 Wonderful. Great. Thank you all for attending. I see we have a lot of people here. I really appreciate you tuning in to hear about Jeff's new publication, The Perfectly State. We're really excited to hear from him today. Before we start the conversation, I wanted to quickly introduce Tech Congress and the organization where both Jeff and I have served as Congressional Innovation Fellows. Tech Congress is a technology policy fellowship on Capitol Hill. And it takes, I apologize, something stuck on here. We take mid-career or advanced technology professionals, and they spend one year shaping technology policy with relevant members of Congress. We are based at New America right now, and I will quickly introduce Jeff. He's an award-winning correspondent. He is an author, a technologist, and he most recently published Samsung Rising, which was long-listed for the 2020 Financial Times and the Kinsey Business Book of the Year award. He's a former correspondent at The Economist. He's a regular commentator in the Wall Street Journal of Time and the New Republic, and he's a frequent guest on CNN, MSNBC, BBC, and Bloomberg. He's also a term member on the Council of Foreign Relations. And his newest book, The Perfect Police State, is an undercover odyssey into China's terrifying surveillance dystopia of the future. And I really enjoyed the book. And so first of all, I wanted to congratulate you on you and thank you for writing it and letting me read it before this talk. Jeff, I think it would be great if you could first tell everyone what the book is about before we go into questions and what led you to write it. I spent a lot of time in this western region of China called Xinjiang. As a technology reporter, I had traveled through there. I had flown out from Beijing. I had spent time in a town called Kashgar, which is not far from parts of Central Asia. And what I observed there in my most recent trip in 2017 was just this all-seeing, terrifying surveillance state that I had never seen anywhere else. My specialty is actually writing about authoritarian regimes. So I spent time in North Korea. I covered the genocide of Myanmar, spent a lot of time in Vietnam, other parts of China, Turkey, Russia, the Trans-Siberian Railway. But of all the authoritarian nations, I've tried to go inside and tried to document. I just found that this region of Xinjiang was so terrifying because it's as if when you go to other places, when you go to North Korea, you're slinging back into the past. You feel like you're going back into the Cold War to this Soviet dynasty. And there are the kooky, goose-stepping soldiers. And it's intended to look scary, but it looks a little bit goofy in so many ways. But when you go to Xinjiang, it is just an all-pervasive, all-seeing, artificial intelligence, facial recognition driven concentration camp populated police states. And just the efficiency and the sinister efficiency with which the Chinese Communist Party has perfected this police state just really terrified me. I also had a lot of friends there from the Uyghur ethnic group who populate this region. There are about 12 million of them. And when I started writing the book, about 1.8 million people had been taken away to a network of hundreds of concentration camps. This was happening as I was writing. These numbers were continuing to swell. The situation was starting to get more and more out of control as I was writing it. Eventually, these concentration camps, they housed about one-tenth of the population of this region of the ethnic minority population. Imagine if you're in America, one in every 10 of your friends disappeared, went to a concentration camp where they were tortured and brainwashed and forced to undergo political propaganda training. So I set out to write this book because I knew that this is a story that needs to be told. It has huge implications, not just for China and the Uyghur people, but really for humanity. Because it is a worst case scenario in what technology can do when placed in the wrong hands, when not governed properly and when used for nefarious racist means. I really wanted this to not just be a story about China, but a warning, a story about how we also use predictive policing programs and various police technologies in America. What does it mean to use them? How do we govern them? How do we manage them to ensure that they're justly and fairly used? And this book is really diving into the underbelly, just the worst case, the George Orwell 1984 outcome in which technology controls all our lives in terrible ways. Great. So before we get into the technology piece, I am curious how you became a foreign correspondent to begin with and in particular how you focused on technology throughout your career. Yes, so I graduated back in 2008 went to the George Washington University out here in DC. And my first assignment so I was actually an anthropology student and I had traveled out to Cambodia I was doing anthropology research near the end of my studies. I, I fell in love with Cambodia. You know, I, it was a place that always that that just always attracted me. And as I finished up my anthropology research. It just so happened that the genocide tribunal was starting this was the genocide tribunal of one of the mass murderers in history of men named like who had run one of the major torture centers and put on pen so I began writing for a number of publications. I spent time there was an old publication called the far eastern economic review which no longer exists. I, I covered