Unrealistic Fears About Chinese Tech Distract From Real Privacy Concerns, Panelists Say

WASHINGTON, January 23, 2023 — The TikTok bans that have been implemented by several state governments and universities illustrate a misguided approach to tech policy that targets certain countries at the expense of addressing broadly applicable privacy concerns, said panelists at a Broadband Breakfast Live Online event on Wednesday.

Some of the often-discussed security threats coming from Chinese tech products “are being imagined in a way that is completely detached from reality,” said Yangyang Cheng, a research scholar and fellow at Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center. This misdirected focus diverts attention away from other concrete risks presented by artificial intelligence and social media, she added.

In December, Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-WI, called for a national TikTok ban, calling the app “digital fentanyl” and claiming it was being utilized by the Chinese Communist Party to influence young Americans. Such allegations are unrealistic and xenophobic, Cheng said, but still have the power to broadly shape American society.

For example, several universities have now banned the use of TikTok on the schools’ Wi-Fi and equipment. Access to a particular social media app is not itself a fundamental right, but “fundamental rights with regards to academic freedom, freedom of expression, government’s role in a society are being shaped, and some fundamental freedoms are being infringed on… in the name of banning TikTok,” Cheng said. “That is the concrete harm here.”

The rhetorical focus on a potential TikTok ban and other “combative” issues takes away from more important discussions, such as the fact that the U.S. lacks comprehensive privacy legislation, said Kate Kaye, an independent tech journalist. Unlike the U.S., China has legislation allowing people to opt out of algorithmic social media targeting, she added.

Attempts to establish “very minor ethical guidelines” in U.S. artificial intelligence research have been met with significant pushback from researchers who question whether it is their responsibility to consider ethical questions or data privacy, Kaye said.

Cheng argued that ethical concerns about digital privacy and artificial intelligence are not unfounded, but rather unfairly targeted at certain countries. For example, the U.S. government has placed certain restrictions on Chinese digital surveillance firms, citing potential human rights violations, but similar technologies are being developed and used in the U.S. and Europe.

The “rhetorical China threat umbrella” has even been used to argue against such ethical regulations, with U.S. tech companies claiming that such restrictions will impede their ability to compete with their Chinese counterparts, Cheng said.

Concerns about economic competition are ‘repackaged’ as security risks

Potential risks related to technology can be divided into three categories, which are sometimes improperly conflated, Cheng said. First, technical risks can entail built-in design flaws that make devices or software vulnerable to hacking. While these problems are still complicated, they are relatively straightforward to observe and define.

Another category is regulatory risks, referring to the guidelines and restrictions that are placed on data collection, storage and usage.

Risks in these two categories are “not specific to any individual country or political system,” Cheng said. While the security concerns raised by the U.S. government about Chinese tech companies like Huawei and TikTok are “not necessarily unfounded,” those same risks are present in products from several other countries, she added.

“There is an overemphasis on the policing or surveillance capabilities of the Chinese state, without seeing the reality that data is being commodified and basically packaged as capital, so it can just be bought and sold relatively freely by data brokers and other third parties,” Cheng said.

This potential overemphasis on certain countries’ companies falls into the third risk category, which Cheng termed geopolitical risks. One such geopolitical concern expressed by some U.S. lawmakers is that it is harmful for a Chinese company like TikTok to have such a large market share.

However, this concern is sometimes couched in language about data privacy or security, Cheng said. “What we are seeing is that actual concerns about geopolitics or economic competition are being repackaged and somehow hand-waved to the first two types — technical or regulatory risks.”

Many of the national security conversations taking place in the U.S., on a bipartisan basis, are propelled by “profit-driven motives,” Kaye said.

Our Broadband Breakfast Live Online events take place on Wednesday at 12 Noon ET. Watch the event on Broadband Breakfast, or REGISTER HERE to join the conversation.

Wednesday, January 18, 2023, 12 Noon ET – Welcoming the Chinese New Year, Navigating a High Tech Cold War

Tensions between the U.S. and China are continuing to grow, and the battle over information technology and policy often appears to be at the heart of the conflict. Chinese telecommunications equipment giant Huawei has been effectively barred from the U.S. market for over a year, and the Federal Communications Commission recently tightened restrictions with a new rule that will keep Huawei, ZTE and other companies from surveilling American citizens. Meanwhile, ByteDance’s TikTok has been banned from U.S. government devices, and some politicians argue that it also should be banned from the devices of its 100 million U.S. users. How will this power struggle play out over the coming year, and what are the implications of both countries’ decisions?

Panelists:

• Dr. Yangyang Cheng, Research Scholar in Law and Fellow at Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center
• Kate Kaye, Independent Tech Journalist and Writer
• Drew Clark (moderator), Editor and Publisher, Broadband Breakfast

Panelist resources:

• Legislators Discuss Banning TikTok Over Growing Security Concerns, Broadband Breakfast, December 30, 2022
• Will nationalism end the golden age of global AI collaboration?, By Kate Kaye, Protocol, November 1, 2022

Dr. Yangyang Cheng is a Research Scholar in Law and Fellow at Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center, where her work focuses on the development of science and technology in China and US‒China relations. Her essays on these and related topics have appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Atlantic, WIRED, MIT Technology Review, and many other publications. Trained as a particle physicist, she worked on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) for over a decade, most recently at Cornell University and Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.

Kate Kaye is a tech journalist who tells deeply-reported stories with words and sound. Her work has been published in Protocol, MIT Technology Review, CityLab, OneZero, Fast Company, and many other outlets, and it’s been heard on NPR, American Public Media’s Marketplace and other radio programs and podcasts. Kate covered AI and data as senior reporter for Protocol until the publication suddenly shut down in November 2022.

Drew Clark (moderator) is CEO of Breakfast Media LLC. He has led the Broadband Breakfast community since 2008. An early proponent of better broadband, better lives, he initially founded the Broadband Census crowdsourcing campaign for broadband data. As Editor and Publisher, Clark presides over the leading media company advocating for higher-capacity internet everywhere through topical, timely and intelligent coverage. Clark also served as head of the Partnership for a Connected Illinois, a state broadband initiative.

Graphic by Adobe Stock

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