SALT LAKE CITY — Sen. Mitt Romney said the United States needs to stay on the cutting edge of technology to counter authoritarian regimes’ use of technologies like artificial intelligence for surveillance and other anti-democratic means, rather than relying solely on diplomacy and sanctions.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s Subcommittee on East Asia, Pacific, and International Cybersecurity Policy held a hearing on digital authoritarianism on Tuesday in Washington. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), the committee’s chairman, outlined the growing threats that some emerging technologies pose to human rights in both authoritarian and democratic countries.
“AI-enabled mass surveillance technologies popularized by countries such as China are proliferating as regimes seek to address mass surveillance of their citizens,” Van Hollen said. “This disturbing trend poses significant challenges not only to individual privacy but also to global security, democratic governance, and freedom of expression.”
“Tools designed to empower people are being used as weapons against them, and we must act decisively to counter this trend,” he added. He praised the Biden administration for taking executive action along these lines, using sanctions, visa restrictions, export controls and diplomatic agreements to curb abuses of power enabled by new technologies.
Rep. Mitt Romney, a Republican from Utah and the subcommittee’s ranking member, agreed with the threat assessment but questioned whether policy would stop authoritarian leaders from using repressive techniques.
“I’m similarly concerned about the threats that technology poses, particularly in the areas of cyber warfare, surveillance and espionage,” he said. “I think it’s natural for the rival systems of free nations and authoritarian nations to realize that this extends beyond the air, land and sea competition into cyberspace. But I’m not convinced that there’s anything we can do to stop the bad guys from doing their bad work. … I’m not sure there’s any way to stop them from doing their bad work short of building better tools ourselves.”
“To protect the rights we cherish, a free nation must prevail over its enemies,” Romney tweeted after the hearing. “Advantage in innovation is what America has always done to hold aloft the flame of freedom.”
Authoritarians are using advanced technologies like AI to expand their global influence. To protect the rights we hold dear, free nations must prevail over their adversaries. Leading in innovation is what America has always done to hold aloft the flame of freedom. pic.twitter.com/soH5E8F983
— Senator Mitt Romney (@SenatorRomney) September 24, 2024
Laura Cunningham, president of the Open Technology Foundation, told the subcommittee that regimes are increasingly using “repressive technological shortcuts” to control their populations through censorship, surveillance and the suppression of opposition groups and journalists. She noted that more than 110 countries receive information technology from China and Russia that could be used to expand the influence of authoritarian regimes.
“With commercially available spyware products deployed in approximately 40 percent of countries around the world, it is now possible to monitor citizens anywhere in the world,” she said.
She added that the Open Technology Fund is actively working to counter the use of technology to oppress people by providing technologies such as virtual private networks to citizens of countries where online information is suppressed.
Romney then said that false, misleading or harmful content online raises new questions about what a “free and open internet” means.
“I don’t know exactly how to judge that,” he said. “Are we going to censor Russian bots? I think so, but it’s no longer free and open. So how do we define a free and open internet? I’m sure Xi Jinping (Chinese President) will say, ‘This is what we have. We have a free and open internet.’ All the information that people need to see, all the truth that he wants people to see is there. And we can’t agree with that.”
Jamil N. Jaffer, founder and executive director of the Virginia-based Institute for National Security Studies, responded to Romney’s question by drawing a clear distinction between surveillance and other tools used by authoritarian regimes and the same tools employed in democracies.
“I think the only solution to this challenge and the problem that Senator Romney has raised is to recognize that there is no moral equivalence between our actions and China’s actions,” Jaffer said. “When China, Russia and Iran conduct surveillance, they are one-party states and they conduct surveillance without judges or independent institutions. When we conduct surveillance, it has to go through a judge…. It’s intense.”
“It’s not the same,” he added. “We talk about their disinformation versus our disinformation, or our legitimate information versus their disinformation, but there’s a fundamental difference. … You can’t say, ‘China or Russia are authoritarian societies, so you can’t have the same thing.’ It’s just a different system. You can say, if they do it, it’s wrong, if we do it, it’s OK.”
