With the world’s largest mass surveillance network already under its belt, China is now looking to establish its omnipresence off-world, with plans to extend its sophisticated “Skynet” spy network to the Moon.
The China National Space Administration (CNSA), China’s equivalent to America’s NASA, in collaboration with the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, recently disclosed their intentions to build a massive lunar surveillance network in the Chinese journal Acta Optica Sinica.
According to Chinese media, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) aims to secure its planned lunar base with an omnipresent optical surveillance system, drawing directly from the extensive experience and technical prowess honed through Skynet, also known as Tianwang.
“The construction and operation of the optical surveillance system for the (International) Lunar Research Station can draw on the successful experience … of China’s Skynet project,” CNSA said in its report.
Paradoxically named for the highly advanced artificial intelligence (AI) system that becomes self-aware and tries to exterminate humanity through an army of robots and machines in the Terminator movie franchise, “Skynet” refers to an interconnected facial recognition system operated by the Chinese government.
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) flagship newspaper, the Global Times, reports Skynet’s facial recognition software has a 99.8% accuracy rate and can scan the entire population of China, 1.4 billion people, in under a second. However, these claims cannot be independently verified.
According to the PRC, the name “Skynet” originates from an ancient Chinese proverb describing the omnipresence of justice and not from the fictional AI killing machine. “There is forever a net in the sky, with [a] large mesh but letting nothing through,” the proverb reads.
And in fairness, the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) also has its own “SKYNET,” a classified program that uses machine learning to extract information on possible terror suspects using GSM cellular data.
However, the term “Skynet” is often colloquially used to describe the smothering system of mass surveillance used by the Chinese government to monitor its citizens.
Hellbound and Down 