I just read this article in Morning Brew’s “Emerging Tech” newsletter,  Facebook Execs Contrast U.S. and Chinese Tech Projects

Then, I read the link in that article to Peter Thiel’s op-ed in the New York Times, Good for Google, Bad for America

Both articles point to the growing concern over China’s overwhelming desire to dominate everything tech-related: 5G, artificial intelligence, autonomous vehicles, etc. And I have to say, I’m in that camp.

As Mark Zuckerberg so plainly stated in the Emerging Tech article, China has created its own internet fiefdom completely separate from the West. And this exclusive domain is closed to outsiders (including Facebook, Google, and the like). Also known as “The Great Firewall”, China is controlling its citizens and censoring free speech by banning outside apps/platforms.

Of course, most of you know this already. But what you may not know is how deep the rabbit hole goes…

China is competing with the West in everything – and winning in many areas. They are taking the lead in blockchain and cryptocurrency, NLP, edge and quantum computing, virtual reality, and many others. But one area that is of particular concern is artificial intelligence (AI). As Peter Thiel notes in the NYT article, “artificial intelligence is a military technology. Why is Google sharing it with a rival?”

He goes on to describe how the moment that Deep Mind (the crown jewel of Google’s AI effort) defeated the world champion of the ancient game Go, China stood up and took notice. Go is an ancient strategy game that was invented in China and still popular to this day. The objective is to surround more territory than your opponent. Does this seem familiar? It sounds like military warfare to me. And that is exactly what China regards this tech race as…warfare.

Peter Thiel also mentions that “the first users of the machine learning tools being created today will be generals rather than board game strategists”. With the ability to enhance computer vision and data analysis multiple-fold, military commanders will be able to gain advantages in intelligence, reconnaissance, deploying troops, or many other potential applications.

This isn’t even mentioning cyber warfare, which is so common now that countries have allocated huge resources to entire departments set up for this purpose. North Korea has a secret cyber warfare department with an ominous name, “Bureau 121” which is run directly by the military and supposedly has approx 1800 hackers, who are picked from the cream of the crop in North Korean universities. Even the US has allocated $15 billion for cyberwarfare – It’s even clearly stated in the White House 2019 Budget, “The FY 2019 President’s Budget includes $15 billion of budget authority for cybersecurity-related activities”. And don’t be fooled by the phrase “cybersecurity-related activities” – it’s cyber warfare, plain and simple.

But back to China – since 2017, the Communist party has written into their constitution the policy of “civil-military fusion”, which mandates that all research that is done in China be shared with the military.

If this isn’t a clear warning sign about the dangers of sharing technology with China, I don’t know what is.

Of course, the reason why companies continue to do so is purely for profit’s sake. Tech companies and their investors don’t want to upset the status quo, in which they’ve been making huge profits. Essentially, they are choosing profit over national security.

#artificialintelligence #AI #China #US #nationalsecurity #cyberwarfare #geopolitics #technology

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