Ministry urges gamers to be wary of app ‘check-in locations’ that seem abnormally clustered around classified or restricted facilities
2-MIN READ2-MIN ListenCarol Yangin BeijingPublished: 7:00pm, 29 Jun 2026China’s top anti-espionage agency on Monday warned gamers that a company with overseas defence ties may be obtaining geospatial data via an augmented reality game.The warning quoted media reports about “the militarisation of civilian data” that said billions of environmental scans from a popular mobile phone game were being used to train AI models with potential battlefield applications.
00:44CIA targets Chinese military officers in new recruitment video“The report has fuelled global concern over the ‘militarisation of civilian data’ and served as a warning of the growing data security challenges in the digital intelligence era,” the ministry said.
The game encouraged players to scan and upload recordings of real-world locations through their devices in exchange for in-game rewards.
Niantic Spatial – a spin-off company from Niantic – owns nearly 30 billion scans from the game and used these data in training a 3D model that allows for very precise navigation when the GPS signal drops, Dutch media outlet Trouw reported this month.
