MAKICHUK: Five Eyes takes tough stand against China in Silicon Valley

They’re mad as hell, and they’re not going to take it anymore.In a rare and unprecedented move, the top intelligence officials of the United States, Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand — known as the Five Eyes intelligence Alliance, the biggest in the world — met at Stanford University in Silicon Valley to discuss how to counter China's growing threat of stealing technology from the West.It has been going on for too long, far too long and something has to be done.According to reports in The New York Times and Interesting Engineering, the Five Eyes meeting, which was the first of its kind, was aimed at engaging the private sector in the fight against China's espionage.Apparently, alarm bells are sounding as China’s monstrous intelligence machine has shifted its focus from the government buildings in Washington to the innovation hubs in the Bay Area.The spy chiefs warned China posed an "unprecedented threat" to the security and prosperity of the Western countries and urged the industry leaders to protect their intellectual property and new technologies.China, they said, is particularly interested in Western artificial intelligence (AI). The latter has been compared to the race for the Atomic bomb — the nation who wins, will be given a decisive edge in technology, economic development and intelligence gathering and analysis.In just hours, AI can learn what takes a human to learn over several years of study and training. It’s a giant leap in every direction.The Tuesday meeting came just hours after the Biden administration announced new restrictions on exporting advanced semiconductors to China, which could hamper China's progress in AI, the report said..According to FBI Director Christopher A. Wray, China was stealing American technology and using it to steal more. He said China was using AI to improve its hacking operations and turn American technology against them.“This is the very first time the heads of our five agencies have appeared together publicly on any topic — an unprecedented event to confront an unprecedented threat,” Wray said. “There’s a single common thread in just about every conversation about protecting innovation . . . and that is the Chinese government.”MI5 Director General Ken McCallum said China had increased its espionage activities and attempts to recruit informants in Britain since 2018, the report said. He said China was targeting technologies that could transform both economics and security and China was pursuing a large-scale and ambitious agenda.“If you’re anywhere close to the cutting edge of tech, you might not be interested in geopolitics, but geopolitics is interested in you,” McCallum said. “So, we’re coming together at this summit to reach a much wider audience than we’ve had to in the past.” He said MI5 investigations into covert Chinese activity had risen sevenfold since 2018.The spy chiefs said China used various methods to steal critical technology from the West, such as hacking, pressuring Chinese students, infiltrating Western companies and forming joint ventures with Western firms, the report said.Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) Director David Vigneault said Western companies needed to realize China had changed the game's rules..He said China had laws that required its citizens anywhere in the world to provide information to Beijing's intelligence services. "China has been very transparent," Vigneault said. "Everything that they're doing in our universities and in new technology, it's going back into a system very organized to create dual-use applications for the military."Vigneault said CSIS has been trying to warn Canadian universities about the People's Republic of China's motivations and is in the process of setting up a research security centre to provide advice directly to research institutions."We're not telling people who they should hire or not hire. But we tell them ... if you're working for one of those seven universities in the PRC associated with the People's Liberation Army, you know it's probably not a good idea if you're working in cutting-edge technology in the university," said Vigneault.He said the five countries faced a “cat and mouse” challenge as Beijing was constantly adapting to efforts by western security services to crack down on spying. The meeting was also attended by the director of the Australian Security Intelligence Organization, Mike Burgess, and the director of New Zealand's Security Intelligence Service, Rebecca Kitteridge, the report said.The spy chiefs said they were working together to share information and best practices to counter China's espionage and welcomed more co-operation from the private sector.They also said China was not the only adversary they faced and they were also concerned about Russia, Iran, North Korea and other actors.US national security officials have said preventing Beijing from imposing its rules on people overseas was a top priority. They said the United States was working to shut down illegal overseas police stations used by China to monitor and intimidate dissidents.Burgess bluntly told the audience "all nations spy.""All nations seek secrets and all nations seek strategic advantage. But the behaviour we're talking about here goes well beyond traditional espionage," he told the conference."And the threat is that we have the Chinese government engaged in the most sustained, scaled and sophisticated theft of intellectual property and acquisition of expertise that is unprecedented in human history. And that's why we're together."FBI Director Wray told the meeting there were currently more than 2,000 FBI active investigations linked to Chinese espionage."China has long targeted businesses with a web of techniques all at once: cyber intrusions, human intelligence operations, seemingly innocuous corporate investments and transactions," he said."Every strand of that web had become more brazen, and more dangerous."

MAKICHUK: Five Eyes takes tough stand against China in Silicon Valley

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