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Digital Authoritarianism Alina Polyakova and Chris Meserole

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POLICY BRIEF Exporting digital authoritarianism Alina Polyakova and Chris Meserole As Russia, China, and other states advance influence through forms of digital authoritarianism, stronger responses are needed from the U.S. and like-minded partners to limit the effects of their efforts. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY unprecedented high-tech repression deployed in Xinjiang in recent years, and has exported Digital authoritarianism — the use of digital surveillance and monitoring systems to at least 18 information technology by authoritarian regimes countries. Russia relies less on filtering information to surveil, repress, and manipulate domestic and and more on a repressive legal regime and foreign populations — is reshaping the power intimidation of key companies and civil society, a balance between democracies and autocracies. lower-cost ad hoc model more easily transferable to At the forefront of this phenomenon, China and most countries. The Russian government has made Russia have developed and exported distinct recent legal and technical moves which further technology-driven playbooks for authoritarian tighten control, including legislation passed this rule. Beijing’s experience using digital tools for year to establish a “sovereign Russian internet.” domestic censorship and surveillance has made it the supplier of choice for illiberal regimes looking The authors recommend that the United States to deploy their own surveillance systems, while and other democracies should tighten export Moscow’s lower-cost digital disinformation tools controls on technologies that advance digital have proven effective in repressing potential authoritarianism, sanction regimes engaging in opposition at home and undermining democracies digital authoritarianism and firms that supply them, abroad. develop a competitive democratic model of digital governance with a code of conduct, and increase This policy brief examines the development and public awareness around information manipulation, export of both the Chinese and Russian models. including funding educational programs to build China pioneered digital age censorship with its digital critical thinking skills among youth. “Great Firewall” of a state-controlled Internet and 1 DEMOCRACY & DISORDER EXPORTING DIGITAL AUTHORITARIANISM INTRODUCTION on the digital domain since the early 2000s, it has not been the “industry leader” in developing In January 2010, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton these tools. Rather, Moscow’s domestic model delivered a landmark speech on internet freedom in is relatively low-tech when it comes to domestic which she argued that the spread of communications surveillance. Its main focus has been the export of technology and free flow of information would digital disinformation tools — a suite of information ultimately lead to greater freedom and democracy.1 influence techniques easily bought and deployed by In the years since, that view has come under other state and non-state actors. Moscow’s model increasing strain. Most notably, China and Russia of low-tech surveillance, due to its relative low cost have learned how to leverage both the internet and and adaptability, is finding appeal among resource- information technology in ways that have reduced poor governments that lack China’s economic rather than expanded human freedom. Worse, prowess, human capital capacities, and centralized they have also begun to export their models of state control. digital authoritarianism across the globe. Absent an effective democratic response, including an Yet as different as the Chinese and Russian international rules of the road framework around motivations and capabilities have been, the surveillence technology exports, further advances end result is remarkably similar: each country in information technology may well yield a world of has developed a set of tools that enable rising ever greater repression rather than liberalization. authoritarians to repress potential opposition at home while undermining democracies abroad. Digital authoritarianism — the use of digital information technology by authoritarian regimes to surveil, repress, and manipulate domestic and THE CHINESE MODEL foreign populations — is reshaping the power Beijing’s approach to information technology dates balance between democracies and autocracies. back to the reformist era of Deng Xiaoping. In keeping While China is driving innovation in high-tech with Deng’s vision for opening China’s economy social control, Russia has been more willing to while maintaining social stability, Zhongnanhai weaponize information technologies as part of has consistently viewed digital technology as a key targeted influence operations. Both countries have driver of economic development as well as a tool developed and exported new tech-driven playbooks for preserving and even extending political control.2 for authoritarian rule, but their strategies are quite The strategy has largely been a success. China distinct. The Chinese have long pioneered digital now boasts world-class technology and the second tools for domestic censorship and surveillance, largest economy in the world,3 yet the country’s dating back to the initial launch of its “Great Firewall” openness to global trade and information technology over two decades ago. More recently, Beijing’s long has not led to any meaningful political reform. The experience building a robust digital surveillance Chinese Communist Party (CCP) remains thoroughly architecture has started to pay dividends: China entrenched in power, and Xi Jinping enjoys an has increasingly become the supplier of choice extraordinary degree of political control.4 for illiberal regimes looking to deploy surveillance systems of their own. Beijing has leveraged information technology both online and offline. Email first arrived in China in By contrast, Moscow is struggling to catch up 1987, and the commercial internet in 1994.5 Not with China’s high-tech model of domestic control. long after, Party leaders began insisting that the Although the Russian government has sought to web would need to be used in accord with “Chinese clamp down on internet freedom, gain access to characteristics.”6 In 1996, when only 150,000 citizens’ personal data, and impose more control 2 DEMOCRACY & DISORDER EXPORTING DIGITAL AUTHORITARIANISM Imams and Chinese government officials pass under security cameras as they leave the Id Kah Mosque in Kashgar, Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, China, during a trip organized by the government for foreign reporters. January 4, 2019. REUTERS/Ben Blanchard Chinese were online, State Council Order No. 195 rights activists are nonetheless frequently detained explicitly brought the internet under state control. for what they post on popular social media sites like Within a year Wired was already referring to the Weibo and WeChat, both of which are aggressively “The Great Firewall of China.”7 In the twenty years monitored.11 (Indeed, in Xinjiang, residents are only since, Beijing’s legal and technical architecture allowed to use WeChat, precisely because it is so for web censorship and surveillance has grown widely monitored.)12 Meanwhile, applications and dramatically. Although Xi centralized control over websites that do not comply with Beijing’s demands the internet in 2013, principally through the creation operate at considerable peril: in the first three weeks of a Cyberspace Administration that reports directly of 2019 alone, the Xi regime shut down over 700 to him, the Chinese web is now overseen by over websites and 9,000 mobile apps, including those sixty agencies with vast legal and technical ability to owned by prominent companies like Tencent.13 monitor and regulate online activity.8 Far from sparking a political opening, within China the internet has been a valuable space for state censorship and surveillance. Far from sparking a political opening, within Yet the Chinese are not just monitoring online China the internet has been a valuable space activity. In 2005, the Ministry of Public Security for state censorship and surveillance. (MPS) and Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) jointly launched a program called SkyNet, which aimed to install a national network of Beijing’s control over both the infrastructure and CCTV feeds.14 By 2010, Beijing alone was blanketed application layer of the web has had a profound with 800,000 surveillance cameras, and by 2015 impact on political behavior.9 Although the CCP allows Beijing police boasted that the city was 100% for some forms of criticism,10 dissidents and human covered. More than 20 million more cameras were 3 DEMOCRACY & DISORDER EXPORTING DIGITAL AUTHORITARIANISM in use nationwide.15 Based on the success of the Beijing is not just constructing separate SkyNet program, the National Development and surveillance systems for the web and real-world. It Reform Commission (NDRC) in 2015 then set the is also increasingly seeking to link the two. Most ambitious goal of covering all of China’s public notably, in 2014 the State Council announced its spaces and leading industries in cameras by 2020, goal to establish a national “social credit score” with the aim of creating an “omnipresent, fully system by 2020.25 As with “Sharp Eyes,” that networked, always working and fully controllable” deadline will likely prove infeasible. A national surveillance system.16 Although that goal is far- system that can aggregate bank data, hospital fetched, the resulting “Sharp Eyes” initiative is records, real-world movements, online activity, and
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