“That tells you what you need to know about how unprecedented the threat itself is,” Wray said.
“The scale of the threat from China is so unprecedented that not only is no single solution going to be enough; no single country can be enough to try to adequately safeguard against them.”
The FBI has seen a 1300 per cent increase over the last several years in investigations related to China’s attempts to steal intellectual property or other secrets.
In one example, a US wind turbine company entered into a joint venture with a Chinese state-owned enterprise, which recruited an insider to steal the company’s trade secrets. Company shares plummeted, resulting in scores of employees being laid off.
In another case closer to home, China was able to steal the intellectual property of a successful Australian company by downloading malware into a staff member’s laptop at an overseas conference.
Counter-intelligence agencies say the areas being targeted by Beijing align with the “Made in China 2025″ initiative announced in 2015. This plan seeks to make China the world’s top manufacturer in 10 areas, such as robotics, artificial intelligence, new synthetic materials and aerospace.
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In a bid to address the issue, the Five Eyes alliance launched its first ever Emerging Technology and Securing Innovation Security Summit on Tuesday (local time) to discuss how to mitigate the threat with industry leaders.
The summit kicked off with a fireside chat hosted by former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice involving all five members: Burgess, Wray, Canadian Security Intelligence Service Director David Vigneault, UK’s MI5 Director General Ken McCallum and New Zealand Security Intelligence Service Andrew Hampton.
“The stakes are now incredibly high on emerging technologies; states which lead the way in areas like artificial intelligence, quantum computing and synthetic biology will have the power to shape all our futures,” McCallum said.
“We all need to be aware, and respond, before it’s too late.”
But the conference at Standford University’s Hoover Institution comes at a delicate time for some of the allied countries, with Albanese expected to go to Beijing within months, in the first visit for an Australian Prime Minister in seven years.
The White House has also begun making plans for a November meeting in San Francisco between US president Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping in a bid to stabilise the relationship between the world’s two most powerful countries.
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