While the financial, economic, technological, and national-security implications of DeepSeek’s achievement have been widely covered, there has been little discussion of its significance for authoritarian governance. DeepSeek has massive potential to enhance China’s already pervasive surveillance state, and it will bring the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) closer than ever to its goal of possessing an automated, autonomous, and scientific tool for repressing its people.
Since its inception in the early 2000s, the Chinese surveillance state has undergone three evolutions. In the first, which lasted until the early 2010s, the CCP obtained situational awareness — knowledge of its citizens’ locations and behaviors — via intelligent-monitoring technology. In the second evolution, from the mid-2010s till now, AI systems began offering authorities some decision-making support. Today, we are on the cusp of a third transformation that will allow the CCP to use generative AI’s emerging reasoning capabilities to automate surveillance and hone repression.
You can read the full article by Valentin Weber in the Journal of Democracy here.
