Undercover operatives and agents play a crucial role in preventing and safeguarding victims from the most serious crimes, including terrorism. In order to gain the trust of those under investigation, there are occasions where they need to participate in criminality themselves. This is a long-standing capability which remains critical for national security.

The Covert Human Intelligence Sources Bill provides certainty to public authorities already using this critical capability and confirms a common set of safeguards by which they are bound, including compliance with Human Rights.

Debt of gratitude

Security Minister James Brokenshire said: “We owe a huge debt of gratitude to the men and women who put themselves in often dangerous situations in order to protect our national security and keep the public safe. In the course of this vital work, it may be necessary for agents to participate in criminal activity in order to gain the trust of those under investigation. This is a critical capability and subject to robust and independent oversight. It’s important that those with a responsibility to protect the public can continue this work, knowing that they’re on a sound legal footing to do so.”

Ken McCallum, director general of MI5, stated: “Throughout MI5’s history, human agents have played a critical role in helping to protect the UK from terrorist threats and hostile activity by states. Since March 2017, MI5 and Counter-Terrorism Policing have together thwarted 27 terror attacks. Without the contribution of human agents, be in no doubt that many of these attacks would not have been prevented. In some situations, it’s both necessary and proportionate to authorise agents to be involved in some managed level of criminal activity in order to win or maintain the trust of those intent on harming the UK and gain the critical information needed to save lives.

This power, carefully used and independently overseen, is vital such that we can continue to meet our duty to keep the public safe.”

Express power

DAC Graham McNulty, Covert Human Intelligence Sources lead at the National Police Chiefs’ Council, explained: “We welcome the creation of an express power which will ensure policing can continue to deploy this vital tactic against the most harmful offenders. From terrorists to violent gangs and organised criminals who seek to harm the most vulnerable in society, this Government Bill will help us to disrupt their activities and keep our communities safe.”

Lynne Owens, director general of the National Crime Agency, commented: “We lead the UK’s fight to cut serious and organised crime, focusing on the most determined criminals who dominate communities through violence linked to drugs and firearms supply, who abuse the vulnerable and who threaten the UK’s economic security and institutions. Law enforcement has long used Covert Human Intelligence Sources to help thwart the most serious criminal threats to our nation and its partners.”

Owens went on to state: “Only when it’s absolutely necessary and proportionate will we authorise our Covert Human Intelligence Sources to be involved in a limited form of criminal activity. This is done with great care and scrutiny. Without this capability we would not be able to bring to justice criminals and their groups who conspire to harm the UK and its citizens. We welcome this new legislation which puts this crucial capability on a firm foundation.”

Robust oversight

Robust independent oversight is provided by the Investigatory Powers Commissioner, namely Sir Brian Leveson, who carries out regular inspections and publishes an Annual Report on the findings for public consumption.

This capability is supported by the courts, with the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (in its recent supportive judgment on the use of Covert Human Intelligence Sources participation in criminal conduct) noting that: “The policy… has been exercised with scrupulous care by the Security Service so as to discharge its essential functions in protecting national security, while also giving proper regard to the Human Rights of persons who may be affected by the activities of agents.”

The Investigatory Powers Commissioner has also commented that, with regards to MI5, “in every case that we examined… the activity authorised was proportionate to the anticipated operational benefits”.

The public authorities that will be authorised under the Bill are the UKIC, the police service, the National Crime Agency, the Home Office (immigration and borders functions), Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, HM Forces and their police, the Ministry of Justice (HMPPS), the Competition and Markets Authority, the Environment Agency, the Financial Conduct Authority, the Food Standards Agency, the Gambling Commission, the Medicines and Healthcare Regulation Authority and, last but not least, the Serious Fraud Office.

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Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal and Palantir, ignited an important conversation in July when he accused Google of “seemingly treasonous” activity and urged President Donald Trump’s administration to investigate the company’s motivations for operating an artificial intelligence (AI) lab in Beijing while refusing to work with the U.S. Department of Defense. Trump initially agreed that Google should be investigated. However, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin met with Google leaders and afterward said he was reassured that the tech giant does not directly support or work with the Chinese military.

