\u201cAs we speak, the Chinese government is already exporting some of its most advanced military aerial drones to the Middle East, as it prepares to export its next-generation stealth UAVs when those come oneline,\u201d Esper said today at the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence conference. \u201cIn addition, Chinese weapons manufacturers are selling drones advertised as capable of full autonomy, including the ability to conduct lethal targeted\u00a0strikes.\u201d<\/p>\n The Chinese company Ziyan, for instance, markets the Blowfish A3, essentially a helicopter drone outfitted with a machine gun. Ziyan says it \u201cautonomously performs more complex combat missions, including fixed-point timing detection, fixed-range reconnaissance, and targeted precision\u00a0strikes.\u201d<\/p>\n As Greg Allen, chief of strategy and communications at the Defense Department\u2019s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, points out in this February paper for CNAS<\/span>, Ziyan is negotiating to sell its Blowfish A2 to the governments of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. \u201cDespite expressing concern on AI<\/span> arms races, most of China\u2019s leadership sees increased military usage of AI<\/span> as inevitable and is aggressively pursuing it. China already exports armed autonomous platforms and surveillance AI<\/span>, \u201d Allen\u00a0wrote.<\/p>\n Last year, Zeng Yi, a senior executive at NORINCO<\/span>, China\u2019s third-largest defense company, forecast that, \u201cIn future battlegrounds, there will be no people fighting\u201d \u2014as early as\u00a02025.<\/p>\n Esper also said Chinese surveillance software and hardware networks could help China develop AI<\/span>. \u201cAll signs point to the construction of a 21st-century surveillance state designed to censor speech and deny basic human rights on an unprecedented scale. Look no further than its use of surveillance to systematically repress more than a million Muslim Uighurs,\u201d he said. \u201cBeijing has all the power and tools it needs to coerce Chinese industry and academia into supporting its government-led\u00a0efforts.\u201d<\/p>\n Last week, the Defense Innovation Board put forward a list of AI<\/span> principles for the U.S.<\/span> military, which listed human governability as key, in line with previous policy going back to 2012. Esper called the list comprehensive and applauded\u00a0it.<\/p>\n He said it was \u201cequally troubling are the outside firms or multinational corporations that are inadvertently or tacitly providing the technology or research behind China\u2019s unethical use of\u00a0AI<\/span>.\u201d<\/p>\n One company that has received criticism recently for partnering with Chinese researchers is Google. n Tuesday, Kent Walker, the company\u2019s Senior Vice President for Global Affairs told the crowd at the forum, \u201cWe have chosen to scope our operations there very carefully.\u201d Walker added that the partnerships are limited to advertising and work that to support open-source coding\u00a0initiatives.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/cdn.defenseone.com\/media\/img\/upload\/2019\/11\/05\/Screen_Shot_2019-11-05_at_4.05.38_PM\/defense-large.png\" "\\"The")
China is exporting drones that it advertises <\/strong>as having lethal autonomy to the Middle East, Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Tuesday. It\u2019s the first time that a senior Defense official has acknowledged that China is selling drones capable of taking life with little or no human\u00a0oversight.<\/p>\n