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About this talk

Professor Lynette Ong will talk about her latest co-authored book Outsourcing Surveillance. The digital age has afforded autocrats new technologies of control, allowing it to co-opt, pre-empt and repress dissent. But, what if they lack the technical capacity to access digital tools of control? In what ways have digital technologies altered the way autocratic states conduct statecraft? Based on an analysis of more than 3,000 public procurement documents, and a dozen elite interviews with various stakeholders, Professor Lynette Ong and her co-authors found that the Chinese state has outsourced various functions of online surveillance to private and for-profit arms of state-owned corporations. They found that outsourcing surveillance is intended to augment state technical capacity to moderate and fine-tune the conduct of digital repression. Outsourcing digital repression opens up a Pandora's box of state-business collaborations in autocratic settings. This element contributes to the literature on outsourcing repression, state-business relations, and conduct of digital statecraft. This event will be chaired by Professor Steve Tsang (Director, SOAS China Institute).

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