Lawfare Daily: Yaqiu Wang on Surveillance, Censorship, and Emerging Technologies in the PRC

[Intro]

Yaqiu Wang: This is a given that whatever you say online, wherever you go, it's recorded. So, but the government is able to collect the information, what are you doing online and then then analyzing the information and make a prediction by analyzing the information, like to what extent? You are being a threat to the government.

Michael Feinberg: It's the Lawfare Podcast. I'm Lawfare Senior Editor Michael Feinberg here today with Yaqiu Wang, a human rights advocate, who has studied the government of China for pretty much her entire career in the United States.

Yaqiu Wang: I mean, Chinese AI is very powerful. It's collecting so much data and also processing so much data. It's going to make human rights activists resistant towards Chinese government much harder. But also we need to keep in mind that the a, the Chinese AI, Chinese surveillance may not as successful it as it appears to be precisely because China is not a free society.

Michael Feinberg: We are going to be talking about the development of artificial intelligence and scientific and technological exchange between the United States and China, and what that says about both geopolitical concerns and human rights concerns.

[Main Podcast]

It would probably be helpful for many of our listeners who do not follow goings on within China at any real granular level to sort of understand what the landscape of the surveillance apparatus and efforts to control thought have been like before the advent of AI. Would you be willing to sort of walk us through what that general picture looks like?

Yaqiu Wang: Well, I mean, I would divide it into two aspects. One is online. The other is offline. Online, as we all know, I mean, probably Americans know too that a lot of websites were blocked in China, Facebook X, Google, New York Times. I don't know whether Lawfare has been blocked or not, but it would be an honor if it's blocked.

So there a lot of information you cannot access, but China has its own social media platforms. People can post things and discuss with each other. And then you cannot post certain words, certain events like the Tiananmen Massacre. You cannot talk about you know, you can talk about cultural revolution, the Great Leap Forward, which are the terrible disasters done by the Communist Party.

But there are, you know things you can talk about. There are things that you cannot talk about. Then there's, you know, absolute forbidden topics like, you know, Xi Jinping's personal life, Xi Jinping's wealth. So there are the ways, you know, they censor what you can talk within the Chinese internet.

So that's basically the how censorship works on the Chinese internet before AI. Then there's a, the offline aspect, of course, there were cameras right everywhere, even before the introduction of AI, but how the data can be processed and how the data can be used and synthesized and were much less effective and on a much less, you know, massive scale than before the arrival of AI.

Michael Feinberg: So let's talk about that. I mean, I think there was a Washington Post story from a couple years ago where they walked through the video and physical surveillance apparatus in Beijing, and the numbers were astounding. It was essentially, if you're anywhere within the ring roads, you're gonna be on camera nonstop, no matter what you're doing. Is that pretty much the case?

Yaqiu Wang: Yes. I think, you know, there are different measurements and it's hard to say how how many cameras are there in China in total, but I think there's one camera for every two or three people. That's the average. So you can just imagine the level of surveillance you're under.

Michael Feinberg: Okay, so that's talking about how the government collects information in terms of people's physical comings and goings and the internet surveillance and censorship that you mentioned, I'd imagine gives the government some insight into what people are doing online. But everything we've discussed so far is sort of means by which the government collects information once they have that information. How is it leveraged by the government and who is it leveraged against to the extent we would call it being weaponized or in a law enforcement manner?

Yaqiu Wang: Well, let's, I mean, still, let's talk about it in two aspects. One is online, right? You say certain things online, you, you are able to post online and there are things you are not able to post online. And the government is able to analyzing what you're saying online or, you know, when you go to a website, it is real name registration.

So obviously this is a given that whatever you say online, wherever you go, it's recorded. So, but the government is able to collect the information, what are you doing online and then then analyzing the information and make a prediction by analyzing the information, like to what extent you are being a threat to the government. So this is online, right?

