From a Google Image Search – Politico

Anne Applebaum’s book has a subtitle, The Dictators Who Want to Run the World. From her perch in Poland, she has a nearer view of all the players, Russia, China, Syria, Iran, and Africa. Nations that are run by autocrats are using new technologies not only to spy on other countries (especially democracies) but also to spy on their own citizens. You might argue that nations need to know what their enemies, both foreign and domestic, are up to but there are more sinister motives at work here too. Chapter 3 in Autocracy, Inc. has the title, “Controlling the Narrative”. 

The author begins by reminding Americans that our NSA is collecting data about US citizens as we were informed by Edward Snowden, a whistleblower or traitor, depending on your point of view, who is living as an exile in Russia. She also mentions Pegasus spyware in Poland which was eventually exposed and investigated. 

“If no parallel scandal has ever unfolded in China, Russia, Iran, or North Korea, that’s because there are no legislative committees or free media that could play the same role.” (p. 71)

Applebaum reasons that when democracies use spyware it helps autocracies justify their abuse. If there are fewer objections to using spyware outside of China, then there will be fewer objections to using it inside of China. 

In fact, we all expect that surveillance inside nations, even democracies, will escalate as new tech advances are developed. Why develop spyware if you won’t use it.  Americans objected to the intrusions of the Patriot Act after the attacks on 9/11 but were so shaken by these brazen attacks on America that we accepted these rules while also believing that they would be temporary. They have been replaced by the USA Freedom Act which curtailed the government’s authority to collect data in 2015. Democrats in Congress strongly objected whenever Trump wanted to collect names of people in a group he wanted to target. 

In China, objections can be deadly, as in Tiananmen Square in 1989. China, says Applebaum, first tried to eliminate the activists (people), then set out to eliminate the ideas such as the rule of law, the separation of powers, the right to free speech and the right to assemble which are described as “spiritual pollution”. (p. 66)

While Americans still believe, or say they believe that the internet would lead to a cultural renaissance, Applebaum predicted in 2012 that the internet would become a tool of control. China was designing “the Great Firewall of China” (p. 67) which used an “elaborate system of blocks and filters to prevent users from seeing particular words and tools. She tells us that foreign companies rushed into the new security market in the same way companies had rushed into the post-Soviet financial market. (Yahoo, Microsoft, Cisco Systems all made software that complied with China’s rules.) These companies were eased out once China had access to their software. (p. 68)

The security network was expanded by combining online tracking with tools of repression such as security cameras, police inspections and arrest. Other tools might include “nanny apps” on phones, monitoring book purchases, picking up on unusual behaviors, voice recognition, and even DNA swabs. All these tools have been used on the Uighur population in China. Now add in facial recognition and AI and you have a state that can truly control the narrative.

Anne Applebaum did not just write her book to expose state surveillance tactics. Perhaps she felt we needed to understand what might be coming to a place near you. These systems can be copied and have been copied by many nations including Pakistan, Brazil, Mexico, Serbia, South Africa and Turkey. 

“The more China can bring other countries’ models of grievance into line with China’s own,” argues Steven Feldstein, an expert in digital technology, “the less these countries pose a threat to Chinese hegemony.” (Am I nervous about writing these words without a powerful husband such as Applebaum’s to make her a public figure and hard to attack – yes, I am sometimes paranoid.) 

Russia plays a different game says Applebaum. Lie constantly and blatantly and when exposed offer no counterarguments. (p. 78) Blame everyone but yourself. This “fire hose of falsehoods” makes citizens question how you can possibly know what really happened and so they avoid politics altogether. Autocrats spread hopelessness and cynicism because it works to their advantage. This is not Russia’s only game. Russia is also a surveillance state.

Surveillance was a thing we worried about in the post-WWII world. We had all read Orwell’s 1984. We expected our freedom to include privacy. After the events of 9/11 we saw the need for some spying, both domestic and foreign, but we still hoped to not invade the homes of private citizens. Now, we are in an age where we live with hacking, with having our data stolen regularly, and with who knows how much surveillance because we can’t imagine our lives without the internet and cell phones. 

Many American fully believe that if Trump and the right-wing MAGA’s win in 2024 all aspects of surveillance will be expanded and private citizens may be pursued because of the things they think and what they write or have written. Even without the MAGA’s in power, surveillance will most likely expand given all the autocracies that have cropped up everywhere. We may not be able to keep it focused on only foreign countries. This is one of our great fears of AI that it will be used by our government to control our behavior, regardless of what party you are registered with or the fact that you choose to not belong to a party. 

“In seeking to create, these new propagandists, like their leaders, will reach for whatever ideology, whatever technology, and whatever emotions might be useful.”…Only the purpose never changes, Autocracy, Inc. hopes to rewrite the rules of the international system itself.” (p. 97)

Chapter 3 also goes into, in some detail, the changes in print and social media that are accompanying this rise in “spying”. Project 2025 will give MAGA carte blanche to spy on all Americans. Anne Applebaum’s book is a warning. Soon she will offer some remedies.