{"id":47788,"date":"2019-05-23T14:45:01","date_gmt":"2019-05-23T04:45:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=47788"},"modified":"2019-05-23T14:44:17","modified_gmt":"2019-05-23T04:44:17","slug":"us-china-tech-rivalry-reflects-contrasting-cyber-cultures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/us-china-tech-rivalry-reflects-contrasting-cyber-cultures\/","title":{"rendered":"US\u2013China tech rivalry reflects contrasting cyber cultures"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

There\u2019s a growing debate in policy circles right now: are cyber technologies good or bad for democracy? Are internet platforms weakening public debate and social cohesion<\/a>? Will artificial intelligence inevitably favour tyranny<\/a>?<\/p>\n

What\u2019s often missing from this debate is a nuanced appreciation of culture. Every piece of technology is invented by <\/em>humans and for <\/em>humans. Whether a technology has \u2018good\u2019 or \u2018bad\u2019 effects can depend on the social and political context it came from.<\/p>\n

Most of the cyber technologies we use today reflect the values of Silicon Valley elites and the American government\u2019s light-touch approach to the tech sector. American tech has enabled significant good, but the values baked into it have also proved toxic\u2014something that we\u2019re only now beginning to understand<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But America is losing its technological supremacy. China is poised to lead on AI, 5G and quantum computing, while its firms are increasingly dominant in consumer-facing platforms<\/a>, from e-commerce and online payments to social media<\/a> and gaming<\/a>. American and Chinese technologies necessarily embody different value systems; understanding both will be essential to navigating the social and geopolitical consequences of technological progress.<\/p>\n

The internet started life as a network for sharing resources between American researchers. Its pioneers prioritised openness; they didn\u2019t design security into the network<\/a> because that would have slowed traffic down. But this feature became a flaw as the internet expanded. Any internet-enabled device is now vulnerable to being hacked. In addition, because advertising was the only way to make money on a network designed to be free and open, surveillance became, in Bruce Schneier\u2019s words<\/a>, \u2018the business model of the internet\u2019.<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s internet platforms also reflect America\u2019s unique cultural mix of muscular capitalism and hyper-individualism. Is it really a surprise that the country whose advertising industry convinced people to smoke tobacco and drink Coke turned the internet into a global tracking machine designed to make people buy more things? Or that the culture that brought us narcissism-as-celebrity through the likes of Kim Kardashian also created Instagram\u2014where #me is always trending?<\/p>\n

Recent advances in AI have underscored how cultural context infects technology. Machine-learning tools used by courts to inform parole decisions have been shown to be systematically biased<\/a> against African Americans. Until recently, when Facebook users searched for \u2018pictures of my female friends\u2019, the platform would prompt them to look at bikini shots<\/a>. These tools were not designed <\/em>to discriminate. However, because they were \u2018trained\u2019 on real-world data, they hold a mirror to a culture that is, regrettably, racist and sexist.<\/p>\n

Smaller countries that are technology \u2018takers\u2019 have long had to grapple with the downsides of American tech.<\/p>\n

For example, because of their advertising-driven revenue model, social media platforms seek to maximise user attention\u2014often by prioritising divisive and emotionally charged content. In America, this feature has exacerbated polarisation and identity politics<\/a>. But for countries with ethnic tensions and weak institutions, American social media algorithms are fuelling actual violence<\/a>. Online rumours and hate speech have sparked race-hate attacks<\/a> against Muslims in Sri Lanka and spates of religious violence in India<\/a>, and contributed to the ethnic cleansing<\/a> of the Rohingya in Myanmar.<\/p>\n

American platforms also reflect the libertarian worldviews of many Silicon Valley engineers, including the belief that unfettered free speech is nearly always a net positive for democracy. This has long rankled Europeans, whose own political values and history<\/a> have caused them to view privacy as a human right and understand the perils of hate speech. In this respect, the EU\u2019s General Data Protection Regulation<\/a> can be seen as an effort to bend American tech to European values.<\/p>\n

