China is enthusiastically embracing the fast-developing technology of artificial intelligence in an effort to give the country a strategic edge over its rivals. Best known for defeating humans at boardgames as Go and chess as well as US gameshow Jeopardy the technology is being lined up by officials as a useful tool for assessing the potential risk of overseas investment presented by unstable regimes and terrorism. To do this the Chinese Academy of Sciences has coded a program capable of trawling vast amounts of data gleaned from China's sprawling diplomatic and intelligence network to make sense of information that would overwhelm human tacticians. AI is increasingly regarded as a revolution comparable to that of the combustion engine, sparking a global arms race as nations seek to become the first to master the technology. China already has a national AI strategy in place to guide development as it works to become the world's pre-eminent AI research hub by 2030.