Technology and Hybrid Threats: Military, Artificial Intelligence, Data, and Surveillance

China is using its capacity in technological innovation to advance its military capabilities. Canadian researchers are unwittingly strengthening China’s military through joint research programs with Chinese scientists, many of whom have hidden connections to PLA and CCP-affiliated universities in China. By championing open research, China is gaining a militarily significant edge in fields such as artificial intelligence, robotics, computers and neuroscience.

China’s technology strategies and plans are very clear. It intends to be “first” among nations in virtually all aspects of economic and innovation performance. Where it is not yet first, it wants to partner with companies and researchers of other nations, until it is in a position to surpass them. This is nowhere more clearly seen than in the technology and innovation sectors. We are seeing China’s objectives play out step by step over months and years as the country makes advances in many technologies, often through its foreign collaborations.

The Integration of Military and Civilian Technology Development

A policy that has not yet had much attention in Canada is China’s integration of military and civilian technology development, which was described in the 2016 Strategy for Innovation-driven Development. This initiative is being led by President Xi himself through his leadership of the Central Commission for Integrated Civilian and Military Development. Scientists, engineers and companies across the country in a vast array of disciplines are being mandated to engage with military counterparts to identify new military applications for their work. This goes deeper than simple dual use—they are proactively creating new military technologies from unrelated fields.

This therefore becomes a risk that many Canadian researchers are not aware of in areas like artificial intelligence (AI) where, for ethical reasons, many lead researchers do not want to assist their military to develop weapons. However, for many years, Canada’s AI scientists have been closely collaborating with China, and it is difficult for them to acknowledge the risk that they are taking in possibly contributing to China’s military AI technologies due to this integration initiative. This is a serious issue. At minimum, they should be provided with the list that has been developed by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) of 160 military-focused labs in China’s civilian universities, companies and research institutes^{Footnote 78}, and advised not to partner with anyone from those labs—though sometimes researchers from China use other institutions on their applications to come to Canada in order to obscure the fact that they are from military institutions. A study by ASPI showed that Canada is ranked third in PLA collaboration, with 84 joint publications with researchers from Chinese military universities in 2017^{Footnote 79}. In addition, three Canadian universities are in the top ten in the number of joint publications over an 11-year period: University of Waterloo, University of Toronto and McGill University^{Footnote 80}. To assist in informing academe, Universities Canada has developed a guide for researchers collaborating with other countries where their research and intellectual property could be at risk, as well as for those travelling to other countries that could face such risks. The user-friendly guide will be a significant help in getting on top of these challenges.

AI and Big Data

Artificial intelligence is a top priority for China. Beijing has a broad strategy with targets^{Footnote 81} as well as a Three Year implementation Plan^{Footnote 82}. These documents chart a path for China to be the world leader in AI by 2030, and the government is putting billions of dollars into this investment in innovation-driven development. AI is dependent on massive amounts of data to make it detailed and refined in its assessments, and no country has more data than China due to its large population and lack of privacy rules and norms. The plans describe priorities in intelligent products, development of the hardware and software foundation for AI, intelligent manufacturing (the AI dimension of the Made in China 2025 Plan), and support services for training, standards, and cybersecurity to improve the environment for the development of AI.

A related issue is China’s development of lethal autonomous weapons (LAWs), sometimes called lethal autonomous systems. This is a field of research that is being given priority in China. Planners in the Chinese military are anticipating that the future battlefields of land, sea, air and space will include unmanned weapons resulting in “Multidimensional, multi-domain unmanned combat weapons system of systems on the battlefield ”^{Footnote 83}. The application of AI across military equipment and functions—such as unmanned autonomous systems using swarm intelligence applied to drones, military robotics, weapons that use autonomous learning, intelligent unmanned surface vehicles, and autonomous underwater vehicles that could support submarine warfare—is being aggressively pursued^{Footnote 84}.

