TikTok, undersea cables and AI: How China’s digital expansion and surveillance raise security concerns in the West

With the global race for technological dominance heats up, national security experts are raising urgent concerns about China’s growing control over critical telecommunications infrastructure, an invisible battleground fought beneath the ocean through undersea cables, sprawling data centres and pervasive surveillance platforms.

Salih Hudayar, Foreign Minister for the East Turkestan government-in-exile, told Pieuvre that China’s expanding grip on global communications poses a direct threat to democracy and security in Western countries. “It’s not just a trade issue. It’s war, an information war,” Hudayar said. “And the West is losing.”

Undersea cables, vital arteries for global internet and communications are increasingly constructed or controlled by Chinese state-linked companies, raising fears that Beijing could gain access to sensitive data and the power to disrupt Western economies and military networks during crises.

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Hudayar also said that China is rapidly developing vast artificial intelligence data centres in East Turkestan, a region under occupation where Uighur communities face severe repression. Alarmingly, many of these facilities rely on advanced chips manufactured in the West despite existing export controls.

“This is the absurdity of the situation,” Hudayar said. “The US is enabling China’s growth by selling advanced tech, all in the name of short-term trade stability. Meanwhile, Beijing is turning it into a weapon.”

Another key front in this shadowy conflict is TikTok, which Hudayar described as a “surveillance platform masquerading as entertainment.” According to Pieuvre, the app’s parent company ByteDance collects extensive user data and passes it to Beijing, compiling detailed digital profiles of millions of Western citizens. Hudayar warned, “The Chinese Communist Party is compiling dossiers for future blackmail, political manipulation and ideological influence.”

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Hudayar stressed that the West must urgently invest heavily in developing its own secure technology infrastructure, ranging from building protected undersea cables to banning Chinese-made devices that could act as Trojan horses or risk falling under Beijing’s digital domination.

“China didn’t ask permission,” he concluded. “It launched this war. Now it’s up to the West to fight back, before it’s too late.”

With inputs from agencies