Chinese officials are developing high-tech mechanisms to monitor and suppress religious believers as an alternative to physical detention camps, according to a senior United States diplomat.

“The big one that really concerns me is their use of advanced technologies,” Ambassador Sam Brownback, the State Department’s lead official for international religious liberty issues, told the Washington Examiner. “So they’ll have less people locked up probably in the future but more people under oppression by uses of cameras and artificial intelligence and social credit systems, where they will be controlling you.”