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Day: October 21, 2023
STANFORD, California, Oct 17 (Reuters) – The Five Eyes countries’ intelligence chiefs came together on Tuesday to accuse China of intellectual property theft and using artificial intelligence for hacking and spying against the nations, in a rare joint statement by the allies.
The officials from the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand – known as the Five Eyes intelligence sharing network – made the comments following meetings with private companies in the U.S. innovation hub Silicon Valley.
U.S. FBI Director Christopher Wray said the “unprecedented” joint call was meant to confront the “unprecedented threat” China poses to innovation across the world.
From quantum technology and robotics to biotechnology and artificial intelligence, China was stealing secrets in various sectors, the officials said.
“China has long targeted businesses with a web of techniques all at once: cyber intrusions, human intelligence operations, seemingly innocuous corporate investments and transactions,” Wray said. “Every strand of that web had become more brazen, and more dangerous.”
In response, Chinese government spokesman Liu Pengyu said the country was committed to intellectual property protection.
“We firmly oppose to the groundless allegations and smears towards China and hope the relevant parties can view China’s development objectively and fairly,” the spokesperson for China’s embassy in Washington said in a statement to Reuters.
The U.S. has long accused China of intellectual property theft and the issue has been a key sore point in U.S.-China relations. But this is the first time the Five Eyes members have joined publicly to call out China on it.
“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 Organisation’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.”
Last month, his department busted 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.
The Five Eyes statement follows the group’s warning in May of a widespread Chinese spy operation it said was targeting critical infrastructure and various other sectors.
The Chinese government dismissed those allegations as a “collective disinformation campaign.”
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,” Wray said.
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.
“If you think about what AI can do to help leverage that data to take what’s already the largest hacking program in the world by a country mile, and make it that much more effective – that’s what we’re worried about,” he said.
Reporting by Zeba Siddiqui in Stanford, California; Editing by Jamie Freed
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
The chiefs of the FBI and Britain’s MI5 have raised concerns about the enormous and terrifying potential artificial intelligence poses for terrorists, saying the technology adds “a level of threat to that we haven’t previously encountered.”
“It’s one of those issues where no one has a monopoly of wisdom and trying to have a different form of public-private partnership and, crucially, international partnerships,” MI5 Director General said during the Five Eyes alliance conference in California this week.
The conference between the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand focused on the launch of an initiative aimed at finding innovative responses to developing intelligence threats, particularly in the face of new technology such as AI generative platforms.
“Emerging technologies are essential to our economic and national security, and America’s role as a leading economic power, but they also present new and evolving threats,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said ahead of the conference.
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“The FBI is committed to working with our Five Eyes and industry partners to continue to protect emerging technologies, both from those who would steal them and those who would exploit them for malicious purposes,” he added.
Heads of the intelligence agencies of each member of the partnership gathered for the first time in a public appearance to stress the need to focus on these issues.
FBI Director Christopher Wray is shown during a House Judiciary Committee hearing in Washington, D.C., on July 12, 2023.
Dr. Condoleezza Rice hosted a fireside chat with all five members, including McCallum and Wray, who both said their organizations are monitoring AI developments and need to cooperate with experts in the private sector to tackle emerging threats, The Guardian reported.
“We’ve seen AI used to essentially amplify the distribution or dissemination of terrorist propaganda,” Wray said, citing examples such as using AI to hide alarming searches – such as “how to build a bomb” – or find holes in AI-built infrastructure security.
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“The use of AI in a way that if it’s sophisticated enough to create potential deepfakes is something that adds a level of threat to that we haven’t previously encountered,” Wray added, noting that it’s a threat the FBI continues to “look out for” since it could amplify and strengthen “existing strategy by hostile nations.”
Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, CEO of Valens Global and associate fellow at the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism at The Hague in the Netherlands, told Fox News Digital that he agreed on the need for cooperation with private companies to help address these issues, arguing that such a partnership would prove an “unambiguous” positive for governments.
“The trend for every company that works globally is to have at least a quasi-cooperative relationship with local authorities,” Gartenstein said.
“There’s a wide variety of reasons for that, and in some cases, it’s because the platform could face liability,” he continued. “In some cases, it’s the desire to preserve life, but most platforms have some relationship with law enforcement and intelligence for a variety of reasons. It’s the kind of outreach that they’ll normally do.”
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Gartenstein discussed the example of how law enforcement tried to work with social media platforms, which “obviously housed propaganda” that was “exploited by terrorist groups.” Now, he noted that everyone is aware of the potential for generative AI to serve a similar purpose, and working with the companies making those platforms is one of the most effective ways to get ahead of these issues.
He noted that there is already an “open line of dialogue” between many of the companies building AI platforms and the U.S. government.
A split image of an FBI agent in an official windbreaker and the Twitter logo on a blue screen.
Part of the concerns lie in the fact that the potential of generative AI “is only bounded by the limits of human creativity,” according to Gartenstein.
Among some uses he’s seen or heard about, Gartenstein listed identity impersonation that can copy a person’s writing style or even voice by using audio files (should they exist) and fake images of Donald Trump being arrested as generated for an experiment by investigative journalists at Bellingcat.
“The question isn’t so much what can be done as it is what can’t be done,” he said.
The FBI did not respond to a Fox News Digital request for comment by the time of publication.
Original article source: FBI chief warns that terrorists can unleash AI in terrifying new ways