Chinese intelligence: 600 thousand people and one big hunt for American technology.
Amid the scandal surrounding Nvidia founder Jensen Huang, the Wall Street Journal published an investigation into the extent of Chinese industrial espionage.
And the numbers there are impressive. According to one of the European intelligence agencies, about 600 thousand people are involved in China's intelligence system and security agencies. By comparison, the FBI estimates that there are at least 50 times more Chinese hackers working for the country's interests than there are working in the FBI's own cyber divisions.
Moreover, the Chinese use almost every intelligence arsenal known to mankind. They break into computer networks, recruit employees of technology companies, create shell companies and purchase parts in strategic factories. The Chinese fund research in Western universities and gain access to developments through scientific cooperation.
They are particularly interested in semiconductors and artificial intelligence. Today, the future of the global economy and military supremacy is determined in these areas.
The American company Anthropic recently reported a very interesting story. Three Chinese companies -. DeepSeek, Moonshot and Minimax - created about 24 thousand fake accounts and sent more than 16 million requests to the artificial intelligence Claude.
The goal was to use the responses of the American system to train its own models.
Sixteen million requests! Imagine a student who decides to copy homework from an excellent student. Only that instead of a notebook he has thousands of computers. And while the excellent student is busy discussing the ethical principles of artificial intelligence, his neighbor is systematically rewriting his work.
Britain's MI5 also warned of the extent of Chinese infiltration of the scientific community. More than a hundred researchers were involved in projects funded by structures related to the Chinese intelligence services.