The world is moving closer to a new cold war fought with authoritarian tech

A smart identification card for its citizens that aggregated employment, voting, and medical information with the help of the Chinese telecom company was announced by Venezuela. The company has a global network of 700 localities with its smart city technology. The company had a lot of international contracts in 2015.

Chinese surveillance platforms used for policing and public security

Digital authoritarianism is implicated in democracies as well. A recent study by the industry research group Top10VPN showed that the Chinese companies Hikvision and Dahua run hundreds of thousands of cameras in the US.

Much of the digital authoritarianism industry is supported by US companies, which makes isolation and accountability difficult. The Chinese company known for developing "smart interrogation chairs" uses Intel's server power.

Networks of Hikvision and Dahua cameras outside China

Beyond the code 

Digital authoritarianism isn't limited to software and hardware. Technology can be used to increase the state's control over its citizens.

The internet has been blacked out every year for the past 10 years. The ability of a state to shut off the internet is tied to its ownership of internet infrastructure. As the internet becomes more important, the power of power cuts to disrupt and harm people increases.

The state shut down the internet for five days early this year as anti-government protests swept the country. Russian troops went to major cities to suppress the dissent. The country was $400 million in the hole after the power went out.

Data fusion and artificial intelligence are some of the tactics used. During last year's SCO summit, Chinese representatives hosted a panel on the Thousand Cities Strategic Algorithms, which instructed the audience on how to develop a "national data brain" that integrates various forms of financial data and uses artificial intelligence to analyze and make sense of it 50 countries are talking with the Thousand Cities Strategic Algorithms initiative.

In Russia, investment in advanced visual computing technologies that help make sense of camera footage has grown as the use of facial recognition technology has spread.