Networked Authoritarianism Is a Global Problem That Demands Shared Resistance

Networked authoritarianism has outgrown any single country’s borders. Governments use digital tools to monitor and influence people, while technology companies pursue markets and profit through relationships with states. My read of October’s Global Voices coverage is that these forces increasingly reinforce one another—and that resisting them will require people to coordinate across countries, not wait for governments or companies to fix the damage.

Fifteen years ago, I described China as “exhibit A” in how an authoritarian state could adapt to the internet, then use digital technology to strengthen its power. That argument challenged a popular assumption that the internet and technology companies naturally advance democracy. The assumption has since lost credibility. But recognizing the threat doesn’t mean giving up on technology’s capacity to help people defend their rights and shape the information systems they rely on.

Image by Gerd Altmann on Pixabay.

October’s reporting traced how political actors and technology companies exercise digital power across the global majority. Contributors examined Brazil, Hong Kong, Kenya, Myanmar, Palestine, Venezuela and Xinjiang, among other places. Their stories show governments and, at times, political insurgents using alliances, corporate relationships and control over infrastructure to expand political or military influence, shape public opinion and monitor citizens. Companies, for their part, use their products and access to governments to expand their markets.

Abuse is hard to trace—and harder to remedy

Digital harm often comes with an accountability problem. It can be difficult to establish who caused it, whether the harm was deliberate and which company or government should answer for it. Platforms may discover that their systems have been used to surveil, threaten, silence or mislead people only after those people have already suffered the consequences.

That gap can turn accountability efforts into a performance. In Brazil, an expert warned of “governance washing”: policies that signal responsibility without showing that companies are preventing harm. An NGO leader working across West Asia and North Africa described a growing industry of organizations focused on technology accountability, while questioning whether their work has measurably reduced abuse. The challenge is to connect scrutiny with practical remedies for the people affected.

Government regulation can help set standards, but it can also become a tool of control. Reporting from Bangladesh, Kenya and the Democratic Republic of the Congo documented how rules presented as efforts to hold technology companies accountable may be used to track, threaten or discredit critics and political opponents when safeguards are weak.

Effective oversight depends on more than passing laws. Rules need to meet human rights standards, and governments should reform or reject those that do not. Independent media, watchdog groups, protected whistleblowers and accessible grievance processes can help document abuse and secure redress. Yet even democracies often struggle to hold governments—and companies—to account for protecting human rights.

Data security matters when companies leave

Some of the hardest choices arise when a multinational company operates through a coup or military takeover. Its departure may leave users’ data exposed to a new authority, with potentially severe consequences. The cases covered in the series point to practical defenses: encryption, data security training for civil society groups and company practices that collect and retain less personal information in the first place.

These measures matter because data can outlast a company’s presence. Once authorities gain access, users may have little power to control how their information is used. Planning for that possibility is part of responsible data handling, particularly in places where political power can change abruptly.

Digital infrastructure is part of geopolitical power

Technology companies also operate within international competition. Powerful states can use domestic firms to advance strategic and commercial interests abroad; those firms gain market access in return. Their products may become information intermediaries or essential infrastructure, giving both companies and their home governments influence over how people communicate and what information reaches them.

China receives much of the attention for exporting technology as a form of influence, although at least one Chinese company has argued it operates independently of its government. The reporting also describes a wider market for digital surveillance involving China, Russia, Iran and North Korea, with customers in countries often classified as democracies. Surveillance technology crosses political lines more easily than the labels used to describe the buyers.

Venezuela offers a case study in how these relationships can persist through political change. Before Nicolás Maduro’s removal by the United States, then vice president Delcy Rodríguez—now interim president—negotiated with Chinese company iFlytek to develop artificial intelligence. The company has been under U.S. sanctions since 2019. Australian researchers identified layers of Chinese technology deployed in Venezuela, and a UN fact-finding mission confirmed that the systems remained in use despite the interim government’s close ties with the current U.S. presidential administration.

Competition between the United States and China can also narrow the choices available to countries with limited resources. Chinese information and communications technology infrastructure may be the only affordable option for some governments, including those that fear domestic dissent. Meanwhile, U.S. reciprocal trade agreements that restrict purchases to approved infrastructure could make it harder for signatories to expand access to digital services. That raises a central question of digital sovereignty: how can countries control their own infrastructure while keeping it within reach of their citizens?

Solidarity and community control offer another path

The dynamics described in these reports don’t stop at the borders of countries labeled authoritarian. China’s government uses digital power against people in Xinjiang; Russia’s government exercises it at home and in states the Kremlin considers its “near abroad.” The October series focused on harms across the global majority, while also pointing to concerns about technology billionaires and Silicon Valley’s relationships with the U.S. government. Surveillance tools tested under military occupation can later be sold and deployed elsewhere, wherever governments can use them.

Some contributors see open source, decentralized and community governed technologies as a way to reduce dependence on large technology companies. Building these systems takes funding, legal support and sustained cooperation—resources that can be hard to secure when governments see corporate partners as useful sources of control and influence. Still, technologists and grassroots groups are collaborating across borders on alternatives that give communities more say over their information environments.

There are no quick fixes for digital power that is distributed across governments, companies and international alliances. But people can strengthen shared efforts to document abuse, demand accountability and build tools they can govern themselves. Networked authoritarianism is global; the response will need to be global, too. As voting rights activist Fanny Lou Hamer said in 1971, “Nobody’s free until everyone’s free.”