Then offline, the government is doing same. That you know, have you, especially in in, in the, in the region of Xinjiang where the Uyghur population live, you know, where you go who you visit what are you doing in your daily lives or, or information that is being collected by the government.

And, you know, once it goes into the system, they're making a prediction in terms of a, to what extent you are threat to, you know, to the society, to the government. And the things they're collecting in Xinjiang has gotten so ridiculous. To the point, I always use the example of, you know, they're collecting whether you are leaving your home from the front door. Or, or the back door.

So if you are leaving, for example, if you usually leave your home from the front door, but this time you're leaving home from the back door, right? This information goes into the system and they are using it to make a determination as part of, you know, the, the data they're using to make a determination whether you're a threat to the government, because, you know, the government is thinking why are you suddenly leaving your home from the back door?

Right? There are other things like, you know, they're always tracking whether your cell phone has signals. If your cell phone somehow goes off track, right, then the government starts to suspect why your cell phone doesn't have signal. Why we can't track you, right? And then there are even things like, you know, if you buy weights from online, right? The government start to think why you are buying weights, right. Are you trying to exercise and make yourself stronger so you can participate in some kind of, you know, rebel groups?

So all those data they're collecting get collected the intersystem, and then some kind of algorithm that we have no idea, privy to making a determination, you know, whether you are threat to the government. And it's not like, you know, the government feel you're threat and then the government go in and knock your door saying, you know, what are you doing? I want to know more.

They, you know, they detain you, they sentence you based on that kind of data. So it's not just, you know, they're just checking on you and they're just watching on you. There are real consequences in places, especially in places like Xinjiang.

Michael Feinberg: Yeah. And one of the earlier seasons of Black Mirror, there was an episode where the protagonist was living in a world where everything she did online or socially created. What I will refer to, and you will understand why I'm choosing these words, a social credit score that determined her tier of privilege and freedom within society, and it was taken as this sort of dystopian science fiction hour long entertainment by most people who saw the show. But I think to those of us who follow Chinese policy, we realized this is just the lived reality there.

Yaqiu Wang: Yes. I mean, no social credit score is a real thing, but it's in China right now. It's not as perfect as some people in the Western. Imagine like every move is being tracked, every move is being factored into the government determination, the score you are, and you know, the kind of category you're being put in.

But there are, yes, this thing, it's less centralized, different municipal government have different systems. Even companies have that kind of systems. So this is for the mass population. It's real, but it's not working that perfectly as some people imagine.

But other people, like, you know, if you are dissident, if you're human rights activist, if you are, you know. As I mentioned, a Uyghur in Xinjiang, so the kind of surveillance, a collection of data of your every move is very real.

Michael Feinberg: Alright, so I wanna sort of delve into something you've mentioned in your past two answers, and that's the Uyghur population, largely living in Xinjiang. I think it's useful to talk about that first at a very general level, simply because I don't know that a lot of people outside the human rights and ology community are really following what's going on there.

There's a misconception, I think, among large parts of the West that China is an ethnically, racially, and religiously, as well as linguistically homogeneous population that everybody is Han ethnicity. Can you explain what exactly the Uyghur subpopulation is and why the Chinese government views them as a threat?

Yaqiu Wang: The Uyghur population is a Turkic and Muslim population in northwest China. There's about 13 millions of them. I mean, they used to have their own, they still have their own language, culture, religion, practice. So you can get into the details, you know, to what extent the, the Chinese population control them in history.

But it's undeniable, you know, they have their own religion culture, language practices. So, you know, in the past, you know, the Chinese government has always have quite tight control over the population, but since 2016, the government really started to tighten the control over the population in response to some legitimate real terrorist, a attacks carried out by the population.

So in 2009, there was a massive violent attacks against the Han population in the area. Then in 2012, there were attacks in the train station in Xinjiang against the Han population. So there were sporadic terrorist attacks against the Han population that it was real. But then the Chinese government came in response to that, had such incredible, massive, stringent crackdown on everybody in the region.

