Advanced sea drones provided by a tech company, also contracted to the United States Military, contained Chinese components sending data from Britain back to Beijing, a whistleblower report claims. The UK Ministry of Defence was forced to issue denials after claims emerged that the country’s new generation of sea drones (‘uncrewed surface vessels’) contained cameras built with Chinese components which were sending data home without the knowledge of the military or the company that built them. Conservative-leaning broadsheet The Daily Telegraph cited the remarks of a source within the military who blew the whistle on Chinese components built into scout drones communicating with an Internet Protocol (IP) address inside China, who said: “This is major failure to check origins of components and we have lost confidence in the platform”.
