Published Date: June 11, 2026 | Source: BBC, Banned Book (Retrospective)
A recently published internal report from OpenAI revealed a troubling pattern: evidence suggests that Chinese state-level accounts have been using ChatGPT as a "surveillance diary" for cross-border operations against critics. According to the BBC report, these accounts used AI assistance in dozens of suppression strategies — from maliciously flagging dissidents' social media accounts, flooding platforms with smear posts, forging documents, and impersonating US officials to intimidate opponents.
The requests were broad and strategic, including targeting Japanese political figures such as Sanae Takaichi. OpenAI has since blocked the relevant accounts. When asked about these allegations at a press briefing on February 26, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning responded only: "I'm not aware of what you are referring to, nor have I seen any basis for this claim." This vague response has only fueled skepticism.
The core issue here is not just about one country. It demonstrates that when governments use public AI tools as instruments of power, every single conversation you have becomes someone else's data asset.
No matter which cloud-based AI service you use — ChatGPT, Claude, or otherwise — every prompt you type is recorded. For most users this seems harmless: "I just asked a question." But when that same power falls into the hands of state actors with surveillance agendas, your ideas, business plans, sensitive data, and casual daily queries become material for monitoring.
This incident makes one thing clear: the fundamental flaw of public AI isn't about quality — it's about data ownership. Once your information leaves your control, there is no guarantee you'll ever get it back.
Lafa System's AI ops services are built entirely on 100% on-premise AI models. All log analysis, attack pattern recognition, and threat detection happen within your own environment. No data leaves your premises. No cloud provider sees your information. There is no external party that can be compelled to hand over your data.
Every public AI platform has zero data privacy — your data, ideas, and API keys are all exposed to those providers at any time. Are you really comfortable with that?