this for them, you know, when I went to the economist for a while as a Southeast Asia writer, and I really built a specialty over time as, as a reporter who looks at some of the atrocities looks at the tries to get inside the minds of some of the people, you know, who who commit these these genocidal acts what what is it you know how is it that a man and in this case do you know a former math teacher in a high school who was a volunteer for world vision at one point the Christian aid nonprofit you know how does this man also happened to be a mass killer. So, so you know I continued this beat I was on the you know I was on the North Korea beat for a long time I you know spent time in Turkey. And one of the things I found on the speed was that there was you know as Americans were having this discussion. You know about a decade ago about you know the rise of big tech and you know the four horsemen Facebook, Amazon, Apple and all those companies, their role in our society they're emerging influence over our government and politics. There were similar movements happening in other parts of the world that I was watching, one of which was China, in particular, where China was also having the emergence of this. It was sort of a government, a state government, you know business nexus that was just, you know, deploying some of these new technologies that the difference being that in China. These technologies were being deployed under a strictly authoritarian one party government. I wanted to dive in and cover more about the inner cover more the intersection of government and technology, the intersection of, you know, what does it mean to be either a democratic leader or an authoritarian leader and when you're when you're in a set of new tools that humanity has never really seen before I think AI is a great example. How do you make decisions over how to deploy this tech and who is watching you who's watching the watchers. And you know how do you write, say good laws good policies to ensure that the technology is being deployed appropriately, and that's what brought me to this beat so I'm a tech and authoritarianism writer you can call it that. Great. I really love in the book you kind of thread together a number of narratives from different characters. Could you tell us a little bit about them, how you came to know them and then sort of what role they play throughout the book and in the narrative that you're trying to tell. Yes, so, you know, I think that as technology writers, we run a risk of getting too absorbed in the tech itself and the software and the hardware and how it's made. And I very wanted, I very much wanted this book to be a human book, you know, this is a book that doesn't just explore, you know, the political side of the technology and how it's being deployed in Shenzhou. How it shapes, and you know, even at times it raises the psychology of the people who are being surveilled. One of the chief protagonists who I met was a young woman named may some that's a pseudonym. I, and I do use pseudonym sometimes because sometimes because for good reasons, you know, there are people. There are family members in this region, you know, who are still in danger from refugees talking out to the media so may some was a young woman in her kind of mid to late 20s when I met her. And she was actually from an elite family so she was from a respective family that had access to the Chinese to the Chinese Communist Party that was considered. You know, one of the families that you know would not be targeted under a mastervalent system she was of the Uyghur ethnicity, a secular Muslim. She had this deep love instilled by her family of reading and poetry books literature. And, you know, this is very sophisticated literature I mean she she could read anything from, say like George Orwell to the to the recent history or Jane Austin she was a big Jane Austin fan, but everything back to ancient Greek and Persian ethics and you know the whole region of Xinjiang has a long colorful beautiful history of engaging in the storytelling of ethics and poetry and in an oral fashion. And so you know she came from this tradition. She was, you know, one of the top people in her high school tapped to become a diplomat attended a very good university in Beijing the capital, and what also went to graduate school out in the Middle East in Turkey she wanted to study international relations and return to her home. And, you know, to be this bright young the bright young star of the Communist Party but I'm over time the, the, the surveillance state in in Western China began getting more and more intense there were a series of terrorist attacks and there was many years ago in 2009 that prompted the Communist Party to, you know, to, to change course and to, you know, to announce that it was essentially going to do a drag net of the region and to, you know, was going to start treating more and more people as potential enemies because young men in particular were targeted young men with beards in particular because beards are a Muslim symbol, and they were targeted they were you know often taken away they were beaten with rifle butts, you know many were arrested. There was a campaign in the early 2000s that started getting more intense and Mason, who was overseas in Turkey returned home every summer, and observed just the effect that the growing surveillance state had on the people of her hometown cash of, you know, her friends and family. She saw the, the tactics that the Communist Party used to divide