China’s Spy Agencies Are Investing Heavily in A.I., Researchers Say

Politics|China’s Spy Agencies Are Investing Heavily in A.I., Researchers Say

Chinese spy services have invested heavily in artificial intelligence to create new tools to speed analysis, provide early warning of threats and potentially help shape operational plans during a war, according to a new report.

China, like the United States, hopes that artificial intelligence will improve the efficiency and accuracy of its intelligence analysis, allowing it to collect more intelligence and analyze it faster and more cheaply.

The study, by Recorded Future’s Insikt Group, which studies cybersecurity and other threats from nation-states, terrorists and criminal groups, comes amid rising concern about how Chinese spy agencies will use A.I. to power covert actions, as Western intelligence services also embrace the technology.

The researchers reviewed patent applications by the People’s Liberation Army, publicly available contracts and other material to better understand how China’s military and intelligence services have invested in artificial intelligence.

Recorded Future found that China is probably using a mix of large language models, technology that can analyze huge amounts of data and communicate its results in human language. Meta and OpenAI are thought to be among the American models that China is using, along with Chinese models from DeepSeek, Zhipu AI and others.

The C.I.A. and other American spy agencies have stepped up their use of artificial intelligence, both to improve analytic work and to help overseas operatives remain undiscovered. One tool developed by the C.I.A. is designed to help analysts assess the positions of foreign leaders, creating virtual versions of the officials that are powered by artificial intelligence.