China could rule world's technology, says UK cyber spy chie
The West must urgently act to ensure China does not dominate important emerging technologies and gain control of the "global operating system", Britain's top cyber spy said on Friday.
In an unusually blunt speech, Jeremy Fleming, director of
the GCHQ spy agency, said the West faced a battle for control of technologies
such as artificial intelligence, synthetic biology and genetics.
"Significant technology leadership is moving
East," Fleming said at Imperial College London. "The concern is that
China’s size and technological weight means that it has the potential to
control the global operating system."
"We are now facing a moment of reckoning," he
said.
World powers will compete to shape the future by developing
the best technology, hiring the people with the best brains and dominating the
global standards that will govern the technologies, Fleming said.
GCHQ, which gathers communications from around the world to
identify and disrupt threats to Britain, has a close relationship with the US
National Security Agency and with the eavesdropping agencies of Australia,
Canada and New Zealand in a consortium called "Five Eyes".
Fleming said that if Britain wished to remain a global cyber
power then it would have to develop "sovereign" quantum technologies,
including cryptographic technologies, to protect sensitive information and
capabilities.
Fleming said quantum computing, which uses the phenomena of
quantum mechanics to deliver a leap forward in computation, was getting closer
and posed huge opportunities but also risks.
The West should forge ahead with developing quantum-proof
algorithms, he said, "so we're also prepared for those adversaries who
might use a quantum computer to look back at things that we currently think are
secure".
He called for better fostering of market conditions to
enable innovation, and create a diversity of supply in a broader set of
technologies.
Fleming said China was "bringing all elements of state
power to control, influence design and dominate markets" while trying to
dominate debates about global standards.
He said digital currencies held significant promise to
revolutionise the finance sector but posed a potential threat to liberties if
abused by illiberal states as they could enable "significant intrusions
into the lives of citizens and companies".
Russia remains the biggest immediate threat to the West but
Communist China's long-term dominance of technology poses a much bigger
problem, he said.
"Russia is affecting the weather, whilst China is
shaping the climate," he said.
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