By Elizabeth Marshall ——Bio and Archives--January 13, 2024
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Ah the internet…what wonders have been achieved through this amazing medium? We’ve seen everything from searching for news articles to government legislation and policies, but over the years we’ve also found that there is an ongoing struggle to protect each individual’s information. There’s also been an ongoing struggle to protect our national security. WOW aren't the Western Democracies naïve…?
For years the warning signs have been there--DON’T TRUST CHINA or THE UN! And what do we have--nothing other than the United Nations leaving global internet governance to China. Need proof…and no this isn’t a conspiracy theory--the facts are in: the Under Secretary-Generals advising the United Nations Secretary-General, on development-related issues, including climate change, internet governance, and financing for development, from 2007 to present are:
Now that you’ve had time to digest that tad of humility, it seems governments involved in the 5-Eyes, etc., have all been warned and to some extent so have our universities--at least in Australia.[5] Perhaps Canadian universities haven’t been, or maybe they merely choose to ignore, considering some of our universities are implementing mandatory courses in the UN Sustainable Development Goals,[6] which we all know by now undermine our national security and encourage/governing our municipalities, through planning and most egregiously through ICLEI, Partnership for Climate Protection, BARC programs, to violate Canadian and provincial law.[7]
But what does this all mean, you might ask? In 2019 “Dr. Samantha Hoffman, an Analyst at ASPI’s International Cyber Policy Centre, "explored “the domestic and global implications of the Chinese Communist Party’s approach to state security. The research offers new ways of thinking about how to understand and respond to China’s technology-enhanced political and social control efforts.” She worked in conjunction with her “ASPI International Cyber Policy Centre colleagues,…as well as, Alexander Bowe, John Garnaut, Matt Schrader, Didi Tatlow, Michal Thim, Greg Walton, and several other reviewers who provided feedback, including those wishing to remain anonymous. Last but not least Cheryl Yu and Kitsch Liao for their valuable research assistance.” And what is ASPI? It is the “Australian Strategic Policy Institute” and “was formed in 2001 as an independent, non‑partisan think tank. Its core aim is to provide the Australian Government with fresh ideas on Australia’s defence, security and strategic policy choices. ASPI is responsible for informing the public on a range of strategic issues, generating new thinking for government and harnessing strategic thinking internationally.”[8]
From her and her colleagues' paper “Engineering global consent--The Chinese Communist Party’s data-driven power expansion, Policy brief” from 2019 the questions of:
The Chinese party-state’s tech-enhanced authoritarianism is expanding globally. This expansion isn’t always distinctly coercive or overtly invasive. While there’s an important focus on technologies such as 5G, surveillance and cyber-enabled espionage, that narrow focus misses the bigger picture. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has a much more ambitious vision for harnessing a broad suite of current and emerging technologies in support of its own interests, including devices that might be seen as relatively benign, such as language translation technologies. By leveraging state-owned enterprises (SOEs), Chinese technology companies and partnerships with foreign partners—including Western universities—the CCP is building a massive and global data-collection ecosystem. The creation of that ecosystem gives the party control over large data flows. And, when the data is combined with artificial intelligence (AI) processing, the result can help build tools that can be used to shape, manage and control, including propaganda tools and the social credit system.
To explain this new phenomenon, this report provides analysis of the global operations of Chinese company Global Tone Communications Technology Co. Ltd (GTCOM), which is a subsidiary of an SOE supervised directly by China’s Central Propaganda Department (Figure 1). GTCOM focuses on ‘big data’ collection and AI technologies such as facial recognition. It claims to collect enormous amounts of globally sourced data each year (2–3 petabytes annually, or the equivalent of 20 billion photos on Facebook). It’s also responsible for identifying risks to state security—a concept that places the party’s political power at its core.
For the party-state, leveraging such things as bulk data collection, as well as, smart city and AI technologies provides valuable tools for shaping global governance so that public sentiment is favourable to the CCP’s own interests—not simply China’s or the Chinese people’s, but globally. As this approach continues to rapidly take shape, many Western governments will find themselves both struggling to understand the problem and struggling to respond.
