The benefits are enticing. With AI, the future promises longer life expectancy, increased productivity, and better preservation of precious resources. You will be able to take a picture of a mole on your leg and send it electronically to a dermatologist, who will use deep neural networks to determine whether it is skin cancer. Data-driven sensors and drones will determine the perfect amount of pesticide and water to promote agricultural diversity and counter monocropping. The AI revolution in transportation will herald autonomous planes, trains and automobiles. Music will be created to improve not only mood but heart rate and brain activity.

But we should know by now that advanced technology can also be used for ill. The whispered worst-case scenarios stem from malign actors gaining control of the massive data sets that will train machines to compute faster, better and perhaps with more-penetrating insight.

A fierce contest between the U.S. and China is under way over who will dominate this new frontier. The Chinese Communist Party has proclaimed that it will become the world’s leader in AI by 2030. Already China is hard at work, building out 5G networks world-wide and launching a new cryptocurrency as part of a strategy of “eco-political terraforming,” or building a world that will enable it to control massive amounts of information and use it for political and economic advantage. Beijing already hoards vast quantities of data about its own 1.4 billion people, none of whom have privacy rights under the Communist regime.

Nevertheless, Beijing isn’t satisfied. It has turned its sights on the U.S. and has already exfiltrated some of the most sensitive information on the American people and military. These include repeated breaches since 2013 of medical systems and databases, and the decadelong targeting of the U.S. Navy’s ship-maintenance records and the names and personal details of 100,000 of its personnel.

In time, through artificial intelligence, China will be able to use Americans’ data against us. Personalized medical records could become personalized bioweapons, for instance. In 2017 Zhang Shibo, a retired Chinese general, wrote that biotech could provide China an offensive capability through the creation of “specific ethnic genetic attacks.” As for the stolen Navy data, understanding how the U.S. maintains its fleets will help China point out vulnerabilities in U.S. weapons systems and ship design to be exploited during a confrontation.

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