No secret: British MI6 spy chief warns race is on for mastery of AI

Richard Moore, a former diplomat who became MI6 chief in 2020, says technological progress over the next decade could outstrip all tech progress over the past century.

The chief of Britain's foreign spy service warned on Tuesday that the West's adversaries such as China and Russia were racing to master artificial intelligence in a way which could revolutionise geopolitics over the next decade.

The world's spies, from Langley and London to Moscow and Beijing, are trying to grapple with seismic advances in technology that are challenging traditional human-led spying operations which dominated for thousands of years.

Richard Moore, chief of the Secret Intelligence Service, known as MI6, said quantum engineering, engineered biology, vast troves of data and advances in computer power posed a threat that needed to be addressed