US Warns of China’s IP-Theft ‘Playbook’ for AI, Advanced Tech

Sam Kim, Bloomberg News

Nathaniel Fick, ambassador at large for Cyberspace and Digital Policy at the US State Department, during a keynote at the RSA Conference in San Francisco, California, US, on Wednesday, April 26, 2023. The RSA Conference brings together industry leaders in the world of cybersecurity at their annual event in San Francisco. , Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) -- The US should build a coalition of countries to stop China from applying its “playbook” of stealing intellectual property to advance in artificial intelligence and other key technologies, according to Nathaniel Fick, Ambassador at Large for Cyberspace and Digital Policy.

He said cybertheft has allowed China for decades to build next-generation wireless networks while subsidizing domestic companies to the point they can now develop globally competitive products on their own.

“If we allow the Chinese to run it again, they’ll run it in cloud computing, they’ll run it in AI, they’ll run it in every core strategic technology area,” he said Wednesday at a Hudson Institute forum. “We have to build the biggest coalition we can.”

China has repeatedly denied US allegations that it engages in theft of intellectual property. The Chinese embassy in Washington didn’t immediately respond to an emailed request for comment on Fick’s comments Wednesday.

Fick didn’t say whether the US would seek to create a formal group of governments, but he said the US should articulate its vision to “consequential hedging states in the middle.” He also said countries are starting to see national security and economic consequences from relying on what he called untrusted networks.

“They are looking for a way out,” he said. “It feels like the wind is shifting a little bit.”