Mick Hartley

China’s terrifying dystopian vision – from the Times:

Documents leaked online show that a Chinese state-linked technology company is trying to combine artificial intelligence and internet control systems to predict who might become a dissident, a study says.

A massive leak of documents from two firms set up by the Chinese state scientific apparatus and deployed as part of the country’s “Great Firewall” internet management system have given an unprecedented understanding of the way in which it operates.

An analysis by a US academic unit, the Institute of National Security at Vanderbilt University, has found that one of the firms is using AI to analyse vast amounts of data covering individuals’ daily habits, travel, relationships and browsing histories.

The firm, known as Geedge Networks in English, appears to be trying to develop a system to predict future habits.

“The goal was to build behavioural profiles of individuals deemed ‘harmful’ — not simply to understand what people have already done, but to anticipate what they might do next and with whom,” the study says….

“The trigger for state action is no longer something the citizen did,” the study says. “It is something the state believes the citizen will do.”…

“Predictive surveillance changes the character of authoritarian control,” the study says. “These systems move government intervention earlier in the chain. They identify the people and networks that could become a threat. They infer intent. They intervene before dissent has organised itself enough to be visible.”…

One of the main aims of the Communist Party over recent decades has been to develop more sophisticated methods of “guiding” public opinion, in part to prevent the sudden eruption of protest movements such as the Tiananmen Square demonstrations of 1989. Those were put down with extreme force on the night of June 3-4, 37 years ago.

Since then, short but repeated prison sentences have been handed down for unauthorised activism, even on issues not obviously a threat to party control, such as labour rights or sexual harassment. Such sentences establish the principle that all social and political activity has to be conducted through official channels.

Likewise, the large network of detention centres in Xinjiang, which the authorities say are for “education and training”, are an attempt to proactively ensure the religious sensibilities of China’s Uighur population do not become a basis for opposing the state.

By wiping out the Uighur culture.

The whole article with no “Orwellian”: that’s some achievement..