China’s government has pushed the country’s technology and financial firms to expand abroad, and Southeast Asia’s growing economies — and AI companies — offer promising opportunities. This report examines the scope and nature of Chinese investment in the region. It finds that China currently plays a limited role in Southeast Asia’s emerging AI markets outside of Singapore and that Chinese investment activity still trails behind that of the United States. Nevertheless, Chinese tech companies, with support from the Chinese government, have established a broad range of other AI-related linkages with public and commercial actors across Southeast Asia.

Machine learning advances have powered the development of new and more powerful generative language models. These systems are increasingly able to write text at near human levels. In a new report, authors at CSET, OpenAI, and the Stanford Internet Observatory explore how language models could be misused for influence operations in the future, and provide a framework for assessing potential mitigation strategies.

CSET's Ali Crawford and Jessica Ji submitted this comment to the Office of the National Cyber Director in response to a request for information on a national strategy for a cyber workforce, training, and education.

China is rapidly building cyber ranges that allow cybersecurity teams to test new tools, practice attack and defense, and evaluate the cybersecurity of a particular product or service. The presence of these facilities suggests a concerted effort on the part of the Chinese government, in partnership with industry and academia, to advance technological research and upskill its cybersecurity workforce—more evidence that China has entered near-peer status with the United States in the cyber domain.

Funding and priorities for technology development today determine the terrain for digital battles tomorrow, and they provide the arsenals for both attackers and defenders. Unfortunately, researchers and strategists disagree on which technologies will ultimately be most beneficial and which cause more harm than good. This report provides three examples showing that, while the future of technology is impossible to predict with certainty, there is enough empirical data and mathematical theory to have these debates with more rigor.

In the current cyber-threat environment, a well-educated workforce is critical to U.S. national security. Today, however, nearly six hundred thousand cybersecurity positions remain unfilled across the public and private sectors. This report explores high school cybersecurity competitions as a potential avenue for increasing the domestic cyber talent pipeline. The authors examine the competitions, their reach, and their impact on students’ educational and professional development.

We aim to demonstrate the value of mathematical models for policy debates about technological progress in cybersecurity by considering phishing, vulnerability discovery, and the dynamics between patching and exploitation. We then adjust the inputs to those mathematical models to match some possible advances in their underlying technology.

Tracking the output of a country’s researchers can inform assessments of its innovativeness or assist in evaluating the impact of certain funding initiatives. However, measuring research output is not as straightforward as it may seem. Using a detailed analysis that includes Chinese-language research publications, this data brief reveals that China's lead in artificial intelligence research output is greater than many English-language sources suggest.

China is following a national strategy to lead the world in artificial intelligence by 2030, including by pursuing “general AI” that can act autonomously in novel circumstances. Open-source research identifies 30 Chinese institutions engaged in one or more of this project‘s aspects, including machine learning, brain-inspired AI, and brain-computer interfaces. This report previews a CSET pilot program that will track China’s progress and provide timely alerts.

The Chinese military’s progress in artificial intelligence largely depends on continued access to high-end semiconductors. By analyzing thousands of purchasing records, this policy brief offers a detailed look at how China’s military comes to access these devices. The authors find that most computer chips ordered by Chinese military units are designed by American companies, and outline steps that the U.S. government could take to curtail their access.