Awareness of the downsides of American tech is growing, but discussion about the values likely to shape Chinese tech is less advanced. What is clear is that these values will not be identical to those that have guided American tech. In the words<\/a> of Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei, \u2018We have our own value system. We don\u2019t accept the Western political value system completely.\u2019<\/p>\n

Management theory has long maintained that China is a relational culture<\/a>, where duty to family and the state is prioritised over individual rights. It\u2019s therefore unsurprising that Chinese platforms don\u2019t emphasise free expression and privacy<\/a>\u2014and that trend is likely to continue.<\/p>\n

China is also a historically \u2018low-trust\u2019 society<\/a>, which helps to explain the emergence of China\u2019s \u2018social credit\u2019 system<\/a> and its apparent strong domestic support<\/a>. Many in the West perceive social credit as simply government control of Orwellian proportions<\/a>, but it may also help bridge China\u2019s trust deficit by providing incentives for\u2014and evidence of\u2014citizens\u2019 and officials\u2019 lawfulness and integrity<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As Bing Song recently argued<\/a>,<\/u> most Western analysis of social credit also fails to appreciate Chinese society\u2019s longstanding tradition of using government structures to \u2018promot[e] moral behavior\u2019. Given this context, we should expect Chinese platforms to nudge users to comply with the party-state\u2019s notions of \u2018morality\u2019, and to prioritise transparency about user identity and activity over notions of anonymity or privacy.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also instructive to look at the Chinese tech sector\u2019s culture. As venture capitalist Kai-Fu Lee has outlined<\/a>, China\u2019s relatively weak property protections meant that its tech pioneers faced a hypercompetitive \u2018coliseum\u2019. Kill-or-be-killed tactics, not lofty Silicon Valley \u2018mission statements or \u201ccore values\u201d\u2019, were the key to survival\u2014as was a fanatical work ethic that would have had American engineers \u2018running to their nap pods\u2019. It\u2019s not surprising, then, that Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei, known today for its \u2018wolf culture<\/a>\u2019,<\/u> allegedly paid bonuses to staff who stole trade secrets<\/a>. Chinese tech\u2019s win-at-all-costs mentality will continue to shape the sector\u2019s conduct and products.<\/p>\n

Finally, the Chinese Communist Party seeks to exert control over its population\u2019s digital experience<\/a>. It does this by introducing laws<\/a>, inserting itself into corporate hierarchies<\/a> and rewarding tech executives<\/a> who demonstrate party loyalty. As a result, the top tech firms tend to reflect the CCP\u2019s values; New York Times <\/em>journalist Li Yuan<\/a> recently said of Huawei that its \u2018soul is steeped in Communist Party culture\u2019.<\/p>\n

The future trajectory of technology is not a given. Technology takers including Australia must ask ourselves: what values do we want reflected in the technologies we use, and what costs are we prepared to incur to guarantee this? We then must identify the levers available to us to influence technology powers like America and China, and their companies.<\/p>\n

American companies are subject to the rule of law, are accountable to regulators<\/a> and can be motivated to change<\/a> by activists and public opinion. We have fewer levers available to shape Chinese technologies\u2014a reality that should make us even more determined to understand their latent values.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s a growing debate in policy circles right now: are cyber technologies good or bad for democracy? Are internet platforms weakening public debate and social cohesion? Will artificial intelligence inevitably favour tyranny? What\u2019s often missing …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":842,"featured_media":47792,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[52,203,332,31],"class_list":["post-47788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-china","tag-culture","tag-technology","tag-united-states"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nUS\u2013China tech rivalry reflects contrasting cyber cultures | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/us-china-tech-rivalry-reflects-contrasting-cyber-cultures\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"US\u2013China tech rivalry reflects contrasting cyber cultures | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"There\u2019s a growing debate in policy circles right now: are cyber technologies good or bad for democracy? 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