There is an international Campaign to Stop Killer Robots^{Footnote 85} coalition led by Human Rights Watch, in the same vein as the Canada-led ban of land mines (in 1997). In his mandate letter provided by Prime Minister Trudeau, Canada’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Francois-Philippe Champagne is tasked to “advance international efforts to ban the development and use of fully autonomous weapons systems”^{Footnote 86}. One of the 30 countries that has signed the ban is China. That may come as a surprise but there is a footnote to China’s ban—it commits not to use LAWs, but will continue to develop them. This is a concern given China’s commitment only a few years ago not to militarise the islands of the South China Sea. Within a year, building had begun and they are now militarised. Given this precedent, one can question whether China’s ban on the use of lethal autonomous weapons is sincere.

Other AI research now underway in China includes the intersection of the brain, AI and biotechnology. This goes beyond lethal autonomous weapons. Elsa Kania at the Center for a New America Security has documented China’s intention to become the first mover on these weapons through its AI and massive data troves. In addition, China has plans for cyber, electronic and psychological warfare, incorporating neuroscience, biotechnology, supercomputing and quantum technology. Virtual domains and consciousness that distort the adversary’s cognition will be the new sites of combat in what the Chinese call “winning without fighting”. Ethics are not a factor in its research. For example, as the US and Europe are cutting back on research with primates, China is ramping up, creating monkey embryos to which human cells were added and researching ethnically-specific genetic weapons^{Footnote 87}.

The Social Credit System and Surveillance Technology

AI is also being used in the Social Credit System that monitors WeChat and Weibo discussions of Chinese citizens in order to score them on what they say about the government and Xi Jinping, whether they refer to 4 June or 35 May (referencing the Tiananmen Massacre), and on other metrics deemed socially desirable, such as whether they take out the garbage on time or whether they pay off their loans promptly. In 2018, 18 million people were punished for their score by not being permitted to take flights, and 5.5d million citizens were not permitted to travel on high speed train. Others lost job promotions, or were not able to send their children to good schools. Some human rights activists have seen their children taken out of school completely^{Footnote 88}. Of course, this is causing people to self-censor, which is exactly what the regime wants.

A similar system, called the Corporate Social Credit System, has now been put in place for companies and non-governmental organisations (NGOs)—even those from other countries operating in China. If the company does not pay its taxes in full and on time, does not comply with every regulation, or complains about government policies, it will be punished. And if some of its employees or suppliers have a poor social credit score, the firm will be punished, or worse yet, be designated a “distrusted entity” with costly sanctions. There are a myriad of elements on which companies are judged. Any foreign firm doing business in China should read in detail the report called “The Digital Hand” of the European Chamber of Commerce in China which describes the many dimensions of this new rating system that now governs firms doing business in China^{Footnote 89}. The report indicates that it is not only requiring all companies to submit information and data to what will ultimately be a huge comprehensive data system, but over time the requirements for companies to submit will be adjusted to tighten increasingly the market economy to ensure it is meeting the objectives of the regime.

These credit systems require that Beijing have a mechanism for monitoring the citizens of China. In Xinjiang, a police app is being used to closely monitor everyone’s movements. For example, if a person exits their house by the back door several times in a week, that action is surreptitious and the police will visit. The police officers themselves dislike the app because they have to do the tedious work of inputting information on each person’s movements into the database^{Footnote 90}. Elements of this surveillance system are now being put in place elsewhere in China. As the Great Firewall thickens and the population has limited access beyond the controlled media message of the government, the citizens of China are facing much more circumscribed lives than they knew even five years ago. Layering on top of this the controls of personal movement brought in as a response to the coronavirus, the prospects for freedom of the individual are bleak for the average Chinese citizen.

Conclusion

In partnering with China, Western countries and their companies and researchers must realize that China’s objective is to learn as much as it can from such collaborations and then move their innovation capacity past that of their partners to stand at number one in the key fields of technology. China has become such an economic force and technology leader that it is natural for Western companies and researchers to want to engage with China and Chinese partners. There are risks, however that must be more fully assessed when considering closer ties to Chinese entities. Westerners must develop their own analyses as to when it is advantageous in both the short and long term to partner with China. Western governments must undertake a comprehensive analysis of when and how to engage with China, and when to focus on other countries in the region.