Media: Amazon sells AI to Britain’s security services for espionage

British intelligence agencies have signed a contract with Amazon to store and process secret materials. This will allow agencies to share information among themselves and conduct deep data analysis using artificial intelligence for espionage, reports the Financial Times.

The cloud service will be connected to MI5, MI6 and GCHQ. Other departments, including the Ministry of Defence, may also participate in information exchange in joint operations.

According to reports, the contract was signed in 2021, though its terms are not disclosed. Experts believe that over the next decade the security services will spend between $700 million and $1.4 billion on Amazon’s services. Data is planned to be stored within the United Kingdom, and the company will not have access to it.

According to former head of the United Kingdom’s National Cyber Security Centre, Kiran Martin, the decision will allow the security services to locate the needed information in minutes, rather than weeks or months. The use of AI will enable authorities to quickly locate a specific person, for example by voice sample from a vast array of audio data, he added.

Experts say the deal with the American company will attract close scrutiny from Parliament and regulators. By entrusting secret data to a foreign company, the United Kingdom risks losing sovereignty, they say. However, sources cited by the publication stressed that efforts to find a domestic cloud provider had not come to fruition.

As reported in October, AI is hindering CIA informants’ communications in Russia and China.

In September Britain approved its AI development strategy to compete with the United States and China.

In April, a U.S. senator introduced a bill prohibiting intelligence agencies from purchasing data from companies such as Clearview AI.

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