Trafficking Data

How China Is Winning the Battle for Digital Sovereignty

By: Aynne Kokas

Narrated by: Hannah Choi

From TikTok and Fortnite to Grindr and Facebook, Aynne Kokas delivers an urgent look into the technology firms that gather our data, and how the Chinese government is capitalizing on this data flow for political gain.

In Trafficking Data, Aynne Kokas looks at how technology firms in the two largest economies in the world, the United States and China, have exploited government policy (and the lack thereof) to gather information on citizens, putting US national security at risk. Kokas argues that US government leadership failures, Silicon Valley's disruption fetish, and Wall Street's addiction to growth have fueled China's technological goldrush. In turn, American complacency yields an unprecedented opportunity for Chinese firms to gather data in the United States and quietly send it back to China, and by extension, to the Chinese government. Drawing on years of fieldwork in the US and China and a large trove of corporate and policy documents, Trafficking Data explains how China is fast becoming the global leader in internet governance and policy, and thus of the data that defines our public and private lives.

©2023 Aynne Kokas (P)2022 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

Thought provoking

I’m not a big social media user (beyond LinkedIn and Strava) and accordingly have limited personal fear of my data being used to cause personal harm. But the author did a great job of framing the national security risks of data trafficking and the growing tensions between US and China. I was less convinced of the purely economic risks of bigger data pools to train AI but clearly see the threat of enhanced bioterrorism knowledge from mining US consumer data. Worth a read if you believe in thinking about the long term.

China's Pursuit of Cyber-sovereignty

If you are considering reading this book and this title dissuades you from even bothering because you have no idea what a "Cyber-sovereign" is, I have good news for you - the book explains that.

It also explains enough other factors and trends around the growing data economy to quickly bring you up to speed in this new frontier. I am a technology professional but I am not a data professional. As a technology professional, I think this is a must-read. As a technology professional, you should hang your head in shame if I got to this before you. Unless that happened because you were finishing up Cryptonomicon - in that case you are forgiven,

This is not much of a spoiler alert - China is approaching the data economy with control and structure and focusing on the long game. The West is, in comparison, lacking in discipline, planning and methodical approach. I guess we'll see who wins.