[The author of this piece is Kawser Ahmed, Adjunct Professor, Natural Resource Institute (NRI), University of Manitoba.]
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The Nvidia case shows that foreign interference reaches well beyond election meddling. When the target is a leading AI-chip supplier globally, the stakes extend to export controls and threatens national security.
Canada’s Hogue Commission focused on interference in democratic institutions, while the 2025 CSIS public report goes further, identifying businesses, universities and researchers as targets of espionage and covert influence.
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Commercial relationships and personal networks can provide access to sensitive information and influential decision-makers. Gray-zone scholarship explains how states may pursue advantages through gradual, deniable actions that fall short of open conflict. Studies of Chinese influence operations describe the long-term cultivation of influential people and organizations.
The concern arises when relationships, economic leverage and information operations combine in a co-ordinated effort to manipulate decisions.
Personal relationships can also become instruments of influence. Oliver August’s 2007 book, Inside the Red Mansion: On the Trail of China’s Most Wanted Man, traced the rise of Xiamen businessman Lai Changxing. His lavish entertainment complex, the Red Mansion, reportedly provided officials with women and other favours.
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Lai fled to Canada in 1999 and fought removal for about 12 years; eventually, he was deported in July 2011. In 2012, a Xiamen court sentenced him to life in prison for smuggling and bribery.
Lai’s case involved corruption, not espionage. Still, if the Nvidia allegations are proven, they would point to a familiar technique — the “honey trap” — used in influence operations to leverage personal relationships for access to powerful people.
Canada has experienced economic coercion first-hand. After the 2018 arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou, China restricted imports of Canadian farm products and detained Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor. The Meng Wanzhou dispute showed how commercial and diplomatic ties can become levers of pressure.
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Canada aims to raise exports to China by 50 per cent by 2030. Wider market access may reduce dependence on the U.S., but it can also create vulnerabilities if security safeguards lag.
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Canada has announced more than $35 billion in federal northern and Arctic investments and a defence industrial strategy emphasizing dual-use technology, domestic innovation and secure supply chains.
China’s dominance of rare-earth processing creates another dependency. The International Energy Agency estimates China supplied 91 per cent of refined magnet rare earths in 2024. Some export controls are active although others have been suspended.
Canadian Arctic security assessments also identify Chinese interest in research, infrastructure and critical minerals.
The risks go beyond mining. Arctic communications, remote sensing, drones and data infrastructure can serve civilian and defence purposes simutaneously. That makes partnerships valuable but sensitive. As with Nvidia, the core question is who gains access to technology, operational data and intellectual property — and on what terms.
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Canada needs a practical security agenda.
Governments should brief executives and researchers on recruitment and information risks. Firms should strengthen safeguards around intellectual property and supply chains and give employees confidential ways to disclose conflicts of interest and report suspected coercion.
Intelligence agencies and industry associations should establish trusted channels for reporting suspicious approaches. Regulators should apply existing national-security investment screening and co-ordinate oversight of dual-use technologies, while protecting legitimate academic exchange and Indigenous authority over northern projects.
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