and conquer to, you know, to treat everyone as a potential target who's being surveilled. And then in the process to turn them against each other to, you know, to convince them that, you know, if you're not with us you're against us and your neighbor, you know might be with us and your neighbor might snitch on you for supposedly being against us so you better, you know, get get on the same page and watch your neighbors and you know make sure that they're in line with the Communist Party to so it really became a society for a long time where everyone was watching everyone where it got terrifying for me some was when this old school surveillance, you know, human surveillance network started escalating into a massive artificial intelligence driven dragnet and it was called the IGOP the integrated joints operations platform this was a massive system that the authorities were set up in which they would put in data on every citizen using surveillance cameras monitoring what they buy, you know how they act in public do they go through the front door the back door of their homes. You know like what are their mannerisms what religion do they come from did they get to work on time in the morning where they did they check in did they get sick one day. And literally just everything that they could gather and this artificial intelligence system began trying to make predictions about every citizen and declaring who was likely to commit a crime in the future and in particular a crime of the terrorist nature you know the jihadi terrorist nature. Now, may some, because she was, you know, at home, you know, she was at home and she was at coffee shops and tea shops, you know, reading books, a lot, because she was traveling overseas to Turkey, one of the sensitive authorities in this region because of the affiliation the association, you know, with with supposed terrorist violence by the Chinese authorities. She was in 2016. Very suddenly, suddenly but over time she didn't see it coming but it did happen kind of suddenly she was labeled an enemy of the state, first taken to indoctrination lessons for a number of hours every day. And then she was brought to a more intense security compound where she would study for even more hours a day and then within a day of being brought to this more intense center. She was summoned to an actual concentration camp or a detention center, as they're often called. She spent very lucky. So she was very lucky she spent some time in this camp, just before things got a lot worse. You know, using her intelligence and her which she was able to figure out some of the inner workings and some of the weaknesses of the system, and she gained the system to find a way out with the help of her family. There were lots of, you know, so, you know, one of the ironies of I call it the perfect police state but one of the ironies of the perfect police state is that it's very much imperfect and it's arbitrary and you know, it's like, if you are. If you are someone who is, you know, being targeted, like you don't totally know why always. And she was able to use that to her advantage because she found holes where it's like even the authorities didn't totally know why she was there. It turned out she wasn't properly in one of their systems to be registered at the camp. And, you know, using some of this knowledge and and her family's connections to she was able to get out. Literally just before the whole region went on lockdown she escaped through a very complicated escape route with the great help of many people and now lives in Turkey. So she just a harrowing story but along the way she documented in particular many of the psychological. Jeff, I think we lost you again. You can't hear I. The book does document the psychological impact of this survey. Can you hear me. Yeah, I can hear you. So, I don't know what's going on with my connection today but you know so. So she does so she does document the psychological effects of you know what it, you know what what what it what it does to your psyche and your mindset to be in this system and you know I wanted to tell her story and she wanted to tell her story in the end originally she wanted to tell you, because, you know, she wanted to kind of go inside herself and rediscover, you know what had happened to her and you know what it was like to be in a camp where you're constantly being indoctrinated to have sort of your, your psyche and memory erased your your sense of heritage and history and identity to have it erased and how to escape the camp and then to reconstruct, you know, to kind of reconstruct her identity to remember that she is a weaker and that you know she did get out and you know there is hope for her and you know there is potentially hope for the weaker people so that's what the protagonist story is about in this book. She was struck by how much she thought about the technology, observing her, even more so than the people that were committing these essentially crimes against her and her people. So throughout the book you you chronicle that but you also talk about the China's acquisition of various surveillance technologies, their accelerated efforts in AI in particular after the after Google created deep mind and the defeat of the chess champion about a year and a half ago. And during, you know, between the period of 1997 and 2017 and 2017 China announced its national AI strategy, but it's global share of research papers in the field of AI increased from about 4% to almost 30% of all the AI. They're a leader