Digital Authoritarianism beyond China: The Supply Side of the Global Market

• In Event: Digital Authoritarianism, Regime Survival, and Authoritarian Diffusion

Abstract

Academic researchers, think tanks, and politicians increasingly refer to the prospect of a new “digital authoritarianism,” the spread of increasingly sophisticated digital surveillance and analytic technologies and their potential abuse by governments around the world. By allowing security forces to gather and analyze vast amounts of data on the behavior of citizens, analysts speculate that such technologies might allow states to dismantle opposition, predict and pre-empt protest movements, and engage in more targeted and less costly forms of repression.

Assessment of the phenomenon of digital authoritarianism requires objective appraisal of what surveillance technologies are being sold to governments around the world and by whom. Yet discussion and analysis of these subjects has been marked by a marked Sino-centrism, an overwhelming focus on China as both a model for the usage of digital surveillance technologies and as the most important source of such technologies. This Sinocentric tendency risks creating a distorted picture of how digital surveillance tools are being implemented in countries around the globe and where those tools come from.

This paper presents a unique data set on the non-Chinese supply side of the global market for electronic surveillance, which captures information on every company that has made multiple product demonstration appearances from 2008-2024 at ISS World, the secretive electronic surveillance tradeshow held annually in the Americas, the Middle East, Asia, and Europe, or been included in a semi-annual compendium of electronic surveillance firms by a leading industry trade publication. This data set allows us to chart the scope, geographic characteristics, and technological emphases of the non-Chinese firms collectively participating in the global electronic surveillance market.

We highlight three main descriptive findings that significantly alter conventional wisdom regarding the phenomenon of digital authoritarianism and how its underlying technologies are spreading. First, the supply side of the market for electronic surveillance products is global in its customer base, highly diversified and competitive, and dominated by companies from the United States, Europe, and Israel, including both the cyber-intelligence arms of huge defense contractors and a great many relatively unknown boutique firms. While we cannot directly compare the size of this market to the size of that comprised of Chinese firms selling surveillance technology, it is overwhelmingly likely that the former greatly exceeds the latter.

Second, while analysts invoking a “China model” of digital surveillance often highlight the central role of camera networks and facial recognition technology, these tools occupy a relatively small part of the non-Chinese global market and their importance to digital surveillance in practice around the world is likely highly overstated.

Finally, the structure of tradeshows like ISS World, as well as the ways companies advertise their products and services, highlight the importance of training and customer support as core functions and activities within this market. Analysis of digital authoritarianism tends to focus on the acquisition and spread of technology, with the implicit assumption that these are turnkey products that are unproblematic to adopt and utilize. In practice, however, companies expend considerable effort and resources to provide training and support to state security agencies, helping them learn to use the technologies and to integrate them into operational tradecraft. Understanding the spread of digital authoritarianism requires consideration of both technology and technicians.

Author

• Sam Handlin, Swarthmore College