Pussyfooting around Chinese influence and data-mining in the West must end | Caleb Bond

Don’t give me any rubbish about freedom of speech for a country that doesn’t grant anyone else that right, writes Caleb Bond.

Should Chinese spyware that can send data to the Chinese Communist Party be allowed on government devices?

Of course not – that’s why the federal government, followed by the state government, banned AI bot DeepSeek this week.

And yet it’s still available for personal use.

So it’s perfectly OK to send your data to the CCP, even if you’re a public official, as long as it’s not on a work device.

The days of pussyfooting around Chinese influence and data-mining in the West must end.

We have to ban Chinese technologies that pose a clear threat to our cultural and national security.

DeepSeek – essentially China’s answer to ChatGPT – launched to the world last month.

The AI chatbot, which its makers claim was built and trained for just $A10m, wiped nearly a trillion US dollars off the stockmarket because if China is so advanced in its AI technology then US companies are in trouble.

The famous “Tank Man” footage filmed from the balcony of a Beijing Hotel in Tiananmen Square on June 5, 1989, doesn’t exist according to the Chinese Government or DeepSeek. Picture: ABC News Australia / Willie Phua

Such cheap production costs, if true, could mean Chinese domination of artificial intelligence.

This is technology that will soon be part of nearly every device and workplace, operating machinery and performing all manner of tasks.

Given Chinese companies are compelled by law to provide data to the CCP, that level of access is worse than scary.

Canadian cybersecurity expert Ivan Tsarynny examined DeepSeek’s code and told ABC News US that it had the ability to send data directly to China Mobile – a telecommunications company owned by the Chinese government and listed as a national security threat by the US in 2022.

Apart from that, it does the bidding of the CCP by refusing to provide certain information and massaging others.

Ask it what happened at Tiananmen Square and it won’t give you a straight answer.

Deepseek is a new AI chatbot app developed by China that has sent shockwaves through the tech world and quickly grabbed the attention of governments. Picture: Leon Neal/Getty Images

It declares that Taiwanese independence is a “serious challenge to China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity” and that “the complete reunification of the motherland is an unstoppable historical trend”.

Imagine an impressionable young person playing around with this technology, being infected by Chinese propaganda.

And that’s the point – to subvert Western nations by infiltrating them with CCP-aligned technology.

It’s the same with TikTok, owned by Chinese company ByteDance.

The version available in China, Douyin, has a child-friendly edition that shows science experiments, educational content, the arts and patriotic videos with a daily use-limit of 40 minutes.

Why, instead, do you think the version available in Western countries shows children mindless dross for hours on end?

We have allowed China a direct link to rot our children’s brains while they strengthen their own.

Nothing short of a full ban is appropriate.

And don’t give me any nonsense about freedom of speech – you have the freedom to say whatever communist guff you want.

But we shouldn’t be allowing China to exert direct cultural and political influence in Western nations when we are explicitly banned from doing so in China.

Among a long list of other websites, China bans X, Facebook, Instagram, Google, WhatsApp and our own ABC.

We are fools for allowing China to have unfettered access to Western minds while their people can’t even look up Gardening Australia – and the CCP knows it.

We’ve banned Chinese technology before – Huawei was black-listed from Australian 5G infrastructure in 2018 – and we can do it again.

All I’m asking for is a fair playing field.

Let Facebook and X operate in China without censorship and they can have TikTok and DeepSeek over here.

Until then, China is playing at a dangerous advantage of our own making.

Originally published as Pussyfooting around Chinese influence and data-mining in the West must end | Caleb Bond