Digital Humanism and Democracy in Geopolitical Context

Government and corporate surveillance in autocracies have very different ethical ramifications than the same actions do in liberal democracies. Open societies protect individual rights and distinguish between the public and private spheres. Neither condition pertains in China, an instantiation of what the philosopher Elizabeth Anderson calls private government. Ignoring the significance of such differences, which are only reinforced by differing business-government relationships in the United States, EU, and China, is likely to undercut both liberal democratic values and US-European national security.

Speaker: Allison Stanger (Middlebury College, USA)
Moderator & Respondent: Moshe Y. Vardi (Rice University, USA)