China warns popular phone games may provide map data to train foreign military AI models

2-MIN READ2-MIN0ListenPublished: 7:00pm, 29 Jun 2026China’s top anti-espionage agency on Monday warned gamers that a company with overseas defence ties may be obtaining geospatial data via an augmented reality game.The warning quoted media reports about “the militarisation of civilian data” that said billions of environmental scans from a popular mobile phone game were being used to train AI models with potential battlefield applications.In a social media post, Beijing’s Ministry of State Security (MSS) cited reports that said an AI company linked to a prominent augmented reality (AR) game had harvested user geospatial scans, which could be used to train spatial AI models and potentially be deployed for military purposes by the firm which had partnered with a foreign defence contractor.00:44CIA targets Chinese military officers in new recruitment video“The report has fuelled global concern over the ‘militarisation of civilian data’ and served as a warning of the growing data security challenges in the digital intelligence era,” the ministry said.