So, you know, I, I think it, we, we needed to recognize both facts. There were some attacks, then the government had this completely disproportionate reaction to the attacks.

Michael Feinberg: Yeah. And now, I mean, we're looking at not just policing of the area. I mean, there have been documents smuggled out that talk about forced sterilization of the population, separation of children from parents crackdowns on the use of the language.

I mean there are many scholars who have referred to it as an ethnic cleansing, essentially just not one that has progressed to the level of death camps yet. But it's interesting you mentioned the Uyghurs also in the context of political dissonance. So I just, before we move on to the next topic, is it fair to say that not all surveillance and oppression that might be happening in the mainland is geared solely towards ideology that it's a little bit broader than that.

Yaqiu Wang: I mean, in the Xinjiang region, it definitely targeting literally every person, every ethnic minority is not just the, you know, the, the, the Uyghurs. There are other Turkic, Muslim minorities too. So that is for sure.

But on the Han population so far, it mostly targets people the government considers as you know, dissidents, human rights activists, tribal makers. But of course the basic surveillance is still there against everyone. You know, as I said, if you go online, anything, you say, any activity you do, the government is, knows who is doing it and collecting the data.

So I do think, you know, you're right, we need to differentiate the minorities with the Han population. And even among the Han population, there are the people you know, the government considers as troublemakers, and then the regular population and the surveillance of them are different.

Michael Feinberg: And this was all in place well before the advent of what, in comparison to the past decade or two, we would call more advanced and sophisticated artificial intelligence models and procedures. Can you sort of talk about how the sort of explosion of knowledge about AI and its increased capabilities has changed this structure, either for better or worse?

Yaqiu Wang: Let's say, you know, online, I mean, AI has been increasingly incorporated into the censorship, right? In the past it would just, you know, there's this word you cannot post online. If you post it online, the government is able to identify, you know, you are the one who is doing this, right? So now they're increasingly incorporating AI into the censorship itself.

So it's more, you know, because people learned, you know, if I can't say July, June the fourth because that's the day the Tiananmen massacre happened. I'm going to say, you know, May the 34th, which does not exist, but it's a reference to June the fourth. So people learned to circumvent a censorship in order to say what they want to say, you know, they can reference Xi Jinping as emperor, right?

But then because the introduction of AI really make that kind of circumvention hard because the AI is able to detecting, you know, your reference something else, right? This is one.

The other really, I think AI has been increasingly used in image detection because people know that if I post this word, it can, you know, it won't pass the censorship. So how about I just write on a paper and then post the picture on the paper. So the AI is being incorporated to detect such kind of circumvention. So online this is getting harder.

I mean, offline, of course. I mean the camera, right? Facial recognition, they're able to identify your face through the camera. AI is in that. So there are also voice recognition, gait recognition. So there, there are ways that AI will incorporate in the the, that kind of surveillance that the government can use to identify specific people, even when your face is not showing.

I mean, I don't know to what extent this gait recognition is working is effective, but the gov, you know, if you read the government materials, if you read tech companies, materials, you know, it's obviously there. They're saying, you know, we are able to invent this tool that are able to recognize people's gait. So it it, you know, it's, at least it's there.

Michael Feinberg: So there's a long history of people living under censors regimes or authoritarian governments who, as you talked about it, find ways to communicate without being explicit. There's a professor from University of Chicago from many decades ago, Leo Strauss, who wrote about what he called the esoteric writing, where in medieval philosophers would disguise their language to make points subtly that they couldn't overtly.

And as we saw in Eastern Europe under the Soviets almost certain cultural items take on a political cachet, reading a certain book, patronizing a certain theater production becomes symbols or ways of expressing solidarity with people who are fighting against the regime in question. But it sounds like what you're saying is AI has now made the monitoring mechanism sophisticated enough that people living in China can't even do that sort of thing.

