FILE – In this Thursday, Feb. 14, 2019 file photo, Jeremy Fleming, head of the British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), in London. (AP Photo/Frank Augstein, file)
LONDON (AP) — Western countries risk losing control of technologies that are key to internet security and economic prosperity to nations like China and Russia if they don’t act to deal with the threat, one of the U.K.’s top spy chiefs warned Friday.
“Significant technology leadership is moving east” and causing a conflict of interests and values, Jeremy Fleming, director of government electronic surveillance agency GCHQ, said in a speech.
Singling out China as a particular threat, he said the country’s “size and technological weight means that it has the potential to control the global operating system.”