October 2025, Volume 36, Issue 4
Today, governments can see who buys what, who pays whom, and who donates to which cause. But they cannot easily trace or confiscate Bitcoin. The digital currency offers a lifeline to democratic movements operating in the most repressive places.
October 2025, Volume 36, Issue 4
Authoritarian regimes are targeting exiles and diaspora communities in more places than ever before. Activists, journalists, and regular people living abroad must watch their backs, because these governments now have the power to suppress dissent even outside their borders.
October 2025, Volume 36, Issue 4
Artificial intelligence and its effects on democracy are a matter of choice, not fate. The concerns are longer term than the recent spate of worry about “generative” AI would suggest. The democratic conversation about AI has hardly begun.
October 2025, Volume 36, Issue 4
The Chinese Communist Party is dreaming an authoritarian techno-dream that is a democrat’s nightmare: ever more fine-grained state control made possible by using AI networks to pry and spy everywhere. But human unpredictability remains a force the party-state cannot tame.
July 2024, Volume 35, Issue 3
A review of The Death of Truth, by Steven Brill, and Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies into Reality, by Renée DiResta.
January 2024, Volume 35, Issue 1
Advanced AI faces twin perils: the collapse of democratic control over key state functions or the concentration of political and economic power in the hands of the few. Avoiding these risks will require new ways of governing.
July 2023, Volume 34, Issue 3
A review of Four Battlegrounds: Power in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, by Paul Scharre.
October 2022, Volume 33, Issue 4
Beijing is bent on deploying mass surveillance to eliminate threats to its rule. It is terrifying—and the latest example of its determination to remold society.
July 2022, Volume 33, Issue 3
Swarms of “nano-influencers,” are rapidly reshaping social-media propaganda campaigns, upending political discourse in democracies around the world.
April 2022, Volume 33, Issue 2
International spying and digital subversion used to be the province of governments. Now anyone who has the cash can order hi-tech snooping and surveillance. This is a threat to the future of freedom.
April 2022, Volume 33, Issue 2
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.
July 2021, Volume 32, Issue 3
Once mostly found in authoritarian regimes, personalism is now putting established democracies in peril—a trend that digital technology will likely make worse.
July 2021, Volume 32, Issue 3
With or without middleware, the basic challenge of responding to bad actors online remains.
July 2021, Volume 32, Issue 3
To stop surveillance capitalism, take aim at the targeted advertising that fuels it.
July 2021, Volume 32, Issue 3
Comprehensive regulation can strengthen user rights in the face of tech firms’ exploitative practices.
July 2021, Volume 32, Issue 3
Bringing middleware from theory to practice will require addressing thorny questions about revenue, cost, feasibility, and privacy.
July 2021, Volume 32, Issue 3
Despite the challenges, middleware offers a legally and politically feasible answer to platforms’ influence over speech.
April 2021, Volume 32, Issue 2
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.
April 2021, Volume 32, Issue 2
A review of Reset: Reclaiming the Internet for Civil Society, by Ronald J. Deibert.
July 2020, Volume 31, Issue 3
The encrypted messaging service WhatsApp has become an increasingly important tool for “fake news” in Nigeria, while weakening government control of information and broadening opportunities for political participation.
July 2020, Volume 31, Issue 3
In Latin America, greater exposure to social media—and the digital misinformation that comes with it—seems to be bolstering prodemocratic attitudes even as it fuels public distrust in democratic institutions.
April 2020, Volume 31, Issue 2
The coronavirus outbreak has exposed the corrupt and rotten core of the Chinese Communist Party’s dictatorial rule over China. It is a moment of revelation. Can it also become one that leads to change?
January 2020, Volume 31, Issue 1
Democracies are grappling with an era of transformation: Identity is increasingly replacing economics as the major axis of world politics. Technological change has deepened social fragmentation, and trust in institutions is falling. As our most basic assumptions come under question, can liberal democracy rebuild itself?
January 2020, Volume 31, Issue 1
It is imperative to rethink how democracy support fits into today’s turbulent and threatening international political landscape.
January 2020, Volume 31, Issue 1
Democratic societies must address the spread of technology developed in authoritarian settings while continuing to uphold democratic norms.