Yaqiu Wang: I definitely think it's making it harder and harder. It's really getting hard, but I don't wanna say that, you know, just make it impossible.

Let me give you a very good example. During the COVID protests, I mean, China had this draconian control over the population during COVID. Then, you know, people were protesting. Then people went to the street, and as I said, I mean the censorship is so severe. So, you know, what did they do? They held a white paper, right? A blank paper as a way to protest.

I mean, you know what the government can say, what are you protesting? I mean, I'm just holding up a blank paper. So the censorship has gone so severe that under such circumstances when you just hold a blank banner, a blank paper, people immediately know that you're protesting the government.

The other good example is that the word Xi Jinping is so censored. Like, I mean, like, as I said earlier, said, you know, you can, people used to reference Xi Jinping as emperor, right? And then they're, you know, Winnie the Pooh, all that, that all got censored. So now it has gotten to the point that if you just say you, him, people immediately start to think, you know, you are reference Xi Jinping, him.

The word ‘him’ the thing people, the first reaction people had towards this unknown ‘him’ is Xi Jinping. So, I mean, you cannot censor the word ‘him’ because if you censor the word ‘him’, the internet can't function. So in a way, you know, the, the government's such a draconian censorship is having an effect that every time when you say something that is in reference, any, anybody, anything, people immediately think that it is a criticism of the government.

Michael Feinberg: Okay, so we've been talking largely about what happens within Chinese borders. Is the advent of this new technology and its availability to the Chinese government affecting populations outside the PRC?

Yaqiu Wang: I mean, I am part of the Chinese diaspora. I live in the United States, but of course, I'm still subject to the censorship of the Chinese government first.

You know, it's harder to post anything the governor doesn't allow on the Chinese social media, just like the rest of the population inside China. And the other is that my communication with people in China you know, censored by the government, if I wanted to use social media platforms that are controlled by the Chinese government.

I mean, because the Chinese government blocks Signal, WhatsApp and other platforms I used internationally, I have to use WeChat to chat with people in China. Right? Then that mechanism is censored. Of course, you know, this is affecting the Chinese diaspora, also the Chinese government's technology affecting people around the world.

You know, there's this idea of smart city. Basically it's surveillance. Surveillance on the name of, you know, better governance. It's being exported around the world. Dozens of countries are importing Chinese surveillance equipment to you know, so-called the better govern, better manage their cities. So it's not just affecting the Chinese people inside, also affecting the Chinese diaspora. It's also affecting people around the world.

Michael Feinberg: Yeah. And if I remember correctly, the first major smart city project that was planned for North America was gonna be in Canada and functionally built by Huawei.

Yaqiu Wang: I don't exactly know whether it was in Canada, but it's true that you know, they had the plan to ex, I mean, they're, they have exported to dozens of, at least dozens of Belt, Belt and Road Initiative countries.

But they had the plan to, you know, export it to western countries and cities too. But then there was a reaction to, which I think is a good thing, that reaction and awareness of the Chinese government surveillance and its impact on human rights. So they were resistant to that. So that was good.

Michael Feinberg: So it's interesting you mentioned the Belt and Road Initiative though, because I, I think most people don't realize there's also a cyber space.

I, I forget what the exact translation is, but there is a Digital Silk Road initiative as well, where the Chinese government is essentially doing what it did with the larger Belt and Road Initiative, which is offering technology and services relating to cyberspace and relating to advanced technologies to third world countries at prices competitors cannot match.

Yaqiu Wang: Yes, the Digital Silk Road is part of the BRI initiative, the, the, the Belt and Road Initiative by President Xi Jinping. And it's an important aspect of the BRI. I think the government has increasingly emphasized that aspect of the BRI which is digital. And of course, the government is setting all kinds of censorship and surveillance tools and know hauls to BRI countries and, right, increasingly it's the, you know, the the AI companies.

