China’s supremacy

China Spotlight

China is rapidly expanding its digital footprint. equipping helicopters and jet fighters with AI. The government created a top-secret military lab—a Chinese version of DARPA—and it’s building billion-dollar AI national laboratories. China’s military is achieving remarkable AI successes, including a recent test of “swarm intelligence” that can automate dozens of armed drones.

China’s supremacy

We’re living through a precarious moment in time. China is shaping the world order in its own image, while exporting its technologies and surveillance systems to other countries. As China expands into African countries and throughout Southeast Asia and Latin America, it will also begin to eschew operating systems, technologies and infrastructure built by the West. China has already announced that it will no longer use U.S.-made computers and software. China is rapidly expanding its 5G and mobile footprints. At the same time, China is drastically expanding its trading partners. While India, Japan, and South Korea have plenty of technologies to offer the world, it would appear as though China is quickly ascending to global supremacy. At the moment, the U.S. is enabling this, and our leaders do not appear to be thinking about the long-term consequences. When it comes to AI, we should pay close attention to China, which has talked openly about its plans for cyber sovereignty. But we should also remember that there are cells of rogue actors who could cripple our economies simply by mucking with the power or traffic grids, causing traffic spikes on the internet, or locking us out of our connected home appliances. These aren’t big, obvious signs of aggression, and that is a problem for many countries, including the United States. Most governments don’t have a paradigm describing a constellation of aggressive actions. Each action on its own might be insignificant. What are the escalation triggers? We don’t have a definition, and that creates a strategic vulnerability.

—Amy Webb