Certainly a concern!
"... Yet one of the most consequential pieces of Maduro’s authoritarian legacy remains intact.
As we show in our new report, Warning Signals: Venezuela and the risk of Chinese AI-enabled digital authoritarianism, Venezuela retains an apparatus of digital surveillance and political control built partly with Chinese technology. Before Maduro’s removal, Caracas had also begun preparing to add something new: Chinese artificial intelligence. ...
For two decades, Venezuela imported much of the plumbing of digital authoritarianism, such as telecommunications equipment, identity systems, cameras, command centres and technology for controlling the internet.
In July 2025 it took a potentially more consequential step: signing an agreement with Chinese AI company iFlytek.
After years of buying the infrastructure, Venezuela had contracted for the intelligence that could run on top of it. That AI layer has not yet been built. There is no public evidence that iFlytek, or any other Chinese company, is currently operating an AI surveillance system inside Venezuela. ..."
"... Now Venezuela is primed to upgrade its surveillance technology. This report shows that in the months before Maduro’s capture by U.S. forces in January 2026, the Venezuelan government signed an agreement to adopt Chinese-built AI systems, an initiative led by Maduro’s vice president Delcy Rodríguez, and signalled its intent to use Chinese AI to enhance existing state-sponsored surveillance.
The US has installed Rodríguez, who once supervised Venezuela’s repressive intelligence agency, as the country’s acting president. Under her leadership the Venezuelan government has neither liberalized nor dismantled the surveillance regime.
If Caracas continues to implement its plan to use Chinese AI for surveillance — and it has given no signal that it won’t — Venezuela will become one of the first countries outside China to import China’s new generation of LLM-based AI systems for surveillance and control, and the most advanced adopter in the Western Hemisphere. ..."
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