Michael Feinberg: Let's talk about that. Is most of the AI technology being used by the Chinese government being developed indigenously within China, or are they also making use of technology from other nations that in some circumstances might be more advanced than say what Deep Seek has come up with?

Yaqiu Wang: Well, I, I, first of all, we should recognize, you know, a lot of the technology are indigenously, invented by Chinese companies. And the Chinese government has invested so much money to help those company to, you know, develop those tools. But of course, as we saw news on the news that you know, anthropic recently has accused Deep Seek and other companies for, you know, the distillation or basically tried to extract AI, the, the, their development to benefit Deep Seek development.

I, I, I have no real understanding to what extent, you know, that's a legit or not legit stealing or just make use of what is available. I, I can't really say on that, but it is definitely part of this indigenous part of is, you know, is making use of what has been available internationally.

Michael Feinberg: It's interesting. Not an expert on AI technology, but I spent a long time studying how the Chinese government works with respect to its citizens and with respects to its expatriate or diaspora community. And there's a real problem that's not getting talked about a a lot, which is to a certain extent authoritarian governments, if that's the proper word.

I know there's debate over when that should be applied, but governments with less protections against state sponsored surveillance or state collection of data, what have you, they have a real advantage in the development of AI in as much as an AI system. It is going to be largely built on how much data it can ingest to learn from, and the fact is, in a country with less laws restricting the use of government surveillance, whether we're talking about the PRC, whether we're talking about Russia, there's a dozen other nations we can name as well.

They have a real advantage in terms of how much data. And surveillance take and network analysis, they can feed into their AI engines to train them.

Yaqiu Wang: I mean, that's absolutely true. I mean, just they can collect anything in China. As long as the government wants, there's no way you can say, you know, this is my privacy, right. I, I don't wanna give it to you. You can go to the court. The court is controlled by the government, so of course they collect anything that they want and they are collecting anything they want by, you know, your, not just your face, your gait, your iris, your voice, anything. It's all biometric data.

You know, people, some people try to sue the government. What can you do? You can, you know, suing government as a act of resistance. Of course, then you get harassed or you can possibly be detained or imprisoned. So yes, they have so much more capability in terms of collecting data and there's just so much less resistance towards that kind of a government's collection of data in China for sure. So the, the government, Chinese government definitely has an an advantage.

Michael Feinberg: Alright, so because China has so much more access to data. The tech companies in the United States very often argue that they need to be supported by the U.S. government specifically, so that China does not get a technological edge.

And it's usually argued about in the context of things like defense strategy, autonomous weapons, intelligence analysis, things of that nature, but what we've been talking about is more of a human rights story so far. And to the extent that there are real human rights applications here, do you think the U.S. companies are engaged in those concerns, or should Americans fear as much from AI technology here as some Chinese citizens do overseas?

Yaqiu Wang: Well, I think we should offer AI companies, I mean, they're, you know, collecting this massive data. It's, you know, done in a way there's no transparency and accountability so far. So in that regard, all AI companies have problems and we need to be concerned about risk. And then, you know, regulate those companies.

But I think Chinese AI companies and American AI companies are different in a sense. First of all, the Chinese government controls Chinese AI companies and the U.S. government to much less extent the U.S. government has control over American AI companies.

Also, a Chinese government has authoritarian motives, right? And America is a democracy. So in the way that, you know, there's debate, there's, push back. The American people can put on a check on the U.S. government, that Chinese people in China cannot put a check on the Chinese government. So there are difference, there are similarities. We should all be concerned.

But, you know, I still would differentiated Chinese AI companies and American AI companies, and also especially concerning the large language models that Chinese companies are exporting around the world.

The way that, you know, the ChatGPT is everywhere around the world, but you know, political censorship are embedded in Chinese AI companies the way that American AI companies don't. Because the government isn't telling ChatGPT, you know, you cannot criticize, you know, the, the, the information that is critical of the President Trump cannot be embedded in your AI system.

