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Think tank the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) has warned that Venezuela is poised to adopt Chinese AI systems to enhance surveillance systems that already rely on Middle Kingdom tech, and called for US Secretary of State Marco Rubio to do something it.

ASPI outlined the Venezuelan situation in a recent report [PDF], titled Warning signals: Venezuela and the risk of Chinese AI-enabled digital authoritarianism.

The document explains that Venezuela’s government built a surveillance state a decade ago, largely using technology from Chinese companies. In 2025, according to the report claims, then Venezuelan vice-president Delcy Rodríguez led an effort that culminated in “an agreement to adopt Chinese-built AI systems … to use Chinese AI to enhance existing state- surveillance.”

One of the companies involved in that agreement is iFlytek, which the US banned in 2019 for its role in helping Beijing to repress the Uyghur Muslim population of China’s Xinjiang region.

The USA effectively took over Venezuela in January 2026 and installed Rodríguez as the nation’s leader. ASPI can find no signs she’s changed course on her plan to adopt more Chinese surveillance tech.

“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,” the report claims. And while ASPI’s analysts don’t think Venezuela’s government can recreate “China’s full-stack surveillance apparatus,” they worry that “Chinese or other AI tools could strengthen a domestically directed apparatus already used to manage dissent, restrict information and preserve political power.”

That arguably leaves Venezuelans no better off than they were before the US decided to replace former president Nicholas Maduro. And it leaves the USA effectively running a nation that relies on Chinese surveillance tech to maintain power, even as Washington seeks a greater role in Venezuelan affairs.

ASPI called on US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who effectively acts as viceroy of Venezuela, to dismantle the surveillance apparatus and enact political change. The think tank’s analysts believe doing so would signal that democracies are willing to combat China’s attempts to export its surveillance tech, and dismantle it when possible in the name of civil liberty.

“Beijing for its part recognizes this opening, and the risk it poses to Chinese companies and China’s political influence there,” the report states. “China’s leaders appear to understand that assets and investments of its national champions are at risk in Venezuela. Beijing’s approach seems to be, in part, strengthening oversight of state-owned assets abroad to assist in risk protection and management.”

The report does not address whether greater adoption of Chinese surveillance by Venezuela increases the risks the USA faces as it seeks to control the South American country. ®

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