Beijing slams UK cyber report as smear campaign against China
China's foreign ministry on Wednesday criticised a UK cybersecurity report that alleged Beijing likely intends to use AI for operations against British critical infrastructure by 2028, calling the claims speculative and a smear campaign without evidence.
China warned Britain on Wednesday not to "smear" it, a day after a report said Beijing was likely intending to carry out AI operations against the UK's critical infrastructure.
The report by Britain's National Cyber Security Centre stated that "by 2028, it is highly likely China, Russia, and other nation states will routinely use AI cyber to achieve their geopolitical goals with the UK facing an increase in scale and speed of sophisticated cyberattacks".
"China highly likely has the intent and is best positioned to use AI for operations against critical national infrastructure and other strategic targets," the report added.
China's foreign ministry hit back on Wednesday, saying Britain had "long politicised the cybersecurity issue".
"China expresses serious concern over the UK's use of speculative language to smear China in the absence of evidence," spokeswoman Mao Ning said at a news briefing, when asked about the report.
The UK is "again using the old pretext of hacking to install new measures to suppress China's AI development", she added, calling this a "misguided approach".
Countries like Britain, the United States and New Zealand have publicly accused China of cyber breaches over the last decade, claims that Beijing has vehemently denied.