January 2020, Volume 31, Issue 1
A review of This Is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality by Peter Pomerantsev.
April 2019, Volume 30, Issue 2
Xi reads Tiananmen as a cautionary tale, and he has sought to centralize power and reverse years of ideological atrophy. By controlling the past, he is trying to determine how the Chinese will view their present and future.
April 2019, Volume 30, Issue 2
It is imperative that artificial intelligence evolve in ways that respect human rights. Happily, standards found in landmark UN documents can help with the task of making AI serve rather than subjugate human beings.
April 2019, Volume 30, Issue 2
A review of The People vs. Tech: How the Internet Is Killing Democracy (and How We Save It) by Jamie Bartlett.
January 2019, Volume 30, Issue 1
There is a growing sense today that democrats worldwide are in a race against time to prevent cyberspace from becoming an arena for surveillance, control, and manipulation.
January 2019, Volume 30, Issue 1
Not so long ago, the internet was being lauded as a force for greater freedom and democracy. With the rise of intrusive and addictive social media, however, a discomfiting reality has set in.
January 2019, Volume 30, Issue 1
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.
January 2019, Volume 30, Issue 1
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.
July 2016, Volume 27, Issue 3
A review of Pax Technica: How the Internet of Things May Set Us Free or Lock Us Up by Philip N. Howard
July 2015, Volume 26, Issue 3
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.
October 2012, Volume 23, Issue 4
Modern democracy was born in the era of print, and the press has been one of its essential institutions. With the decline of newspapers and the rise of new media, what are the implications for democracy?
April 2011, Volume 22, Issue 2
Chinese authoritarianism has deftly adapted to the Internet Age, employing various forms of technological controls. China’s brand of networked authoritarianism serves as a model for other regimes, such as those of Iran and Russia.
April 2011, Volume 22, Issue 2
In China, the Internet is not merely contested space between citizen and government. It is also a catalyst for social and political transformation, offering the possibility of better governance with greater citizen participation.
October 2010, Volume 21, Issue 4
Are technologies giving greater voice to democratic activists in authoritarian societies, or more powerful tools to their oppressors?
July 2010, Volume 21, Issue 3
The Internet, mobile phones, and other forms of “liberation technology” enable citizens to express opinions, mobilize protests, and expand the horizons of freedom. Autocratic governments are also learning to master these technologies, however. Ultimately, the contest between democrats and autocrats will depend not just on technology, but on political organization and strategy.
July 2009, Volume 20, Issue 3
Read the full essay here. Online activism is an integral part of the broader landscape of citizen activism in contemporary China. It assumes a variety of forms, from cultural and social activism to cyber-nationalism and online petitions and protests. Technological development and social transformation provide the basic structural conditions. A fledgling civil society of online…
April 2001, Volume 12, Issue 2
Read the full essay here.
October 1999, Volume 10, Issue 4
Review of The Lexus and the Olive Tree, by Thomas L. Friedman.
Summer 1990, Volume 1, Issue 3
A review of Power, Press, and the Technology of Freedom: The Coming Age of ISDN, by Leonard R. Sussman.
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.
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.
Artificial Intelligence has become autocrats’ newest tool for surveilling, targeting, and crushing dissent. But this supercharged technology doesn’t need to favor tyrants. Activists must learn how to harness it in the fight for freedom.
Economic freedom is one of a tyrant’s first targets. My family and I have experienced this firsthand. But tools like Bitcoin offer a lifeline for activists fighting repressive states.
Coartar la libertad económica es uno de los primeros objetivos de un tirano. Mi familia y yo hemos experimentado esto de primera mano. Sin embargo, herramientas como Bitcoin ofrecen una esperanza a los activistas que luchan contra los estados represivos.
Cash is king, even if you are an activist leading a democratic movement against some of the world’s worst dictators. That’s why Bitcoin has quickly become the currency of choice for dissidents working everywhere.
The popular Chinese-owned app is enabling Beijing to collect data on people nearly everywhere. Not only can such platforms track people’s preferences and whereabouts, but they give the Chinese government control over a powerful tool for shaping people’s worldview.