It's not there yet. Maybe Trump wants that, but America is still a democracy. It's an open society. So, so, you know, in that way, Chinese AI companies, American AI companies are different.

Michael Feinberg: Yeah. And I firmly share that conviction and phrase the question provocatively to specifically to draw that out, but I think it does speak to a certain extent that like, I don't know, and, and tell me how you feel about this. I don't know that AI is a malevolent technology in and of itself. And what we are seeing from China though is that you cannot evaluate that claim unless you look at the general legal regime outside the context of ai.

So in other words, if AI were to disappear tomorrow. It would not make China's government respectful of human rights, it would just make it less efficient at clamping down on them.

Yaqiu Wang: Correct. I don't think unit AI is bad and good. It's, you know, it's, you know, how we design the product, how we use the product, where, what are the guard rails to protect people from harm by using the product. So, yeah, I, I don't think technology is good or bad it on how we use it.

Michael Feinberg: Zoom out and talk about China Tech and U.S. tech in a larger sense than just with respect to AI. There is a school of thought in the United States that for geopolitical reasons, and to a lesser extent for human rights reasons, which do not get nearly enough attention, there is a necessity for the United States to maintain technological superiority to the PRC government.

Now I'm gonna put my cards on the table and confess, like I was very much a part of that effort on the part of the United States, and I'm still 100% supportive of that effort. But you've lived in China, you've engaged with the government there in a way a lot of people have not who are still free to speak. What's missing from that debate on the American side as somebody who's lived in both countries and who has engaged with the repressive architecture in at least one of them, what do you wish more Americans were thinking about in this debate?

Yaqiu Wang: Well, I think especially on the left in America, there's this less appreciation of just how brutal the Chinese government is, and also the lack of appreciation that the Chinese government is not just going to limit its brutality inside the country. When it can, it will export. Its also our terrorism, human rights abuse, it is already doing it against the, you know, population outside of China.

So in a way, I mean, at least you know, prior to Trump administration and I so much more want America to maintain the superiority in technology and also other areas over China because I do see fundamentally the two governments are different. America is, has a, with all its problems is still broadly supportive of democracy and human rights, and one that, that kind of governance model to be adopted around the world.

So I, I did I do think America, America's hegemony played generally a positive role. But you know, this is been challenged by the current Trump administration. But overall, I still believe and maintain that that, you know, it's better that America is the hegemony than the Chinese government is the hegemony. But as we are seeing the evolution of the U.S. governance international actions.

I don't know to what extent you know, this, this belief, my belief will continue, but you know, I still, as I see right now in the United States, there's such resistance to Trump's governance, whether it's within the country or its behavior outside of country. So I do hope that America is can go back on track to be a country that is broadly supportive of human rights and democracy around the world.

Michael Feinberg: Yeah. So, okay, let's talk about that. Human rights and national security often get treated as very different things. I've never agreed with that particular dichotomy, and I know it's something you've spoken about before in other venues. Do you think there is a broad separation between national security and human rights advocacy, or do you see them more operating in parallel? Or do you think they're the same thing?

Yaqiu Wang: Well, I do think that you know, America, for America to support human rights in China is good for Americans national security. You know, you want the Chinese, the country to be a stable country. That is a, you know, democratic human rights respecting, so it facilitates, you know, a peaceful relationship with the United States.

It facilitates international exchange, facilitates business, so it's good for China to be a human rights respecting country so you can have a normal relationship with China. And you know when for China to be more authoritarian, more repressive inside the country, the manifestation of that kind repression inside the country is China oftentimes become more aggressive around the world as we are seeing, right?

I mean, China has become more repressive in the past 10 years, also become more aggressive in the past 10 years. So I do think these two are very much related.

Michael Feinberg: So, alright, so let's put that in the context of everything we've been discussing earlier. There was a belief beginning largely with the first Bush administration and continuing very much into the Clinton administration, that if the United States was able to bring, able to sort of help shepherd an era of economic liberalism in the PRC that a political liberalism would inexorably follow? I think it's fair to say that it has not worked out that way so far.

