There’s a fine line between genuine cybersecurity and digital authoritarianism. Many autocrats use the pretext of digital order to surveil, silence, and suppress their citizens. Zambia is a case in point. As Wiriranai Brilliant Masara explains in the latest Journal of Democracy online exclusive, Zambia’s new cybersecurity laws grant the regime sweeping powers over the digital realm that can be easily weaponized against dissent.
State cyber repression creates a climate of fear around social media and the internet, shrinking one of the last remaining spaces for free speech. The JoD essays below explore how advances in digital technology and artificial intelligence empower authoritarian actors, and what can be done to protect democratic rights.
How Zambia’s Cyber Laws Rebrand Repression
The hope was that President Hakainde Hichilema would bring much-needed reform and openness. Instead, he has ushered in new laws that are silencing dissent and free expression.
Wiriranai Brilliant MasaraWhy DeepSeek Is So Dangerous
The Chinese Communist Party’s newest AI advance is making repression smarter, cheaper, and more deadly. Even worse, they aim to export it to the world.
Valentin WeberMaking the Internet Safe for Democracy
The outsized power of large internet platforms to amplify or silence certain voices poses a grave threat to democracy. Finding a reliable way to dilute that power offers the best possible solution.
Francis FukuyamaThe Road to Digital Unfreedom: President Xi’s Surveillance State
Chinese authorities are wielding facial-recognition software, big-data analytics, and other digital technologies to control China’s citizens by monitoring and assessing their activities, both online and off.
Xiao QiangCyberspace Under Siege
Rosy assumptions once held that the Internet would inevitably undermine unfree regimes. A look around the world today, however, indicates that something very different and far more disturbing is going on.
Ronald J. DeibertChina’s Tech-Enhanced Authoritarianism
The same technologies that are making traffic flow faster, cities run better, and ad-targeting more precise are also helping authoritarian governments to crush protests, hunt dissidents, and control their populations.
Samantha HoffmanHow Artificial Intelligence Is Reshaping Repression
Democracies must grapple not only with the proliferation of AI to authoritarian and illiberal regimes, but also with the temptation that AI poses for democratic governments themselves.
Steven Feldstein
Subscribe here to have curated collections like this one and other Journal of Democracy news delivered directly to your inbox.
Image credit: Peng Lijun/Xinhua via Getty Images