Thiel responded with a pointed op-ed published Aug. 1 in The New York Times that Google’s reassurances and Mnuchin’s response seemed to be ignorant of China’s stated goals to fuse its public and private sectors, assuring that all private technology is ultimately given to the People’s Liberation Army for strategic advantage. Thiel colorfully asserted that Google is either suffering from an “extreme strain of parochialism” or is ill-informed of Chinese intent, or it is intentionally engaging in “seemingly treasonous” cooperative activities to advance the communist nation’s strategic objectives.

Confusing Google’s position further, Eric Schmidt, chairman of Google’s parent company Alphabet, in 2017 had urged the United States to step up its AI innovation because China may soon surpass it. Schmidt, referencing Chinese policy, clearly understands that China intends to become the global AI superpower and use the technology for military purposes. Incongruencies in national and corporate strategies are emerging from this debate. China, holding homogenous control over both public and private sectors, is in a strong position to take advantage of Google’s AI research to advance its own strategic objectives above those of the United States. China is zealously protective of its national interests and is stealing as much intellectual property as possible from the United States, quickly catching up with decades of innovation and investment in advanced technologies at a fraction of the time and cost. Some of these technologies, such as AI, could be game-changers in the balance of world power. What does this ultimately mean for American tech giants like Google that are working cooperatively with Beijing while avoiding military contracts at home, and how should the United States protect its own disruptive innovation and technological advancement from exploitation by the Chinese military through replication and fusion between public and private entities?

Protecting Advanced Technology as a Strategic Resource

Advanced technologies are an important strategic resource, most obviously for purposes of wartime advantage but more opaquely for cold war or clandestine peacetime objectives. The strategic advantages of technology for corporations are equally apparent but typically less dire in consequence. These distinctions are beginning to blur as corporations create and develop disruptive technologies that upend entire industries, erase borders of global trade, or shift the balance of economic or military power to nations that best implement innovation toward their own strategic goals.

Unprotected, disruptive technologies are almost always integrated or otherwise adapted to benefit foreign militaries and can give significant strategic advantages to U.S. adversaries if not adequately protected and leveraged at home. China has been taking full advantage of every instance it can to exploit data leaks, positions at universities and human intelligence to capitalize on U.S. technology innovation and investments. Joel Brenner, former inspector general at the National Security Agency, laid out an alarming case in his 2011 book, America the Vulnerable: Inside the New Threat Matrix of Digital Espionage, Crime, and Warfare, that the United States is bleeding wealth and intellectual property to China to such an extent that it threatens national security. In the interconnected information age, even the most protected and classified technologies often wind up on the dark web or otherwise available to foreign militaries through theft or espionage, so adversarial militaries inevitably will leverage fully open source or unprotected technologies that offer major strategic advantages.

Private companies such as Google are making wildly disruptive technological advancements that are still unprotected and in the infancy of proper regulation. The government heavily protects and regulates technologies considered to be weapons of mass destruction, such as nuclear or chemical technologies; yet regulators have not fully defined the similar dangers of cyber and economic warfare to harm the lives of an equally large number of people.

Good Intention and Collaboration or One-Sided Strategic Advantage?

There is little doubt that Google has developed vitally important technologies that offer enormous strategic advantages to its customers, including nation-states. Western, democratic minds understand Google’s open-source business model to offer advantages to anyone who wishes to use and help to advance the technology for strategic purposes. However, when viewed through the lens of geopolitical competition, this goodwill can be used as a massive accelerator for innovation and leveraged as a strategic resource furthering the goals of the Communist Party of China enough to shift the balance of technological power.

In his book The Hundred-Year Marathon: China’s Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower, renowned China expert Michael Pillsbury lays out a comprehensive analysis of Chinese objectives to overtake the United States using Western parochialism to their advantage to steal and leverage every bit of American technology they can access. Fully embracing this empathy-inducing disguise of the humble, developing nation, the Chinese have endeared themselves into the good graces of the U.S. government, former presidents and American educational institutions, gaining unfettered access to innovation and invention across every sector of science and technology. This has led to a well-known yet underemphasized hemorrhaging of both intellectual property and data from the United States to China.

