Beijing Used Claude to Spy on Religious Targets, Dissidents, Including Falun Gong and NTD
Chinese state actors were using Claude to surveil dissident and religious communities, including practitioners of the faith group Falun Gong and NTD, The Epoch Times’ sister media outlet, tech company Anthropic said in a report.
TL;DR
- Chinese state actors used the AI chatbot Claude for surveillance of dissident and religious communities.
- Targets included Falun Gong practitioners, NTD, Catholic cardinals, Tibetan Buddhists, and Presbyterian Church leadership in Taiwan.
- The AI was used to ingest information, translate, summarize, and create Chinese-language dossiers and reports.
- Actors sought information on targets' China-related activities, negative information, and vulnerabilities for leverage.
- Anthropic identified these accounts as part of a China-based intelligence operation and has banned them.
- The actors also used Claude to gather intelligence on overseas dissidents and human rights groups, and for 'pre-operational venue intelligence' on protests and events.