Revealed: COP28 president linked to spyware experts via ‘AI university’

The president of international climate conference COP28 works with surveillance experts linked to a phone tapping scandal and the “Chinese military industrial complex”, openDemocracy can reveal.

Sultan Al Jaber – who is the chair of a new “AI university” in the United Arab Emirates as well as the organiser of COP, which begins on Thursday – has claimed that AI will “unlock advances in climate progress”.

But his connections to the global surveillance industry underline concerns that the UAE may spy on delegates and campaigners at this week’s UN climate conference.

The Youth Climate Movement, an international activist network, has warned its members who are travelling to COP that “authorities can monitor civilians’ activity both online and offline with ease” and that “delegations should be prepared for surveillance as a method of intimidation”.

British citizens attending COP28 “will expose themselves to a tightly knit network of surveillance and monitoring”, according to Andreas Krieg of King’s College London – who also told openDemocracy that “electronic devices brought to the UAE have to be assumed to be infiltrated”.

One trustee of the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence, Peng Xiao, is also the CEO of a computing firm called Group42 that was behind a messaging service used as a “spying tool” on millions of UAE citizens.

The now defunct app – which used the same code as the Chinese snooping app YeeCall – was designed “to track every conversation, movement, relationship, appointment, sound and image of those who install it on their phones,” a New York Times investigation found.

At least three individuals at Al Jaber’s AI University have links to the Chinese surveillance sector.

Hacked phones

Xiao’s links to spy tech stretch back to at least 2015, when he became CEO of Pegasus: a big data firm that supplied tools to Dubai’s police force. Pegasus – not to be confused with the Israeli spyware also used by the UAE – has been described as “UAE’s answer to Palantir”, the controversial spy tech business that was awarded a huge NHS contract earlier this month.

During Xiao’s tenure, which lasted until 2018, Pegasus was in turn owned by an Emirati firm called DarkMatter – which hacked hundreds of “iPhones of activists, diplomats and rival foreign leaders” in 2016 and 2017, according to Reuters.

Using special software, DarkMatter hackers were able to “gather evidence on scores of targets – from activists critical of the government to regional rivals” and gain “access to compromising and at times sexually explicit photos of targets”.

Meanwhile, two key players at the AI university have links to Megvii, a Chinese firm that has been blacklisted by the US government for its repressive use of facial recognition software in Xinjiang.

A second trustee of the university, Kai-Fu Lee, was an early investor in Megvii and has vocally championed the firm’s “talent” – while an online biography of Hong Liang, the university’s chief of staff, says she was previously chief risk control officer at an “AI industrial investment fund” that was “backed” by Megvii.

The US Department of the Treasury has accused Megvii of “active support” for “biometric surveillance and tracking of ethnic and religious minorities in China” and claims the company is part of the “Chinese military industrial complex”.

Megvii-controlled firms can “recognize persons as being part of the Uyghur ethnic minority and send automated alarms to government authorities,” according to the Treasury.

Spying fears

There are widespread concerns that the UAE may now use COP28 to spy on conference delegates, journalists and activists alike.

Rulers of the UAE are reportedly behind the hacking of British citizens – including the Conservative peer Fiona Shackleton, a lawyer who acted for the Jordanian Princess Haya bint Hussein during her divorce from Dubai’s ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum.

Documents leaked to the Guardian suggest the UAE has targeted several other high profile Brits – including Pola Uddin, who sits as an independent in the House of Lords, Rhoula Khalaf, the editor of the Financial Times, and a number of activists and academics.

In September, more than 200 NGOs from around the world called for the UAE to “refrain from conducting surveillance related to COP28 and its attendees” and to “cease the use of spyware and surveillance technologies to repress peaceful critics and journalists”.

Reporters are also at risk of surveillance, according to Amnesty International, which said the UAE is suspected of targeting reporters at the Economist and Wall Street Journal.

This month, draconian restrictions on press freedom which called on journalists to “refrain from publishing anything that could offend directly or indirectly the ruling regime of the State” were removed from the UN website.

The “content standards” were “posted erroneously” in October this year by the UAE Media Regulatory Office, according to a spokesperson who told the news website Politico: “We look forward to hosting the most inclusive COP ever.”

Krieg said: “Critical discourse around COP28 will be widely made impossible – especially for activists and journalists that do not have the protection of a larger brand or employer behind them. But even here, evidence from the past suggests that often neither the passport of individuals nor their affiliation protects them from arbitrary arrests.

“The UAE have succeeded in creating an environment of self-censorship through repression, intimidation, harassment and compulsion. COP28 is therefore not going to provide a platform for effective grass-roots dialogue as most critical voices will likely take the decision to stay away from this event.”

Roles in the UAE government

Al Jaber himself has held controversial roles within the UAE government linked to censorship and the suppression of democracy.

Between 2015 and 2020, he chaired the National Media Council – a precursor to the Media Regulatory Office that was “responsible for censorship of all media content in the country,” according to Amnesty International.

In 2013, Al Jaber helped quash the ‘Arab Spring’ democracy movement in Egypt when he acted as a liaison point between the UAE and the newly formed military government of Abdel Fattah El-Sisi.

The UAE special envoy of climate change, the office for the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (which helps oversee COP), the Mohamed bin Zayed University for Artificial Intelligence and Group42 were all approached for comment and did not respond.

Rebecca White, a campaigner at Amnesty International’s Disrupting Surveillance Team, said: “We have received questions throughout the year from other civil society groups concerned about the risk of digital surveillance if they attend COP28. We share those concerns.

“The UAE has pledged to ensure space for activists’ voices at COP28. But in order to do this, the authorities must ensure at a minimum that they do not engage in extrajudicial or secret electronic surveillance for conference participants. They must also allow participants full use of encrypted messenger apps like Signal before, during, and after COP28.”