in AI patents. They currently have around roughly 1200 AI firms compared to about 2000 AI firms in the United States. So largely accepted that the US leaves the world and AI technology development, but that China also has some advantages both in terms of talent pool and computer science and engineering and its ability to capture and process large amounts of data and you touch on that in the book. An example of their access to data found in DD the Chinese version of Uber and it processes more than 70 terabytes of data with 9 billion routes being planned a day and 1000 car requests a second. And as you just kind of pointed out, and then you also say in the code of the book, despite all of their sophisticated surveillance technology to China failed to identify COVID-19 in a timely manner with devastating global results, obviously failed to keep her from escaping. So what is your view on China's AI capabilities and their ability to further develop the technology and put in place the right incentives for major breakthroughs, which is some experts suggest that they don't have the right incentives like we have in free societies, open societies, because, as you know, AI is most effectively done with open research so I'm curious in a closed society and in some of these spaces how you how you see China's AI capabilities currently and then how it will develop in the future. Yeah, so I think it is widely accepted that America does lead an AI, you know, there is China does have a vibrant AI scene that this is something that I document in the book that sort of the creation of China's AI ecosystem through through firms and laboratories like Microsoft Research Asia which is very influential over there. But ultimately, you know, I think that as I've documented in some of my interviews in this book with the technology workers from Xinjiang, weaker technology workers who were involved in creating the surveillance state. I think that there is a huge problem in China with that old adage of garbage and garbage out, you know that if you put in bad data or arbitrary data that maybe doesn't really make sense then you're going to get bad outputs you're going to get bad, you know, advice from whatever system, you're using that that is, I think the the catastrophe of what's happening in China right now with people's human rights. So you know I'm sure the Chinese surveillance state, you know it does it has gathered a lot of data on a lot of people. But we don't totally understand, you know, how it gathers that data, and you know how does it use that data to train the algorithms, I mean from from what I can lean from my interviews, the algorithms that have been used in Xinjiang are actually quite crude. They're not, you know, they're not at the level of sophistication that you would find at a place like Amazon, you know, or, you know, or even Alibaba and Chinese, you know, online seller like this. I think that the algorithms. I think that there is a good deal of evidence, you know, from a mixture of testimony but also some of the, just some of the software that has, you know, come out of China that you know I've actually tried before. You know, it's, it's not really built necessarily for, you know, a quality, quality output or a quality kind of, you know, like, like a quality AI system that can kind of that can go across data and piece together things on its own without a human hand. So this is why out in Xinjiang, there will be arrests, there will be, you know, people taking to camps for silly reasons like you, you know, you were late to work today, you were two hours late, where were you clearly, you know, so the police will get a it's called a bump on their phone or a notification, you know that says there's something suspicious about this person, you know, Mr. Smith is he's been late for work two days in a row. Maybe you should go check on him knock on the door at the neighbors what's going on. And then, you know, if, if, like, put the data back in like report back to the system and will tell you whether or not to take this person to a concentration camp and you know it like if they're in a camp. And it means that the, you know, the state has determined them to be enemies absolute enemies and that they need to be completely perched of their, you know, they're thinking of their thoughts and the end, and what the government calls the ideological viruses of the mind they use all this kind of medical language to science language to describe what they're doing operating on the mind. I think that that is really the major failure of AI in China. But I think that that is what ironically makes the Chinese state so so strong in so many ways and so so feared by so many people in China. It's because nobody knows for sure, you know what the system is going to decide against them. It's arbitrary. You know, if the system were too perfect, then, you know, people would probably be able to figure out what the parameters are what the criteria are you know why are they going to be sent to a camp and they can alter their behavior to, you know, to not be sent to a camp here. It's simply, you know, for whatever reason the system decides you're going to a camp and we don't know why. And that's why people, you know, just just living in that constant state of uncertainty it just it crushes the psychology of so many people in Xinjiang it really it just makes them, you know fearful every day for their life is this going to be the last day I see my family and my kids my spouse, my, you know, my partner. And