A new report comes amid rising concern about how China will use new tools to power covert actions, as Western intelligence services also embrace the technology.

Chinese spy services have invested heavily in artificial intelligence to create new tools to speed analysis, provide early warning of threats and potentially help shape operational plans during a war, according to a new report.

China, like the United States, hopes that artificial intelligence will improve the efficiency and accuracy of its intelligence analysis, allowing it to collect more intelligence and analyze it faster and more cheaply.

The study, by Recorded Future’s Insikt Group, which studies cybersecurity and other threats from nation-states, terrorists and criminal groups, comes amid rising concern about how Chinese spy agencies will use A.I. to power covert actions, as Western intelligence services also embrace the technology.

The researchers reviewed patent applications by the People’s Liberation Army, publicly available contracts and other material to better understand how China’s military and intelligence services have invested in artificial intelligence.

Recorded Future found that China is probably using a mix of large language models, technology that can analyze huge amounts of data and communicate its results in human language. Meta and OpenAI are thought to be among the American models that China is using, along with Chinese models from DeepSeek, Zhipu AI and others.

The C.I.A. and other American spy agencies have stepped up their use of artificial intelligence, both to improve analytic work and to help overseas operatives remain undiscovered. One tool developed by the C.I.A. is designed to help analysts assess the positions of foreign leaders, creating virtual versions of the officials that are powered by artificial intelligence.

The Pentagon announced on Monday that it was awarding a $200 million contract to OpenAI. The company, in a release, said its OpenAI for Government initiative would be used to improve administrative operations, including health care, but also improve work on military acquisition programs and support “proactive cyberdefense.”

Former American intelligence officials have said China’s large population has long given it a potential advantage over U.S. spy agencies, but artificial intelligence could even the playing field. Generative A.I. models can scan huge amounts of collected communications intelligence and queue the most interesting information for human analysts to examine.

Some U.S. officials said China’s investment in artificial intelligence was of little surprise, given its potential to improve analytic assessments. But the Recorded Future report found specific examples of how China could be using large language models and generative A.I. to not just improve its intelligence analysis, but also help military commanders improve targeting and operational plans.
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In October, Ordnance Science and Research Academy of China filed a patent application to use various forms of intelligence to train a military model. The application talks about the ways the model could be used, such as by crafting operational plans and helping battlefield intelligence analysts analyze friendly and enemy forces, according to Zoe Haver, the author of the study and a senior threat intelligence analyst at the Insikt Group.

Source: The New York times