It Isn't The Tool, But What You Are Using It For.

The Economist is pretending the West is less authoritarian than China:

Under an authoritarian government such as China’s, digital monitoring is turning a nasty police state into a terrifying, all-knowing one. Especially in the western region of Xinjiang, China is applying artificial intelligence (AI) and mass surveillance to create a 21st-century panopticon and impose total control over millions of Uighurs, a Turkic-language Muslim minority (see Briefing). In Western democracies, police and intelligence agencies are using the same surveillance tools to solve and deter crimes and prevent terrorism (see Technology Quarterly). The results are effective, yet deeply worrying.

Well, lets think about what China is trying to do. In part, I started thinking about this in the aftermath of the conversation that inspired my last post. Basically, we need a metric for agency, but it isn't something you can just do objectively- i.e. a person demonstrates agency by making and keeping agreements. And despite being large institutions of questionable repute, both corporations and governments really need to figure out who has high agency, especially in a world where money is created via debt.

This is why we have credit scores in America, and why China is creating an even more comprehensive version. Now, I am of the opinion that China would be better off innovating rather than trying to repeat and/or out-compete America in the financial empire arena, but the rather obvious nature of their intentions leads one to an inescapable conclusion:

They are, generally speaking, using technology to figure out who they can trust. They need high agency people they can trust, because they need to out-compete the rest of the world. The leaders of China have seen the post-Soviet Russian struggle, and they naturally don't want to be dethroned. So moral whinging about 'political freedoms' will get you nowhere, or in jail. However, I will not be surprised to see some relatively wealthy Uighurs vacationing in America in a few years, assuming any of them have a reasonable IQ and can pass this rather intensive test.

But meanwhile, the West, which is already supposed to have freedom- when we get these systems applied to us, well it is mostly to restrict us. This is because we were relatively free, and our leaders keep trying to figure out ways to make us less free.

Eventually, I believe even local governments will have to use surveillance defensively. If you aren't doing it, someone else will, and they will be able to manipulate you and your people. I am not fond of the cameras and tech being given to the police, for I suspect that stuff often calls home to bad actors who are interested in their own nefarious ends, not in keeping the local police and people safe.

Indeed, I think the Chinese are being rather honest and open about what they are doing, while much of what is going on in the West is being hidden. Much can go wrong in both places. Intentions don't always translate into results. But I don't think the Chinese can be using this for more tyranny. They already had tyranny, so spending assets and effort on all this tech means they are looking for a solution to a different problem.