and Tokyo began talks on a potential defense equipment transfer, made possible by Japan’s decision to scrap restrictions on military exports. The discussions include the possible early transfer of Abukuma-class destroyers and TC-90 aircraft to the Philippines, Japanese Minister of Defense Shinjiro Koizumi said. Philippine Secretary of
A South Korean judge who last week more than doubled former South Korean first lady Kim Keon-hee’s prison sentence was found dead yesterday, police said. Shin Jong-o was found unconscious at about 1am at the Seoul High Court building, an investigator at the Seocho District Police Station in Seoul said. Shin was taken to a hospital and pronounced dead, he said. “There is no sign of foul play in the death,” the investigator added. Local media reported that Shin had left a suicide note, but the investigator said there was none. On Tuesday last week, Shin presided over 53-year-old Kim’s appeal trial, finding her guilty
RSS