China’s Minister of State Security Chen Yixin has laid out one of Beijing’s clearest warnings yet about the risks linked to artificial intelligence. According to Bloomberg, he said the rapid advance of the technology could pose threats to both political stability and critical infrastructure.
In an article published in the official magazine China Cyberspace, Chen Yixin wrote that the malicious use of artificial intelligence by adversaries could “directly threaten China’s political security, the security of the state system and ideological security.” He also said AI is becoming increasingly effective at identifying system vulnerabilities and can be used to create malicious software and tools to exploit it.
The article stands as one of the most explicit statements of China’s assessment of AI-related risks. It was published at a time when executives at leading US technology companies have been calling for a slowdown in the development of the technology. At the same time, there is no indication that the publication was tied to those statements, and the article does not mention recent calls by Anthropic PBC and OpenAI to reduce the pace of the race to build more advanced models.
Days earlier, Anthropic co-founder Dario Amodei said artificial intelligence capabilities were advancing faster than protective systems. He urged companies, the US and other democratic countries to coordinate their actions. Chen Yixin also stressed the importance of security, but framed the risks primarily through the lens of political control, technological sovereignty, external threats and strategic competition.
One of Beijing’s main concerns, he said, is that what he called “hostile” forces could wage “public opinion wars” and “cognitive warfare.” According to Chen, AI-generated deepfakes, texts and images, as well as social media bots, could be used to spread political rumors and harmful information and to stir divisions within society.
Chen Yixin also warned that countries holding an advantage in artificial intelligence could, under the banner of protecting national security, impose technological restrictions, “monopolize” industry standards and create closed ecosystems.
The position is in line with remarks made in July by Chinese President Xi Jinping in a speech devoted to the concept of national security.