Looking back several millennia to the great philosophers and strategic thinkers of ancient China reveals a deep-rooted emphasis on clandestine activities, deception and espionage with the moral intent of avoiding full war at all cost. The Western, democratic ethos is different, respecting individual rights and speaking out against torture and deceptive activities as the more ethical approach. This divergence in ethics often introduces bias in analyses of China because Western analysts may not fully grasp that this meaningful use of deception and covert activity is engrained deep into the Chinese psyche as the most ethical approach. Chinese philosophy and history are steeped in these ancient ideas from Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, that “Successful war follows the path of deception” and “the ultimate achievement is to defeat the enemy without even coming to battle.”

The Chinese government is equally misunderstood by Westerners, with far less public accountability and a single ruling political party. Rather than democratic elections or multiple parties competing for public trust, China’s Communist Party has the power to act in its own best interest regardless of individual rights or however it might harm its own people to ensure higher national objectives. The one-party government can co-opt private Chinese businesses for military purposes at any time. According to the Council on Foreign Relations, the Communist Party of China strongly emphasizes “civil-military fusion” to assure that both foreign and domestic businesses in China are contributing directly to the People’s Liberation Army and Chinese national objectives whether they are aware of it or not, rendering it impossible to do business in China without ultimately supporting the military or Communist objectives to some extent.

Despite this seemingly adversarial mindset, China is not intentionally provocative or attempting to conquer other nations without pretext. More fundamentally, China is in a fragile and growing position in the world with a great deal of responsibility in the East. In this position, the balance of power can easily be shifted and populist movements can cause upheaval as seen in Tibet or Hong Kong. The Chinese government typically shows restraint until events threaten national stability or the government’s claims of sovereignty over administrative regions and neighboring islands. This is why China has focused most of its efforts on subversion and clandestine operations rather than building up a large, kinetic military force.

Westerners often assume the Chinese military is at a significant disadvantage because it cannot match the might of the United States, yet analysts within the U.S. intelligence community have written about the subversive abilities of China to disrupt America’s critical infrastructure or economy. This clandestine disruption can have harmful effects on millions of people without clear attribution or evidence of an attack, putting the Chinese within their objective of defeating the enemy without coming to battle.

An Important Debate About Priorities

Thiel ignited an important debate when he questioned Google’s priorities for working with China on AI research while ending its AI work with the Pentagon: How concerned should the United States be about American companies working with China on its most significant technological advancement? Are Google’s AI research efforts in China “seemingly treasonous,” as Thiel put it, and worthy of investigation? Or are they an ignorant or naive act of goodwill in innovation and collaboration? Should the U.S. government vigorously regulate Google and other large tech companies, or break them up, as some critics suggest, given their size and influence?

In addition to its AI research,  the extent of Google’s control over the search for and distribution of information is a national, strategic resource in itself. Statements by the company’s leaders suggest an attitude that Google’s importance and significance transcend national interests, though its international behavior at times seems to belie this mindset. Tech giants are no more immune to potential espionage and foreign influence than energy or defense companies or any other business with vast international ties and interests. And when Google’s actions are considered within the context of China’s interests and history, Thiel’s argument gains merit. In its attempt to adhere to its old “don’t be evil” mantra by disengaging with the Pentagon’s AI research, Google may learn how the proverbial road to hell is paved with good intentions.

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Two former high-ranking national security officials are criticizing Google for developing artificial intelligence in China while backing out of working with the Department of Defense, a move they said could benefit Chinese military and intelligence services.

Ash Carter, secretary of Defense under President Barack Obama, said Thursday that Google could be helping the Chinese military without knowing it. And the tech giant’s refusal to continue working with the Department of Defense on its AI development was a “mistake,” Carter said on CNBC.

The recent round of criticism comes after Peter Thiel, a Silicon Valley investor and supporter of President Trump, accused Google of acting “treasonous” by working on AI in China. Trump echoed Thiel’s concerns after referencing a “Fox & Friends” segment by tweeting that his administration would “take a look.”

Richard Clarke, who was a top counterterrorism and cybersecurity aide in the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, also backed Thiel’s criticism of Google.

