What are China’s biggest concerns about AI? A new article by Chen Yixin, China’s Minister of State Security, in the latest issue of China Cybersecurity Magazine offers some revealing clues. Chen identifies six major risks: 1. Regime security. Hostile forces and people with ulterior motives can use deepfakes, AI-generated text and images, and automated online accounts to cheaply and massively produce political rumors, spread harmful information, and incite social divisions—waging “public-opinion wars” and “cognitive warfare” against China and directly threatening its political, institutional, and ideological security. 2. Critical infrastructure. AI can enable countries and organizations to rapidly discover vulnerabilities, automatically chain together attack paths, and carry out sophisticated hacking operations, dramatically lowering the technical barriers and costs of cyberattacks against China’s critical information infrastructure. 3. Data leakage. Foreign intelligence agencies can use AI-powered web crawlers, data mining, and profiling to collect sensitive information, including critical national data, trade secrets, and citizens’ personal information. Chinese users who process sensitive information through foreign AI products or export data abroad could also cause large-scale data leaks. 4. Closed technological ecosystems. Countries with advantages in AI theory, model architecture, and computing power may invoke “national security” to impose technology controls, entity lists, monopolize technical standards, and build closed-source ecosystems, restricting other countries’ access to advanced technologies and fragmenting global AI supply chains. 5. Structural challenges to social governance. AI creates new uncertainties for social governance and public order. Algorithmic “black boxes” and data poisoning can amplify existing social biases; misuse of personal information can trigger crises of public trust; automated decision-making creates difficult questions of accountability; and the rapid development of AI is increasingly outpacing existing laws, ethics, and regulatory mechanisms. 6. A fundamental transformation of warfare. AI is pushing warfare into an era of “intelligentization.” Whoever can use algorithms to achieve more precise sensing, judgment, and targeting will gain the initiative on the battlefield. AI is moving from an auxiliary role to a central one in intelligence fusion, decision support, target identification, combat operations, and cognitive warfare. And what is the solution? Chen’s answer is revealing: strengthen “Party control over the internet” and “Party control over data,” and “transform the advantages of Party leadership into the effectiveness of AI governance.” In other words, from the CCP’s perspective, the central question is not simply AI versus no AI. Nor is it even fundamentally a contest between the US and China. It is a contest between the US and the CCP over who gets to control AI, data, information, and ultimately the future of society. And whoever wins that contest will decide the future of humanity. mp.weixin.qq.com/s/jsc97cKVY…

In AI and nuclear alike, extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence | @vanderjas | bit.ly/3TryGiY

What "went rogue" is the Doomers, escaping their Silicon Valley sandbox. As it turns out, companies that believe that the probability their product will "kill all humans" is ">10% in the next decade" may struggle to sell a stake in their long-term future to those same humans!

Contrast the present hysteria with Los Alamos. The Manhattan Project scientists thought the first nuclear explosion could ignite the atmosphere and end humanity. They did the math. They determined it wouldn’t. And they proceeded. Because they weren’t fighting a thought experiment. They were fighting the Nazis. Effective Altruism inverts this. Multiply a sufficiently horrifying hypothetical future by enough hypothetical future humans and suddenly speculation acquires the moral authority of fact. That’s not empiricism. It’s secular eschatology. Take risks seriously. Do the work. Engineer against them. But don’t confuse the ability to imagine the apocalypse with the authority to rule the present.

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute has become an important voice in Australia's national security landscape over the past 25 years. Founded in 2001 as a bipartisan initiative, @ASPI_org's work has helped bring new ideas and independent perspectives to the issues that matter most to our country's future. #auspol #aspi #nationalsecurity #australia @BassiJustin @StatecraftINT

PSA: Stop getting in helicopters. wsj.com/world/kenya-helicopt…

🚨 NEW REPORT 🚨 In 'Past its use-by-date', @vanderjas examines how govts and critical infrastructure operators are accumulating dangerous exposure from end-of-life tech, and how a structured response can convert that liability into national advantage. 🔖: bit.ly/4x3nKpP

Australia just learned an old lesson from the AI age | @vanderjas | bit.ly/4vbcsQ1

Denis Alimov, FSB Alfa veteran and senior operative of Russia's new and "most secretive" assassination unit, walked into El Dorado Airport in Bogotá on Feb 24 looking like a tourist heading to Cartagena. He walked out in handcuffs. He was undone by Google Translate. 🧵New @TheInsider investigation with @DerSpiegel — thread below.

Senator Ron Wyden and Rep. Shontel Brown are calling for an investigation into the vulnerability of modern computers to what the NSA calls TEMPEST: spy techniques that pick up devices' secrets via their accidental electromagnetic/radio/acoustic emissions. wired.com/story/how-vulnerab…

It is a good thing for Australia, the Middle East and the world that the Ayatollah and many of his most senior Islamic Republic regime officials are dead. 1/4

Check out ⁦@BassiJustin⁩ speaking on how global insecurity is feeding social insecurity ⬇️ Reminder that political violence doesn’t just occur—it grows where aggression in public discourse is practised, platformed & consumed as entertainment. abc.net.au/listen/programs/s…

Making the Advanced Capability Investment Fund count | @vanderjas | bit.ly/3OnTHIE

Jason Van der Schyff, Fellow at @ASPI_org and Gregory Smith, Director of Technology Supply Risks, Department of Home Affairs, are bringing #Australia’s experience to the discussion. As grey-zone activities increase we need to work more closely with trusted partners.

We are proud to have two #Australian experts attending the #GCTF Workshop on Enhancing the Resilience of Communication Infrastructure.

South Korea held data domestically—and lost it in a fire | @vanderjas | bit.ly/4sNEpwg

AI in theatre: gaining decision advantage at machine tempo | @vanderjas | bit.ly/49OClgF

Infrastructure resilience underpins national power | @vanderjas | bit.ly/3Xu6z18

After MPs were told to switch off phones during a 🇨🇳 delegation visit to Parliament House, @vanderjas told @australian: “Phones are now part of the battlespace & states with the capability & intent will exploit them whenever the opportunity presents.” 🗞️: bit.ly/480IPYz

Great insights from @jbvolkmann in the latest @TheEconomist Drum Tower economist.com/podcasts/2025/…