July 2026, Volume 37, Issue 3
The coercive tools of modern autocracies are highly integrated, with an ability to monitor, restrict, and shape behavior at scale and in real-time. It is time for democratic movements to adapt and respond with a decentralized resistance of their own.
July 2026, Volume 37, Issue 3
Beijing knows digital surveillance of the world’s most populous nation is technologically demanding. So the Party has hired corporations to occupy the “public-opinion battlefield” and spot the trouble before it spreads.
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.
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.
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.
April 2021, Volume 32, Issue 2
A review of Reset: Reclaiming the Internet for Civil Society, by Ronald J. Deibert.
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 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.
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.
They are benefiting from a world that has grown more hostile for democracy and human rights. But it doesn’t need to be the case. Democracies need to double down on their own competitive advantage.
Nationwide protests against Xi Jinping’s zero-covid policy caught the Chinese Communist Party off-guard. Expect the Party’s security apparatus to strike back with quiet precision.
