The CCP’s dream concept of total control is pervasive. It is horrible, but highly captivating to a handful of players. Long ago, I wrote in one of few things that ever got published that surveillance can never work in the ways desired. It would definitely immiserate, but always end up in perverse outcomes that thwart the goal of total control. The current circumstances of big data, AI, facial recognition and other technology provide an emerging instance to test this assumption.
China’s internet firewall and social credit system offer one model of this outlined in Document Number Nine. Yet, the reviewer of two books on the subject inevitably tie Chinese efforts to those of Silicon Valley. For the Chinese, the control issue is civic behaviour. For Silicon Valley, it is consumer behaviour. Interesting to think of what the perverse outcomes might be in these unfolding regimes. Given the state of current politics, one can hardly think that democratic oversight would keep these oppressive measures at bay.