Don’t historians often write about how the totalitarian governments of the 20th century were enabled by various new technologies? (ie, radio and newspapers for propagating ideology, advances in bureaucratic administration that helped nations keep tabs on millions of individual citizens, etc? People are always mentioning things like how IBM made those punch-card machines that the Nazis used to help organize the holocaust.) I don’t think that stable totalitarianism is very plausible with modern-day technology. But new technology is being developed all the time—the fear is that just like the 20th century made “totalitarianism” possible for the first time, the balance of new technology might shift in a way that favors centralization of government power even more strongly.
Political commentators often mention that China has developed a lot of innovative high-tech methods for controlling its Uighur population: AI-based facial tracking and gait analysis to identify people’s movements around the city, social credit scores to lock them out of opportunities, forced sterilization to reduce birthrates, etc. Obviously China’s innovations aren’t good enough that they’ll be able to outcompete the free world and attain perfect global hegemony, or anything like that! But technology is unpredictable; future surveillance tech might give much bigger advantages to authoritarian systems.
I agree that historically, new technologies often allow new forms of political control (but also new forms of political resistance and rebellion). We’re seeing this with social media and algorithmic ‘bubble formation’ that increases polarization.
Your last paragraph identifies what I think is the latent fear among many EAs: when they talk about a ‘permanent global totalitarian state’, I think they’re often implicitly extrapolating from the current Chinese state, and imagining it augmented by much stronger AI. Trouble is, I think these fears are often (but not always) based on some pretty serious misunderstandings of China, and its history, government, economy, culture, and ethos.
By most objective standards, I think the CCP over the last 100 years has actually been more adaptable, dynamic, and flexible in its approach to policy changes than most ‘liberal democracies’ have been—with diverse approaches ranging from Mao’s centralized economic control to Mao’s cultural revolution to Deng’s economic liberalization to Hu’s humble meritocracy to Xi’s re-assertive nationalism. Decade by decade, China’s policies change quite dramatically, even as the CCP remains in power. By contrast, Western ‘liberal democracies’ tend to be run by the same deep state bureaucrats and legislatively gridlocked duopolies that rarely deviate from a post-WWII centrist status quo. Anyway, I think EAs interested in whether ‘China + AI’ provides a credible model for a ‘permanent totalitarian state’ could often benefit from learning a bit more about Chinese history over the last century. (Recommended podcasts: ‘China Talk’ and ‘China History Podcast’).
This post itself sounds very misinformed about CCP history over the past hundred years.
Yes, the CCP changes, but not its underlying logic of unlimited power, and all the dangers associated with it.
Yes, it adapts to external environment to survive, but the domestic costs of doing so cannot be lightly overlooked—such as some of the worst famines, political purges, mass-shooting against teenage students, mass imprisonment, forced labour camps (and the list goes on) humanity has ever seen.
There is the tendency among some China watchers, in their eagerness to ‘educate’ the West about China, too quickly adopt the official narrative and history of the CCP. In doing so, they create a dangerous alliance, often out of ignorance more than willingness. Only when one can get over the hook of CCP official propaganda can one truly begin to see China as it is (sometimes it does seem terribly enticing. Hundreds of millions of people literally lifted out of by the Mother Party, rising on the global stage, developing modern technology, etc.). And I’m beginning to come to the view that the moral instincts of ignorant people reacting to phenomena in China are often more laudable than those of ‘experts’, who claim to know subtleties but in effect really are finding hopeless justifications for a morally bankrupt system. I’d recommend reading not Western China watchers but well-respected (and often suppressed) Chinese experts, scholars such as Gao Hua, Qin Hui, Shen Zhihua, to name a few.
fwiw I think conventional political science literature or most historians would tell the idea is really out there
Don’t historians often write about how the totalitarian governments of the 20th century were enabled by various new technologies? (ie, radio and newspapers for propagating ideology, advances in bureaucratic administration that helped nations keep tabs on millions of individual citizens, etc? People are always mentioning things like how IBM made those punch-card machines that the Nazis used to help organize the holocaust.) I don’t think that stable totalitarianism is very plausible with modern-day technology. But new technology is being developed all the time—the fear is that just like the 20th century made “totalitarianism” possible for the first time, the balance of new technology might shift in a way that favors centralization of government power even more strongly.
Political commentators often mention that China has developed a lot of innovative high-tech methods for controlling its Uighur population: AI-based facial tracking and gait analysis to identify people’s movements around the city, social credit scores to lock them out of opportunities, forced sterilization to reduce birthrates, etc. Obviously China’s innovations aren’t good enough that they’ll be able to outcompete the free world and attain perfect global hegemony, or anything like that! But technology is unpredictable; future surveillance tech might give much bigger advantages to authoritarian systems.
Jackson—thanks for your comment.
I agree that historically, new technologies often allow new forms of political control (but also new forms of political resistance and rebellion). We’re seeing this with social media and algorithmic ‘bubble formation’ that increases polarization.
Your last paragraph identifies what I think is the latent fear among many EAs: when they talk about a ‘permanent global totalitarian state’, I think they’re often implicitly extrapolating from the current Chinese state, and imagining it augmented by much stronger AI. Trouble is, I think these fears are often (but not always) based on some pretty serious misunderstandings of China, and its history, government, economy, culture, and ethos.
By most objective standards, I think the CCP over the last 100 years has actually been more adaptable, dynamic, and flexible in its approach to policy changes than most ‘liberal democracies’ have been—with diverse approaches ranging from Mao’s centralized economic control to Mao’s cultural revolution to Deng’s economic liberalization to Hu’s humble meritocracy to Xi’s re-assertive nationalism. Decade by decade, China’s policies change quite dramatically, even as the CCP remains in power. By contrast, Western ‘liberal democracies’ tend to be run by the same deep state bureaucrats and legislatively gridlocked duopolies that rarely deviate from a post-WWII centrist status quo. Anyway, I think EAs interested in whether ‘China + AI’ provides a credible model for a ‘permanent totalitarian state’ could often benefit from learning a bit more about Chinese history over the last century. (Recommended podcasts: ‘China Talk’ and ‘China History Podcast’).
This post itself sounds very misinformed about CCP history over the past hundred years.
Yes, the CCP changes, but not its underlying logic of unlimited power, and all the dangers associated with it.
Yes, it adapts to external environment to survive, but the domestic costs of doing so cannot be lightly overlooked—such as some of the worst famines, political purges, mass-shooting against teenage students, mass imprisonment, forced labour camps (and the list goes on) humanity has ever seen.
There is the tendency among some China watchers, in their eagerness to ‘educate’ the West about China, too quickly adopt the official narrative and history of the CCP. In doing so, they create a dangerous alliance, often out of ignorance more than willingness. Only when one can get over the hook of CCP official propaganda can one truly begin to see China as it is (sometimes it does seem terribly enticing. Hundreds of millions of people literally lifted out of by the Mother Party, rising on the global stage, developing modern technology, etc.). And I’m beginning to come to the view that the moral instincts of ignorant people reacting to phenomena in China are often more laudable than those of ‘experts’, who claim to know subtleties but in effect really are finding hopeless justifications for a morally bankrupt system. I’d recommend reading not Western China watchers but well-respected (and often suppressed) Chinese experts, scholars such as Gao Hua, Qin Hui, Shen Zhihua, to name a few.