Taiwan starts AI-powered campaign to recruit Chinese informants and whistleblowers

TAIPEI, June 14 — Taiwan’s ​government launched a website on Sunday to encourage Chinese nationals to report intelligence tips, saying it was offering a secure channel to what it ‌says is an increasing number of people who are fed up with the ​system and want change.

Taiwan and China, which views the democratically governed island as its own territory, have long spied on each other, and Taiwan in particular has reported an increased number of ​Chinese espionage cases.

Taiwan’s National Security Bureau said on its website that in recent years, China’s economy has faced growing difficulties, while political control has remained “tight”.

“Coupled with a growing range of social and livelihood-related problems, these conditions have fuelled public discontent,” said a statement in Chinese and English. “As a result, an increasing number of individuals ‌have approached relevant agencies in Taiwan, wishing to provide various types of information.”

China’s Taiwan ⁠Affairs Office did not immediately respond to a ⁠request for comment.

The website opens to a one-minute ⁠promotional video that the bureau said ⁠was AI-generated, showing a ⁠Chinese civil servant witnessing colleagues being investigated and removed from their posts.

“Ah, yet another person has been taken away,” the unnamed civil servant says in a northern Chinese accent, ⁠with subtitles in the simplified characters used in China.

“The old comrades are inexplicably vanishing one by one,” the narrator says.

The video ends with the official buying a mobile phone and typing on it, saying: “Now is the time to change”.

The website is blocked in China, though many Chinese use VPNs to access other blocked sites like ⁠Western social media and search engines.

The bureau called on Chinese nationals at home or abroad to “actively provide information and make changes with courage”.

It said ⁠the new tactic was following the lead of agencies in such countries as the US, ⁠Britain and ⁠Israel.

The channel enables Chinese nationals to provide intelligence-related information to “expand the bureau’s diverse intelligence sources”, it said.

China ​has tried similar tactics itself. In 2024, ​China announced an email address where people could ‌report tipoffs about crimes committed by Taiwan “separatists”.

Taiwan’s government rejects ​Beijing’s sovereignty claims, saying only the ​island’s people can decide their future. — Reuters