The State of Authoritarian Tech | Steven Feldstein
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Steve Felsing is a senior fellow at Carnegie's Democracy Conflict and Governance program where he focuses on the intersection of technology, human rights, and global politics. He's also the author of two books, The Rise of Digital Repression, How Technology Is Reshaping Power Politics and Resistance, that came out in 2021, and then an incoming book, Bites and Global Riberally, Private Tech, and the New Shape of Modern Warfare coming out next year. We wanted to get Steven on the show today to inform us about a subject that we think is just an important to keep our eyes on, which I'll call the s
It's progressing fast. And, you know, first of all, thanks for having me on as well. I really appreciate it. The sector is progressing fast. It's something that I think you know, it's an interesting arc that we've seen. I I would say, you know, if you go back about fifteen years around that time, there was a moment where there was a real emphasis, I think, on liberation technology and the idea that different digital tools could really liberate and empower people to fight back against state control and so forth. And I think there's been a real reversal since then, that governments have gotten c
Steve, is there, like, a taxonomy that you think about when you think about, you know, repression digital repression technology? Like, what are the different categories in your mind?
Yeah. There's a few. So, I mean, I would start with surveillance technologies being one. And within that, there's a few even a few different types. You have mass surveillance technologies, so things like public facial recognition cameras that are used to see who is gathering where. You also have social media surveillance technologies that, you know, really tries to mine through millions of different messages to see what types of sentiments or political challenges are happening. And then you have targeted surveillance, things like spyware, where you have governments that are able to use softwar
Can you actually talk about that? The Nepal case, both Dave and I were were kinda tracking this and understand some of the anti authoritarian technologies that were used by some of the the protesters and, I guess, you know, revolutionaries, we should call them because they basically led a revolt against their the the incumbent government. So they were using, you know, encrypted communication technology, things like signal, things like telegram. They were also there's reports of them using cryptocurrency because some of this censorship and and repression obviously doesn't just shut down communi
Yeah. It's been really interesting. And and, you know, I've actually commissioned a couple pieces via a network I run at Carnegie to write more about it. So that's coming out in the next few days. But essentially, what you saw is that for a number of weeks, you saw a rising level, and this is really Gen Z oriented. So that was one of the things that was really important is that the bulk of the people protesting, spreading messages, and so forth were of a younger generation that were finally sort of coming into their own, and were really angry about a couple things. They were angry first and fo
And of started course chronicling all of this on social media, I imagine. Right? Just like kind of influencer culture, but you can imagine this for the kind of the the nepo baby baby elite, you know, children of the politicians.
Right. And so that started to gain momentum. And, you know, what happened was that there already was an attempt by the government. They had sort of passed a law that was that would essential
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