Yaqiu Wang: I agree. It's unfortunate and I think people had that, that kind of expectation. Some of them I think were rationalization, right. You wanted, a lot of American businesses wanted to do business with China because it's good. To make money, right? Then they start to rationalize, you know, by engaging with China, we're gonna liberalize the country to make China more like America. So there were genuine belief that it was the right way to go. But there I think were also rationalizations for moneymaking. But unfortunately it didn't happen.

Michael Feinberg: That idea that economic liberalization would lead to political liberalization has, has pretty much, at least over the past 35 years or so, proven not to be true.

But now we get a similar argument that technological cooperation and scientific cooperation are the only way that humanity as a whole can progress because it's very common to hear that science doesn't operate within geographical boundaries. We build up on the steps that others have taken. We see where their experiments and hypotheses ended. We start from there. We incrementally move forward until eventually we get a great leap. Sorry, I should have used a different phrase talking about Chinese politics than Great Leap, but you understand what I'm.

I'm gonna phrase this in a very purposefully controversial way that I know a lot of people are going to disagree with, but does China's decision not to liberalize politically, but to actually become more reactionary as it became more of an economic powerhouse and more integrated into the world economy? Indicate that we should have similar suspicions or not suspicions, but indicate that we should have a reluctance to integrate Chinese government-sponsored research into the larger scientific community for the same fear.

Yaqiu Wang: Well, I think, you know, I've been engaging this topic for a while. I feel the the devil is in the details.

I do think, you know, by integrating the Chinese scientific world into the international scientific world, you know, there's just so much collaboration going on. A lot of us was used by the Chinese government for malicious purposes. So I mean, you know, the governor was sent, Southern's Talent Project, right? Qiān rén jì huà, what is that in?

Michael Feinberg: The thousand talents program?

Yaqiu Wang: Yes. I mean, you know, people having a collaboration with American universities on the name of some kind of a, for, for let's say a public good, but the government does use this same, the results of the collaboration for military purposes, for example. So there's a large scale espionage. You probably know more than I do because you were in the U.S. government, so you had information I don't. So that was a legitimate concern, but oftentimes collaboration are really just for public good, especially basic research.

My concern is always that the government, the U.S. government needs to know what kind of collaboration can be used by Chinese government for malicious purposes, and what kind of a collaboration is actually good and just for public. You know, for the public good for that advancement of science per se. So it really requires expertise within the United States government to be able to differentiate differences and you know, make a good judgment.

Michael Feinberg: Yeah, there's an anecdote. I tried to tell as many people as possible when I was supervising those types of espionage cases, and that is everybody who works in national security can easily think of a dozen famous cases where there was Chinese government sponsored theft of U.S. technology.

But there's a danger to a certain extent in focusing on that because the story they don't know is about the rocket scientist who was tenured at California Institute of Technology who got so fed up with the suspicion and racism of the U.S. government in assuming he was gonna do something wrong, which he never did and never had that. He was eventually driven from the United States, sort of softly persecuted until he moved back to China and then developed their space program.

So, I just wanna echo your statement that you do need smart people in the U.S. government who are able to differentiate between the sort of sharing we should be encouraging and the environment we should be fostering to welcome foreign scientists, but who also know that not everybody has the purest of intentions.

Yaqiu Wang: Exactly. Yeah, I, I, I mean that, that was already my concern even before the Trump administration. Right now my concern has become more grave because I know many talented people inside the government just can't stand their job anymore. So they left. So now I, I'm sure it's even you know, it's it's even a worse situation in their ability to differentiate what is legit, what is not legit.

And also, you know, I have friends, Chinese friends who are scientists who work in U.S. labs, U.S. universities. I mean, they're, it's, it's real, the, the pressure they're facing from the U.S. government sites, which the pressure they're feeling is from the administrations in their university, in their lab, but ultimately it's from the U.S. government.