that, like, that is the irony of this perfect police state that it's perfect from its imperfection. So I have a two part question for this one. I'm sure you saw the New York Times and ProPublica recently published a report on widespread, what they claimed were widespread online propaganda campaigns to counter former Secretary Pompeo's assertion that a genocide was occurring in Xinjiang. Right on the Hill, we looked at a lot of what Facebook calls coordinated and authentic behavior, or what we called the artificial amplification, and the various technical efforts that make narratives look organic and widespread and essentially make it seem as if there's an audience that isn't necessarily there, that's called perception hacking. This is the type of behavior that this article and this research was documenting these campaigns as they point out in these articles rely on technologies that are US US technologies, like YouTube and Twitter they sometimes start in on websites in China and then migrate onto us platforms, and they're not always easy to spot or amplify. My first question is, do you have any thoughts on how US tech companies should respond to these behaviors or what obligations they have to marginalize and oppress communities like the Uyghurs. And then secondly, I on my own went down into a rabbit hole a lot of these videos and you find English speakers and others who will argue that the US sanctions efforts and efforts to, you know, label what's happening in Xinjiang as crimes against humanity or genocide. You see them saying that it's simply an effort to control a region with, you know, 12 million people that would otherwise be impoverished without the changes and developments that have made in Xinjiang. The argument is that the United States wants to kneecap China from succeeding essentially not that it cares about concentration camps or force we are labor and supply chains. And you even highlighted the US role in China's oppression of the Uyghurs based on the stakes meeting during the war on terror and US designation of Uyghurs as a terrorist organization so what are your thoughts on those arguments that the US wants to handicap the region economically as well as those are being propagated on US technology platform. So I don't. So I, so yes, there's a lot to that question, and I'll take it piece by piece. So, yes, you know, it, we do live in a real politic world now with these, these trade wars, and you know what's happening with China I think that, you know, no one denies anymore that China is a major strategic rival, and that you know it will continue to be as long as it grows. I think it's only natural for two, you know, giant powers, you know, one emerging power and one, you know, one incumbent power to, you know, to have this sort of rivalry and this rivalry also plays out in the world of technology. So yes, I mean, I don't think that, you know, what's happening right now is entirely, you know, with these trade wars and you know trying to handicap Huawei and other companies I do think that there is an element of, you know, real politic and, you know, just looking for ways to, you know, to make sure that America keeps a competitive edge. I think that these do play into, you know, major strategic policy decisions in the US. But at the same time, you know, I don't think that that erases, you know, the fact that, you know, there are crimes against humanity and, you know, major human rights abuses happening in China, perhaps on a scale that we haven't seen in this country. You know, I'm not, I'm not saying, you know, there are no Nazi death camps. We're not, you know, like China is not gassing the Uyghurs. It's not, you know, setting up mass graves. But, you know, what is so terrifying about this particular crime against humanity is that it's, it's a it's a postmodern version of what happened in the 20th century. But China has found a way to, you know, erase a people's identity and population through more subtle means and slower beans, you know, and using with the help of some of these technologies. One great example is the use of forced sterilizations and birth control, which under international law is, you know, one of the major markers that would that would be used to determine whether this was a genocide. There was actually a report, I mean, we can go beyond so the State Department and a few of parliaments out there have declared this a genocide, but even among independent academic experts, I could, I don't have this report handy but a group of them publish a major report a couple months ago that went through internet that UN and international law and showed why actually this would meet the threshold for genocide. So, you know, America does not have a wonderful sparkling history of responding to genocide around the world. I think that, you know, as we've seen in Rwanda and Cambodia, and you know, even Nazi Germany early on before, you know, before the war started getting worse and that, you know, America and its policy makers and leaders have wanted to close their eyes because when you use the G word, that means that you have to do something about it. And you know, there's even with the Rwandan genocide, there are even declassified documents now that show, you know, very officials in the US saying, like, don't call it a genocide because then you might have to do something. And that says close to the original quote I can get I'm paraphrasing but it's just, it's just truly shocking. So, you know, I think that, you know, like, I think that so the question