Security News > 2021 > April > GCHQ boss warns China can rewrite 'the global operating system' in its own authoritarian image

GCHQ director Jeremy Fleming on Friday delivered the 2021 Vincent Briscoe Lecture for the Institute for Security, Science and Technology, and opened with an observation that humans love to connect to each other, that digital connectivity continues to become more pervasive and important, and that Britain is "a big animal in the digital world."

China's size and technological weight means that it has the potential to control the global operating system.

"Fleming named Russia and China as the main threats and revised an analogy he's previously used that asserted"Russia is affecting the weather, whilst China is shaping the climate.

"Fleming highlighted"concerted campaigns to dominate international Standards developing organisations" as one area of concern, and called out smart city standards as creating risks "that we will import technology which hardwires data collection in ways that go against the interests and values of open, democratic societies.

The world therefore faces what Fleming described as "a moment of reckoning" in which the UK and its allies need to assert their values and ensure that technology ecosystems reflect their values.

For the UK that means ensuring "a very small percentage of key technologies must be truly sovereign to retain strategic technical advantage - things like elements of the cryptographic technologies that protect the UK's most sensitive information and capabilities." Investing in such capabilities and "Using statutory powers to restrict hostile foreign investment" will be needed.

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https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2021/04/26/jeremy_fleming_gchq_china_warning/