It makes them uncomfortable. They're automatically being suspected as a, you know, a spy. In fact, you know, they wanted to come to the U.S. because it's a better country. It's a country that they can do real science in the environment that is more transparent, you know, that actually value their talent.

And they want to be in the U.S. They want to live in the U.S. They want their children to grow up in the U.S. because it's a better system, because it's a democracy. It's a human rights respecting country. And they wanted to be part of it, but now they feel, you know, just by being virtually Chinese, I'm being a suspect.

So, you know, people do tell me that, you know, like, I came here because it's a better country because I wanted to be an American. But now I just feel feeling that, you know, American doesn't want, does not want me. And then people feel hurt. And now how do they gonna reacted to that? Maybe some of them are going back to China a lot, you know, not some.

You know, a lot of them are going back to China because they don't feel welcome here. And then of course the Chinese government is very attuned to this and they are doing more to welcome people. Go back to talents to go back to China.

Michael Feinberg: So I want to tie this back to AI before we conclude, and its effect on not just the U.S. China rivalry, but also its effect on the Chinese populace, both within the country and within the diaspora. If you were an American AI company and you are working on international ventures or, or you're really an American tech company of any sort. Your Apple, your Microsoft, your OpenAI, you know, there's a million different companies we can think of and you have a lot of conflicting feelings about China as a market, as a partner, as a rival nation, what have you, knowing what you know about how the Chinese government leverages technology for, as you called it, malevolent ends.

What do you wish American tech companies would think about before they approach China as a market or a partner or a rival that might not occur to them?

Yaqiu Wang: You know, I feel America has been so successful as a country American company has been so successful, has so much to do with America as a democracy, as a human rights, respecting country, as a society that people can speak freely without repercussion, without fear, right? So America has been able to thrive as a result of this system.

So they need to keep that in mind. So when they interacted with China, whether to see them as a partner, whether to see them as a rival, keep in mind that I'm good because I, I was born in a system that was open, transparent, human rights, respecting, and democratic. So you need to have confidence that promoting this is good, that it is in your advantage, right?

So coming from this place of that, I want, this is good for me, this is why I'm successful, and I wanted this to be brought around the world. It should be the, you know, the fundamentals of how an American company should conduct itself. Whether it's, you know, seeing China as a collaborator, or China as a rivalry, granted that, I mean, Chinese AI is very powerful.

It's collecting so much data and also processing so much data. It's going to make human rights activists resistant towards Chinese government much harder. But also we need to keep in mind that the a, the Chinese AI, Chinese surveillance may not as successful it as it appears to be precisely because China is not a free society. You know, in the U.S., as far as I know in New York City, there are a lot of surveillance, but there are, you know, civil society groups criticizing the surveillance of not being successful.

I'm sure that in China it's happening, but there's no way that people can tell you the story. You know, you cannot read a story on the Chinese internet from Chinese media saying, you know, the government's surveillance camera is not working for X, Y, Z reasons. And the reason I can say that is because I have, you know, family members and friends in China, especially during the COVID, and they were telling me, you know, this is the way I circumvented the health code.

So the government didn't know that I actually went to that shop. Actually, I went to that city which is prohibited at that time. So there are ways that citizens were doing all kinds of things to circumvent the surveillance, and they are also finding out the government's surveillance was not working as it claims, but they're not channeling it publicly because of censorship.

So we just don't know to what extent, you know, it is working as the government. Claims are to work. So we, we, when we talk about surveillance and AI, we need in China, we need to keep that in mind. You know, that works not in favor of the Chinese government. I mean, the government is losing critical information in terms of how effective it's, you know, control over the population.

Michael Feinberg: And I think we'll leave it there. Yaqiu Wang, thank you very much for joining us today. It's been a pleasure from our end.

Yaqiu Wang: Thank you so much.

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