China's digital colonialization of the Global South

A report detailing my argument that this is America's real competition with Beijing

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The report is a bit dated (2021) but this was the first I bumped into it, due to a presentation at OODAcon24.

This is the basic argument I laid out in my book:

Thread 25: Leave the Gun, Take the Biometrics: How China and America Project Power Differently

Jim Nuttle illustration from “America’s New Map”

America focuses on neutralizing bad actors to shape an environment—a top-down approach. China’s bottom-up variant shapes an environment to prevent bad actors from emerging …

China approaches the challenge in a bottom-up fashion. The Chinese point to their history of subjugation by outside forces as reason both to fortify their perimeter and to consider that fortification entirely insufficient. Sensing themselves vulnerable to globalization’s dangers, Beijing seeks to create and enforce safe zones at home and across the world. These heavily sensored safe zones are digitally enforced (e.g., CCTV cameras, location tracking, contact tracing, facial/mood recognition, biometrics, AI). Beijing tracks its citizens like Amazon monitors warehouse workers—invasively surveilling every single human action to systematically judge its potential threat to the state (or, in Amazon’s case, to productivity). It is the reduction of individuals by algorithms into controllable cogs within a high performing system—a process of dehumanization first flagged by Karl Marx in his searing critiques of capitalism but far more frequently found in dictatorships than in democracies.

Americans are familiar with this sort of surveillance, but only in certain public spaces (e.g., federal buildings) or under certain conditions (attending exceptionally large public gatherings). To us, it is the special price of admission, but to the Chinese, it is an increasingly Orwellian staple of life. A good example is how Beijing aggressively locks down its restive Muslim Uighur population in its Xinjiang Province, where its safe-zone approach looks an awful lot like cultural genocide. This is worth remembering as China seeks to impose its integration model globally: the world witnesses its own worst-case scenario in Xinjiang today.

China’s counterinsurgency model is thus akin to the classic British imperial approach known as the ink spot strategy—here, securing an environment one safe zone at a time, then linking them up over time. We can call it the “string of pearls” or the Belt and Road Initiative, but it is all the same Go strategy of filling in blank spots until you control the board far more than your opponent.

For China, every bit of infrastructure it builds and controls exemplifies a Go stone successfully laid. The same holds for surveillance systems sold to metropolitan governments. Each investment extends the safe-zone network…

A good portion of that success stems from Beijing strongly supporting its big tech companies as they penetrate and capture wide swaths of the planet. Meanwhile, Washington busies itself with corralling, taming, and even breaking our own tech giants, many of which are already so intertwined with China’s big tech firms as to compromise their ability to compete with them globally. America should view these firms more like our Security Industrial Complex for the coming struggle. Their collective global brand appeal is one of our great national assets.

Juraj Mihalik and Tom Zorc data visualization from “America’s New Map”

That last notion being my sub-argument on maybe why the US doesn’t want to break up our big tech companies at this point in history — despite the legitimate progressive instinct to do so.

Continuing from America’s New Map, China’s ultimate goal:

Thread 26: Pacification by Gamification: Ruling the World One Cowed Citizen at a Time

Jim Nuttle illustration from “America’s New Map”

The best-policed society is one where everyone acts as their own cop, reminding themselves at every point in their day what they are doing wrong and what they could do better.

I dub China’s entire approach its “quantum grand strategy.”

As I brief it today:

So, let’s see how this report (which I regret not finding until now) matches up with that take.

First, who’s doing the analysis:

Recorded Future has 1,800+ clients, 1,000+ employees, $300M+ revenue, and the world’s largest holdings of interconnected threat data …

Insikt Group is Recorded Future’s threat research division, comprising analysts and security researchers with deep government, law enforcement, military, and intelligence agency experience.

The report described:

This report profiles the growth of China’s global digital presence and influence through state-sponsored development of digital infrastructure in foreign countries, cyber espionage enablement, and the export of Chinese surveillance technology. This examination weighs the privacy and security risks associated with Beijing’s growing global influence through programs such as the Digital Silk Road Initiative. Data sources include the Recorded Future Platform, academic papers, government reports, and common open-source tools. The report will be of most interest to democratic governments, strategic decision-makers in developing regions such as Latin America, Africa, and South Asia, cyber defense groups, and corporations hosting data in developing regions.

From the executive summary:

Through the Digital Silk Road Initiative (DSR), announced in 2015, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is building an expansive global data infrastructure and exporting surveillance technologies to dictators and illiberal regimes throughout the developing world, in some cases trading technology for access to sensitive user data and facial recognition intelligence. Domestically, China uses this type of technology to assert authority over its citizens, censor the media, quell protests, and systematically oppress religious minorities. Now, over 80 countries are enabled to do the same with Chinese surveillance technology.

Many developing countries are vulnerable to the exploitation of their data by corporations and powerful governments due to a lack of direct experience in cyber defense and an eagerness to catch up with competitors through rapid digitalization. The 8 case studies in this report serve as examples from Africa, Latin America, and Southwest Asia.

This report explores 3 primary concerns related to China’s digital colonialism:

1. China’s DSR projects in the least developed regions of the world create a power imbalance between China and the recipient nations, resulting in a high risk for privacy and cybersecurity in those regions.

2. China’s export of intrusive artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled technologies and ideologies to illiberal regimes around the world enables authoritarianism and systemic oppression and degrades democratic values.

3. Chinese digital dominance poses both a critical cybersecurity threat to the world and a growing threat to competitors’ markets through the assertion of new Chinese-style standards of internet governance.

Digital dominance benefits the Chinese government in several ways. By building out and controlling access to data infrastructure in foreign countries, China is establishing new footholds for the flows of information from new markets. And by hosting foreign companies and government information in data centers, the Chinese government has access to valuable intelligence and intellectual property (IP) if unchecked by the host country. Additionally, China is actively developing exploits for the global internet of things (IoT), giving them an additional layer of access to individual and societal behavior data.

As China builds new global internet infrastructure through the Digital Silk Road, it will co-opt billions of new IoT devices, servers, and foreign resources to its cyber arsenal. We posit that Beijing will conduct extensive influence operations in conjunction with the development of Chinese-style internet governance in participating Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) countries. If left unchecked by both the rest of the world, China will reshape internet governance by replacing democratic values and standards with authoritarian principles.

The report’s “key judgments”:

• China’s digital colonialism is a growing threat to democratic values, human rights, and national autonomy, especially in developing regions of the world such as Latin America and Africa.

• The export of Chinese digital surveillance technology to developing and security-vulnerable countries poses a critical privacy risk to citizens and businesses alike.

• China’s development of internet infrastructure in foreign countries opens avenues for Chinese intelligence services abroad and poses a growing risk for cyber espionage intrusion campaigns.

• China’s growing presence and influence in the developing world will pose challenges for democratic institutions and markets as it co-opts new alliances through coercion and manipulation.

• China’s intelligence services have unprecedented access to foreign user data and vulnerability research through its fused civil-military research ecosystem. China’s dominance in the IoT market ensures continued access to this data, which can be exploited and developed for multiple purposes.

In all, a very validating report.