“If you turn around and you work on artificial intelligence in China, and you don’t really know what they’re going to do with that, I think there’s an issue,” Clarke said on CNBC Wednesday.

A Google spokesperson flatly denied the company works with the Chinese military.

“We are not working with the Chinese military. We are working with the U.S. government, including the Department of Defense, in many areas including cybersecurity, recruiting and healthcare,” the spokesperson said in an emailed statement.

Trump’s nominee for secretary of Defense, Mark Esper, also stressed during his confirmation hearing last week that AI development would be a priority for him.

“Different people put different things as No. 1. For me it is AI,” Esper said. “It will likely change the character of warfare.”

While Google’s search function is banned in China, it announced the opening of an AI center in 2017. The company has long-courted China and taken criticism for its pursuit of the more than billion-person market. Recently, a top Google executive confirmed at a Senate hearing the company was not working a censored version of its search function for use in China.

Last year Google employees protested the company’s involvement with the Defense Department’s Project Maven, citing ethical issues. The project aims to help Air Force analysts make better use of full-motion video surveillance by deploying AI and machine learning in the place of human eyeballs.

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The administration of US President Donald Trump is exploring curbing exports of sensitive technologies including artificial intelligence for national security reasons, according to a proposal this week.

The proposal to control sales of certain technologies “essential to the national security of the United States” comes amid growing trade friction with Beijing — and fears that China may overtake the US in some areas such as artificial intelligence.

The Commerce Department said in the proposed rules, published Monday, that it would consider curbs on various AI technologies such as neural networks and deep learning, computer vision, natural language processing and audio and video manipulation.

The proposed rules also said export curbs would be examined for microprocessor technology, quantum computing, robotics and other sectors.

The US is examining controls for “specific emerging technologies” that would avoid “negatively impacting US leadership in the science, technology, engineering, and manufacturing sector,” said the federal register notice.

But banning AI exports could be counterproductive to US goals, said Daniel Castro, vice president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a Washington think tank.

“If the US government bans the export of AI technology, other countries will likely enact reciprocal policies,” Castro said.

“It will mean US companies are locked out of certain markets, allowing firms in other countries to compete unchallenged.”

Castro said a ban also would “prevent the type of international research collaboration needed in an emerging technology such as AI,” including with China.

Meanwhile, a report this month by the Center for Strategic and International Studies said there are difficult tradeoffs when considering AI and national security in light of cross-border investments.

“If an adversary succeeds in acquiring technology from a US firm or start-up through investment, that is a detriment to national security,” the CSIS report said.

“On the other hand, if the United States refuses to work with companies that have Chinese investment or funding because of the national security risk that this investment might pose, these companies could lose access to significant investment potential and the US government also loses a potential partner for new ideas and capabilities.”

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India is considering the use of Artificial Intelligence for national security and military strategic purposes and the government is studying a report recommending the use of technology in aviation, naval, land systems, cyber, nuclear and biological warfare.

Minister of State for Defence Subhash Bhamre told the Lok Sabha that the ministry has initiated the process of preparing Indian defence forces in their use of Artificial Intelligence and leveraging India” capabilities in machine learning sectors.

This, he said, has a potential to fuel technology-driven economic growth and provide military superiority.

To study strategic implications of Artificial Intelligence for national security, a task force comprising the government, services, academia, industry, professionals and start-ups was constituted in February this year.

The group led by Natarajan Chandrasekharan, Chairman Tata Sons, was tasked to prepare a road map for Artificial Intelligence for national security purposes.

The Task Force submitted its report on June 30 after studying the level of Artificial Intelligence development in India in general and specifically in the context of defence needs.

The group has made recommendations relating to making India a significant power of Artificial Intelligence for both defensive and offensive needs, Mr Bhamre said.

The group has also made recommendations for policy and institutional interventions required to regulate and encourage robust Artificial Intelligence-based technologies for the defence sector in the country.

Considering that most Artificial Intelligence work is happening in the private sector, it has also made recommendations to work with start-ups and commercial industry in the field of use of Artificial Intelligence for defence purposes.

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