China makes deals with other countries that allow Beijing to collect data on the citizens and national projects of other countries, which threatens their sovereignty and makes them vulnerable to Chinese influence. About it declared head of the British foreign intelligence service MI6 Richard Moore.

Countries that agree to such deals risk falling into a “data trap,” Moore said. Moore mentioned that when China sold COVID vaccines around the world, he often secured conditions under which recipient countries had to share their vaccination data sets with Beijing. According to Moore, this is exactly the kind of conditions in any trade that should be alarming.

MI6 is now mostly focused on China more than any other country. Such priorities are related to the growing global importance of China and the need to understand the intentions and capabilities of the Chinese government.

Moore also noted that China has an advantage over the UK, which allows it to receive “huge amounts of data” needed to train machine learning tools.

China has increased its huge datasets domestically by taking others overseas without worrying about data privacy, Moore said. Moore also stressed that MI6 will be increasingly involved in collecting information about how hostile states use AI for “unethical purposes.”