This post is mostly quotes, I think that their words are better than mine.
I have not read this "Surveillance State" book but it sounds very much like what I experienced.
I hope the world pay attention to it as soon as possible. It really is here.
One of the book's strongest traits is its unflinching analysis of how such big data approaches are being utilized not just by China, but by governments all around the world, including in the United States. China, the authors make clear, is not an exception in its embrace of a policing system fortified by video surveillance and artificial intelligence. Western companies including Intel, IBM, Seagate, Cisco and Sun Technologies are among those Chin and Lin examine the commercial relationships that helped make China's surveillance state technologically and financially viable.
China has undoubtedly unlocked an impressive, if chilling, achievement: absolute social control with relatively little of the unseemly and highly visible physical oppression seen in lower-tech authoritarian countries, such as Iran or Russia.
“Josh Chin and Liza Lin show how some of Silicon Valley's most celebrated advances, along with some of its most exalted companies, have enabled a vast experiment in Chinese social engineering that is terrifying and seductive in equal measure. Surveillance technologies, both inside China and around the world, are creating an alternative to the liberal order far more swiftly than most people believe. This book gives us a vital glimpse into what might replace it.”
—Anne Applebaum, author of Twilight of Democracy“There hardly is any Uyghur person in the Region who has not been subjected to the oppressive and systematic tactics of this high-tech war that the CCP has waged against its own citizens. Josh Chin and Liza Lin’s book reminds us how easily a state actor can quietly and stealthily take control of its people. As Uyghurs, we know this well. But to the rest of the world, Surveillance State should serve as a wake-up call.”
—Jewher Ilham, author of Because I Have To
