Authoritarian regimes are competing to create and control emerging technology to gain the upper hand in the global power competition, while democracies have the potential to harness emerging technology to strengthen democratic institutions and freedoms. From 5G to social media, find ASD’s work on emerging technology on this page.
Looking Back: ASD Experts React to Biden’s Summit for Democracy
Last week, U.S. President Joseph R. Biden hosted a virtual Summit for Democracy with 110 countries and governments, in which he called on leaders to make commitments to bolster democracy before an in-person summit is hosted later in 2022—but did the [...]
Responses to Foreign Information Operations
Panelists: Anneli Ahonen, Senior Fellow, ISD Global, and Former Head of East Stratcom Task Force, EEAS & EU vs Disinfo Renée DiResta, Research Manager, Stanford Internet Observatory Lee Foster, Senior Vice President, Althea Group and Former Dire [...]
RT Deutsch Finds a Home with Anti-Vaccination Skeptics in Germany
YouTube’s decision last week to remove RT’s German-language channels for violating the platform’s coronavirus misinformation policy sparked an outcry from Moscow, with the foreign ministry claiming that the move was “fully in line with the logic of [...]
Deep in the Data Void: China’s COVID-19 Disinformation Dominates Search Engine Results
Since the earliest days of the pandemic, Chinese state officials and media outlets have disseminated conspiracy narratives claiming that COVID-19 originated at Fort Detrick—a U.S. army research facility in Maryland that has been the target of disinf [...]
How Authoritarians Can Exploit Apple’s Child Safety Initiatives
Much has been said about Apple’s recently announced “Child Safety” initiatives. The focus has been (rightly so) on the perceptions of user privacy and implications of content processing happening on user devices versus cloud servers. Child safety pr [...]
Lindsay Gorman with NBR: China’s Data Ambitions
Lindsay Gorman details China’s data ambitions with a particular eye to how they relate to emerging technology goals associated with AI. She then discusses how these efforts complicate democratic values in cyberspace and analyzes options for how demo [...]
Maurice Turner on Tackling the Remnants of Systematic Discrimination in the Tech Industry at Def Con
It’s easy to just accept the status quo even when it’s harmful because that’s just how it’s always been done. Discrimination in the tech industry is no different. The reuse and amplification of discriminatory language can have damaging effects on th [...]
Economic Statecraft Toward China from Trump to Biden: More Continuity Than Meets the Eye
In the final year of the Trump administration, the U.S. government issued a flurry of actions related to China, utilizing a diverse basket of economic statecraft tools in furtherance of national security objectives.The Trump administration’s tariffs [...]
Making Cyberspace Safe for Democracy
Cybersecurity Fellow Maurice Turner led a conversation on making cyberspace safe for democracy at the German Marshall Fund's Brussels Forum. He was joined Mieke Eoyang, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for cyber policy at the U.S. Departmen [...]
The Weaponized Web: The National Security Implications of Data
This paper is the second in a series on technology policy through the lens of national security, published in partnership with the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at the Harvard Kennedy School. Read the first paper on the digita [...]
The Good Web: Tensions in Democratic Responses to Authoritarian Technology Threats
In April 2021, ASD held a security and geopolitics workshop as part of the Good Web project entitled “Tensions: Authoritarian Internet Threats and Democratic Responses,” in which participants debated the merits of different responses democracies hav [...]
The Good Web: Is There an Authoritarian Model for the Internet?
What Countries Buy Into When They Buy Authoritarian Technologies In February 2021, ASD held a security and geopolitics workshop as part of the Good Web project entitled “Authoritarian Models, Practices, and Threats,” in which participants discussed [...]