West faces a moment of reckoning over technology, UK top cyber spy says – Security

The West faces a second of reckoning unless it will take profound motion to make certain technologies that determine its prosperity are not controlled by rivals these as China, the director of Britain’s GCHQ spy agency reported on Friday.

Britain’s spies believe that that China could within just many years dominate all of the crucial rising technologies of this century, specially artificial intelligence, synthetic biology and genetics.

In an unusually blunt speech, GCHQ Director Jeremy Fleming reported that the United Kingdom’s cyber power could not be taken for granted and that the rules were being shifting in methods that states did not constantly regulate.

“Devoid of motion it is ever more very clear that the crucial technologies on which we will rely for our upcoming prosperity and stability won’t be shaped and controlled by the West,” Fleming reported in a lecture at London’s Imperial College, according a textual content of his speech unveiled ahead of delivery.

“We are now facing a second of reckoning.”

GCHQ, which gathers communications from all around the planet to establish and disrupt threats to Britain, has a close partnership with the US Countrywide Stability Agency as nicely as with the eavesdropping companies of Australia, Canada and New Zealand in a consortium termed “Five Eyes”.

Fleming reported that if the United Kingdom wished to remain a world wide cyber power then it would have to produce “sovereign technologies” in areas these as quantum, together with cryptographic technologies, to shield delicate info and capabilities.

He also termed for greater fostering of the suitable market disorders to help innovation, and develop a diversity of provide in a broader set of technologies.

“The Uk actually is a world wide cyber power – a big animal in the digital planet,” he will say. “But historic toughness does not indicate we can presume we will be in the upcoming.”

In cyber intelligence, the United States is ranked by the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Centre as the prime world wide power, followed by Britain, China and Israel.