George Soros: China is using tech advances to repress its people

Artificial intelligence and machine learning are being used for authoritarian control

By Larry Elliott in Davos

George Soros delivers a speech at his dinner at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. 

The billionaire philanthropist George Soros has delivered a stinging attack on China with a warning that Xi Jinping’s regime is using breakthroughs in machine learning and artificial intelligence to repress its people.
Soros used his annual dinner at the World Economic Forum to say Xi was the most dangerous opponent of open societies and to call on the west to crack down on Chinese tech companies that were being used as a means of authoritarian control.
“I want to call attention to the mortal danger facing open societies from the instruments of control that machine learning and artificial intelligence can put in the hands of repressive regimes. I’ll focus on China, where Xi Jinping wants a one-party state to reign supreme,” Soros said.

The former hedge fund dealer said that in China all “the rapidly expanding information available about a person is going to be consolidated in a centralised database to create a ‘social credit system’.
“Based on that data, people will be evaluated by algorithms that will determine whether they pose a threat to the one-party state. People will then be treated accordingly.”
China, he added, was not the only authoritarian regime in the world, but it was the wealthiest, strongest and most developed in machine learning and AI.
Soros said there was an undeclared struggle between the west and China over governance of the internet. 

China wanted to dictate rules and procedures that governed the digital economy by dominating the developing world with its new platforms and technologies.
“Last year I still believed that China ought to be more deeply embedded in the institutions of global governance, but since then Xi Jinping’s behaviour has changed my opinion,” he said.

“My present view is that instead of waging a trade war with practically the whole world, the US should focus on China. Instead of letting [the Chinese tech companies] ZTE and Huawei off lightly, it needs to crack down on them.
“If these companies came to dominate the 5G market, they would present an unacceptable security risk for the rest of the world.”
Soros said Trump was taking the wrong approach to China: making concessions to Beijing and declaring victory while renewing his attacks on US allies.
“This is liable to undermine the US policy objective of curbing China’s abuses and excesses. The reality is that we are in a cold war that threatens to turn into a hot one.”

Public Enemy Number One

China’s Xi Jinping most dangerous to free societies, says George Soros
By Joe Miller

The billionaire philanthropist George Soros has used his annual speech at the World Economic Forum, in Davos, to launch a scathing attack on China and its dictator Xi Jinping.
Mr Soros warned that artificial intelligence and machine learning could be used to entrench totalitarian control in the country.
He said this scenario presented an "unprecedented danger".
But he said the Chinese people were his "main source of hope".
"China is not the only authoritarian regime in the world but it is the wealthiest, strongest and technologically most advanced," he said, noting concerns too about Vladimir Putin's Russia.

Security risk
"This makes Xi Jinping the most dangerous opponent of open societies," he said.
Mr Soros, a prominent donor to the Democratic Party in the US, also criticised the Trump administration's stance towards China.
"Instead of waging a trade war with practically the whole world, the US should focus on China," he said.
He urged Washington to crack down on Chinese technology companies such as Huawei and ZTE, which he said present an "unacceptable security risk for the rest of the world".
More broadly, Mr Soros cautioned that repressive regimes could utilise technology to control their citizens, in what he called "a mortal threat to open societies".

The 88-year-old Hungarian-born Jewish businessman, who survived Nazi occupation by forging identity documents, became infamous for his involvement in the devaluation of the British pound, known as Black Wednesday.

But it is his philanthropic and political activities that have made him a divisive figure in the US, Europe and beyond.
He has spent billions of his own money funding human rights projects and liberal democratic ventures around the world, and has become a frequent target for criticism by right-wing groups due to his support for liberal causes.
Much of the criticism aimed at him has been criticised as having anti-Semitic undertones.
Last year, a suspect package was found in a post box at his home in New York.
Mr Soros used his Davos speech last year to lambast tech giants such as Facebook, and what he considered to be their corrosive effect on democratic systems.
But this year, he directed his wrath towards Beijing, and particularly its controversial "Belt and Road" investment plan, which pays for road, rail and sea links to boost trade with countries around the world.
"It was designed to promote the interests of China, not the interests of the recipient countries," he said.
"Its ambitious infrastructure projects were mainly financed by loans, not by grants, and foreign officials were bribed to accept them."