The Free Speech Stakes in the Global AI Race
America’s technology competition with China is about more than just geopolitical competitiveness and national security. It is also about which values will dominate the globe in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). Will freedom of speech, press freedom, and freedom of thought win out globally, or will censorship, surveillance, and control dominate?
I wrote about that question in a recent essay with Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) CEO Greg Lukianoff on “AI, free speech, and America’s real advantage over China.” We argued that it is more important than ever for the United States to “double down on the principles and policies that made our nation the leader of multiple modern information and entertainment revolutions.” If American leaders won’t embrace openness, pluralistic values, and speech freedoms—and promote these values globally—then the world faces the very real risk that the opposite values come to take hold, especially if Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials come to have increasing sway over the nations of the world.
The Long Arm of the CCP
This week, we got another preview of what that grim future might look like. In a new essay for Tech Policy Press, Michael Caster argues that, “China’s Disruption of RightsCon is a Wake-Up Call To Counter Its Authoritarian Influence.” Caster is the Head of the Global China Program at ARTICLE 19, where he covers China’s global influence on freedom of expression and information. His article discusses a shocking development involving Chinese officials successfully pressuring Zambian officials to cancel this year’s RightsCon conference, which was scheduled to take place May 5th – 8th in Lusaka, the capital of Zambia. RightsCon is a global multistakeholder gathering that brings together diverse organizations and public officials to discuss matters relating to technology and human rights. The goal of the conference is to “drive forward change toward a more free, open, and connected digital world.”
Unfortunately, just days before this conference was to begin, and thousands of people from all over the world were set to fly in for it, RightsCon was “postponed” by the Zambian government. According to RightsCon conference organizers, Chinese diplomats “were putting pressure on the Government of Zambia because Taiwanese civil society participants were planning to join us in person,” and on April 28, local state-owned media announced the event was off. The conference organizers added that “a decision was made by the government without consultation or formal notice. We had no prior knowledge of the publication of the news article, nor any opportunity to comment.”
What happened in Zambia reflects the CCP’s expanding effort to exert influence over global affairs through infrastructure investment and accompanying information control efforts. As I documented in testimony given before Congress last year, “the CCP is engaged in a concerted effort to export digital authoritarianism through its Digital Silk Road effort, which is part of a broader campaign to spread influence through investment assistance for nations with basic infrastructure needs.” These efforts are now bearing fruit.
As Caster notes in his Tech Policy Press article, “Perhaps not so coincidentally, on April 23 China and Zambia signed a development cooperation agreement, including a $1.5 billion USD investment into its energy infrastructure.” But China was already making other investments there and across the African continent through the Digital Silk Road effort, and now the CCP is looking to expand those efforts through new AI technologies and investments. Atlantic Council research has identified how the initiative is meant to “shape the global AI ecosystem according to [China’s] own terms, which risks undermining international norms and values on privacy, transparency, and accountability.”
Exporting Authoritarianism
Many governments, including the United States, have historically offered investment assistance to foreign nations. China is rewriting the playbook of how such deals work, however, and exerting unprecedented control and hoping to use that leverage to influence the free flow of global information and truth more generally. This was comprehensively documented in a 2023 State Department report on “How the People’s Republic of China Seeks to Reshape the Global Information Environment”:
“The PRC’s approach to information manipulation includes leveraging propaganda and censorship, promoting digital authoritarianism, exploiting international organizations and bilateral partnerships, pairing cooptation and pressure, and exercising control of Chinese-language media. Collectively, these five elements could enable Beijing to reshape the global information environment along multiple axes.”
These disturbing trends could also take hold in many other nations as CCP officials step up their effort to spread their repressive values globally through investments and other pressure. This is particularly concerning as governments look to extend information control efforts using new AI technologies. As Lukianoff and I recently wrote, “[w]hen a regime pressures AI systems to evade reality around taboo subjects, the damage does not stay neatly confined to those subjects.” Unfortunately, that is exactly what is already happening in China domestically today, and the CCP is now looking to export those efforts globally.
America Must Lead by Example
This is why American technologies and the policies that govern them matter so deeply. If American AI services and platforms aren’t being adopted far and wide, Chinese technologies will fill that gap. By extension, Chinese values will dominate as their most centralized and control-focused systems take root. Lukianoff’s testimony before Congress from 2024 remains relevant here: “With decentralized development and use of AI, we have a better chance of defeating our staunchest rivals…it’s what gives us our best chance for understanding the world without being blinded by our current orthodoxies, superstitions, or darkest fears.”
This applies equally here at home. If the United States is to be a global exponent of the values of openness, transparency, free expression, and freedom of thought, then our nation needs to uphold these same values here at home. Unfortunately, these values are sometimes under attack in America and we must push back against the efforts of some lawmakers to adopt more repressive tactics for old and new media and technologies alike.
The United States cannot be a beacon of hope for global freedom unless it practices what it preaches.