2022.Jul.15

EVENTS

Lecture by Dr. Aynne Kokas
“Trafficking Data: How China is Winning the Battle for Digital Sovereignty”

Please join us in a conversation with Dr. Aynne Kokas, whose book regarding digital sovereignty between China and the US is forthcoming.

 

【Date & Venue】

・Date: Monday, August 8, 2022, 16:00 ~ 17:30 (JST)

・Venue: Zoom Meeting (No registration required)

・Language: English

 

【Speaker】

Dr. Aynne Kokas (Associate Professor, University of Virginia; 2018 Abe Fellow)

 

Aynne Kokas is the C.K. Yen Professor at the Miller Center and an associate professor of media studies at the University of Virginia. Kokas’ research examines Sino-U.S. media and technology relations. Her book Trafficking Data: How China is Winning the Battle for Digital Sovereignty (Oxford University Press, October 2022) argues that exploitative Silicon Valley data governance practices help China build infrastructures for global control. Her award-winning first book Hollywood Made in China (University of California Press, 2017) argues that Chinese investment and regulations have transformed the U.S. commercial media industry, most prominently in the case of media conglomerates’ leverage of global commercial brands.

Kokas is a non-resident scholar at Rice University’s Baker Institute of Public Policy, a fellow in the National Committee on United States-China Relations’ Public Intellectuals Program, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

 

【Description】

 

Trafficking Data: How China is Winning the Battle for Digital Sovereignty

 

In Trafficking Data, Aynne Kokas looks at how technology firms in the two largest economies in the world, the United States and China, have exploited government policy (and the lack thereof) to gather information on citizens. Kokas argues that US government leadership failures, Silicon Valley’s disruption fetish, and Wall Street’s addiction to growth have fueled China’s technological goldrush. In turn, American complacency yields an unprecedented opportunity for Chinese firms to gather data in the United States and quietly send it back to China, and by extension, to the Chinese government. Drawing on years of fieldwork in the US and China and a large trove of corporate and policy documents, Trafficking Data explains how China is fast becoming the global leader in internet governance and policy, and thus of the data that defines our public and private lives.

 

【Moderator】

Yuko Itatsu (Professor, Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies, The University of Tokyo)

 

【Organizer】

B’AI Global Forum, Institute for AI and Beyond, The University of Tokyo

 

【Supported by】

The Institute for AI and Beyond, The University of Tokyo

 

【Inquiry】

B’AI Global Forum Office

bai.global.forum[at]gmail.com（Please change [at] to @）