While ideal solutions to this emerging suite of problems don’t exist yet, partly because research on these issues hasn’t been in-depth or forward-looking, there are a range of areas that governments should be investing in and working with industry and civil society on. This report recommends strengthening data privacy laws and foreign influence transparency schemes. It also recommends greater investment in data literacy and data transparency programs, and it calls for a rethink for how governments deal with foreign propaganda in the digital age.”[9]
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Now that that has been explained, in 2021 the UK House of Commons, Foreign Affairs Committee report “Never Again: The UK’s Responsibility to Act on Atrocities in Xinjiang and Beyond, Second Report of Session 2021–22,” expressed:
“53. Under Chinese government policy, Xinjiang has become a modern police state where advanced technology is deployed to support an unprecedented level of surveillance, invasion of privacy, and repression. Systems such as the Integrated Joint Operations Platform (IJOP) and the ‘Big Brother App’ therein demonstrate the potentially Orwellian use of new technologies. These systems collect Uyghurs’ biometric information, such as blood type and height, and monitor their every move for suspicious activity, which may involve actions as vague as “unusual electricity consumption”. We are alarmed by the reports that Uyghurs in the camps are restrained in chairs and subjected to experimental technologies, such as “emotion detection software”.
54. We were further concerned to discover that there are substantial research connections between the Chinese organisations responsible for these crimes and UK universities. While we will be addressing wider questions around tech governance in our inquiry into tech and the future of UK foreign policy, the role of advanced technologies in the use of oppression in Xinjiang cannot be ignored. We are of the view that no UK company should be partnering with or investing in Chinese firms that provide technology for repression, nor should any UK universities engage in research collaboration with Chinese institutions suspected of being involved with Xinjiang or the Chinese government’s wider civil-military fusion doctrine.
55. Given that many forms of technology have the potential for both innocuous use and coercive use, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to determine which specific types of technology will be used for repression. We therefore believe that decisions about research collaborations should be made based on the history, affiliations, and independence of potential partner institutions. Where a Chinese institution possesses known or suspected links to repression in Xinjiang, or substantial connections to Chinese military research, UK universities should avoid any form of technological or research collaboration with them. They should also conduct urgent reviews of their current research partnerships, terminating them where involved parties are found or suspected to be complicit in the atrocities in Xinjiang.
56. We wrote to Manchester University to enquire about their research partnership with CETC, the Chinese firm largely responsible for developing the IJOP. We were surprised to learn that they were unaware of CETC’s reported complicity in the crimes in Xinjiang, despite the extensive and frequent reporting on this issue in the press and media. We welcomed the news that, following our interventions, Manchester University took steps to terminate its partnership with CETC. UK organisations—whether private companies or universities—should take much greater care in investigating those they work with.”[10]
And from “testimony for the record for The United States House Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, hearing on "Commanding Heights: Ensuring U.S. Leadership in the Critical and Emerging Technologies of the 21st Century:”
“The Chinese government and the U.S. government are in a strategic competition, and at stake are alternate visions for the future world order. Technology will play a central role in how the world order is contested, shaped and sustained, especially in the political, economic, military, social and information domains.
The technological aspects of the competition are not measurable through the R&D of technology: the “winner” will not be determined by who races to have more cutting-edge technology. The winner of the strategic competition will be determined by who can best apply those technological outputs consistently and effectively to coherent national strategies.
This testimony briefly describes China’s national strategy for the R&D of critical and emerging technologies and the implications of this strategy for the United States. It then argues that the U.S. government must engage in a two-fold response: First, severe weaknesses in the U.S. innovation system must be addressed, and industrial policy must be strengthened. Second, China’s efforts to undermine the United States’ competitiveness should be decisively countered.”
With the Secretary General of the United Nations being advised by the Under Secretary-General(s), on development-related issues, including climate change, internet governance, and financing for development,being from China and part of the Communist Party of China, from 2007 to present, shouldn’t all Nations, who claim to be part of the Western Democracy, limit, through various steps, the egregious influence China has in our Nations? This would include ridding their nations of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), ICLEI and its subsidiaries/partners (including the Federation of Canadian Municipalities) and remove all remnants of these SDG plans/propaganda from our educational system, either in our universities and our primary schools from K- grade 12? Anyone with a sense of pride in their Nation or anyone who believes in Canada being the “true North Strong and Free” most certainly would. So, question--who’s the parent…you or China?
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• Director of Research Ontario Landowners Association
• Author – “Property Rights 101: An Introduction”
• Board Member/Secretary – Canadian Justice Review Board
• Legal Research – Green and Associates Law Offices, etc.,
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I am not a lawyer and do not give legal advice. Any information relayed is for informational purposes only. Please contact a lawyer.