China's Grand Strategy For Global Data Dominance | Hoover Institution

June 22, 2023
Hoover Institution | Stanford University

Report author and Hoover visiting fellow Matthew Johnson finds that Xi Jinping’s Party-state is building a massive institutional architecture to maximally exploit data as the fundamental resource of the future global economy and governance system, and proposes robust policy solutions to arrest the exposure of huge swaths of the world’s population to the CCP's data accumulation, espionage, and manipulation. Johnson joined Orville Schell, Susan Aaronson, Grady McGregor, and Glenn Tiffert to discuss the implications of the CCP’s bid to shape how data will be distributed and controlled, and how Washington can lead in building a data regime shaped by democratic values.

The Hoover Institution’s project on China’s Global Sharp Power and the Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations held a presentation of their new report, China’s Grand Strategy for Global Data Dominance, at Hoover’s DC office on Thursday, June 22nd, from 3:30-5:00pm ET.

[rickgigliotti]

She didn't like comparing data to oil, but compared data to children. She lacks some logic...

[GermanJobbies]

One member on the panel had a rather touching understanding of the world.

[TheWhitehiker]

An overdue topic--
thanks much.
Still, this group generally lacks a bit of dynamism.

[cooper]

Quite curious to look at China as Leninist system, which by any benchmarks any Chinese visitor would hardly see similarities. Think much is lost in translation. Instead, China should be looked through its own history and ideologies which is through Confucianism, bureaucracy framework, which is more similar to other Asian entities.
Get someone on visited China or other Asian countries for what they think. China is Confucianist in modern, market economy context. Confucian focuses on family first, then community, then country, and much similar to socialist but manage through values.

[Anton-rrkw]

This comment section dominated by Y2KMilleniumBug 😂. Either he's a Chinese bot, or needs to be in a padded room.

[roberthumphreys]

I would have liked Aaronson to expand a bit on what she means by "open immigration"? If she meant open borders, then she probably does not belong on the stage. These days, it's not words that matter, it's the meaning intended by the words. If she means open to all qualified people, and we can discuss what "qualified" means, then I am for it. However, one does need to acknowledge that taking the best people poor nations have to offer to make up for the generally poor educational performance of our native population (less than half of ALL public school students in the USA read at grade level based on National Education Achievement testing) is probably not a sustainable long term strategy for making a stable world.

As for open AI, I am strongly in favor of it being open and all effort supporting it being totally transparent. We have seen what happens when we grant special privileges to winner-take-all social media companies. The result is rampant violation of first amendment rights in collaboration with the government. What makes anyone think AI will be treated differently if allowed to proceed in the dark?

[mcasanovaiii]

The group conversation is quantum opinions, which are needed, yes. It sounds like America is not working we are just playing. My op op on our societal problem. *overpowered opinion

[alacazaba]

Susan Aaronson may have an opinion about the politics surrounding information, specifically data, but she is not properly understanding the way data can be used to create strategic, economic, and political advantages for companies and of course with Nation states. And she is wrong about the quality of data, we have excellent data collection tools, our mobiles, the sensors in our cars, and other remote sensing technologies that are tied into things like drones and satellites. In fact the most unreliable data are typically the data that are given with consent, the things that are scraped organically by for example having your cell phone with you all the time, that is very good data. Unfortunately, I don’t think Mr. Johnson made an effective argument, perhaps the format constrained him a bit, but I would encourage him to reach out to academics as well as leaders in firms that lead in remote sensing technologies in the San Francisco Bay Area As well as firms that specialize in understanding data. They will tell you that you can have many strands of disparate information oh but a clever approach to that can reveal deep truths, and even lead to good forecast. Take the Fitbit watch for example, data collected about your jogging and health, anybody with access to those accounts can figure out where American troops were stationed, deployments, based on theOutlines generated by somebody jogging a perimeter fence at an American defense institution. Disparate data, seemingly So unintended as to be poorly applied to strategic purposes, but with clever application, obviously useful.

[Wise]

@Y2KMillenniumBug Chinese bot 🤖 spotted

[carylhalfwassen]

Too many “umms”, “you know”s” making this unlistenable.

[PCBAPPR]

In my view, nuttiness and/or naiveté, but not from Xi, or maybe on behalf of. . .if a position must be apologized for, it is neither a position worth asserting nor meritorious. . .it's propagandizing, and spin.

[zolanidingaan]

This lady is a breath of fresh air. Wonderful she was part of the panel.

[ImperiumVita]

What kind of person says "Utterly unconvincing", rather than just "unconvincing"?

[andrewlm]

The lady’s suggestion that China isn’t leveraging their relationships with client’s of Belt and Road initiative to collect data seems very strange when the whole project seems designed to subjugate. Collecting data seems like one of the most benign actions China would be taking against their would-be subjects. It is a fair point that a balance needs to be achieved between data sharing and protection but that decision should be based on a reasonable assessment of who you are sharing with - I don’t think her opinions of China are reasonable

[samshepperrd]

29:09 She said she wants to see Facebook succeed. What another Trump presidency?

[djy]

This needs to be stopped by any means necessary.