you're asking, there are lots of these very complicated angles and I think that, you know, what the US does the US does not, you know, always act out of the kindness of its heart to the world, you know, going to, you know, to China and condemning the treatment of the Uighurs. I mean, I think we also saw in John Bolton's memoir he mentioned this briefly that, you know, that the Uighur human rights issue was kind of seen as one of the chips on the bargaining table. You know, it's like you can use that to get leverage and negotiate trade negotiations against China human rights is always tied to trade. So, you know, I think that, you know, the question you're asking like it depends on, I guess, you know, which government you're asking which leader you're asking which policymaker, you know, some of them like maybe Samantha power or more focused on the idealistic side of the policy and the humanitarian intervention for purely, you know, altruistic reasons whereas you know you go to the Bolton side, and it's you know these are the chips on the table, you know put human rights there, and you know make sure that, you know that we can advance American interests as they should be. And then about Bolton in the book you noticed, you noted that he said the President Trump didn't care about the camps and in fact told President she go ahead, you know build the camps however you want at the time in that in their summit. And by the end of the administration you have this declaration of genocide, which as we could discuss further is very complicated. I'm curious if you could talk a little bit more about that arc of change going from, sure go ahead do what you need to do, and know a lot of it had to do with the trade wars to labeling and genocide before they left office could you talk a little bit more about that transition. All right, so actually, so I spent a lot of time covering some of these trade wars back when they were just starting. And I just remember, you know, very just vividly when the Trump administration had entered office, you know some of the, the virulence, you know, in China, I mean it was like, you know, he would be on a campaign trail and China's the boogeyman and there were the funny YouTube videos of him saying, you know, China over and over a zillion times so like rat music it was kind of funny and you know back then I mean, we all knew journalists policy makers people in this sphere, we all knew that, you know, China was not going to become more democratic that you know there there wasn't really hope anymore that you know the government was going to open up or maybe make a friendlier or amicable stance to America. But then, you know, President Trump came in, and I think he really upped the ante and he actually, you know, brought China from, you know, something a little, maybe more on the side of policy circles to something that's the centerpiece everyone in Washington is talking about it you know and like under under President Trump I remember kind of there was this thing that happened where everyone, everyone in Washington DC was like kind of now an expert on China and like you know giving their hot takes on China and social media and everywhere. But you know that at the beginning that was very much a, you know, that was very much kind of a, I guess, a blunt object you know it felt more like rhetoric and you know it was it was yelling to one upmanship who you know President Xi would say his own things that were equally kind of blunt against America, you know he would say it to Chinese audiences usually. And you know I think that there was a transformation over time, you know as his administration, you know, changed very rapidly with its huge turnover. And I think that, you know, there were some figures in the White House, especially in the National Security Council, who did. Yeah, and this is, I mean this is like these this is from interviews I've done with them so this is not my speculation this is, you know what they say, who actually care who were following the situation of the Uighurs who were following the human right side to and began urging the presidency to incorporate that you know in this kind of blunt foreign policy so these these forces of you know trade wars, plus human rights and the Uighurs and I think that we saw a convergence over the period of the Trump administration and now we're in, you know, like I don't think much has changed. I think that we're really now in part two which is President Biden and we're seeing the same convergence of trade considerations with human rights considerations that were not really as strong before. Why don't we try and turn to the audience for a few questions before I keep pestering you with other questions. We have one from. So, I'm asking about government issue digital currencies, and the author is concerned that they will replace cash and digital IDs, and will be woven into everyday aspects of life and not just in China, and primarily concerned about the anonymity online could appear. And the question is will any country resist the temptation to design digital currencies and digital ID systems for surveillance and not privacy. What is the counter pressure. So, so the question is just to clarify so essentially about Bitcoin and whether these currencies will. Are you asking whether they will converge with, I guess with regular markets with respect to China. I think so I believe that's what they're asking. Yeah, so actually, to be totally frank, I haven't been following the recent Bitcoin saga with China as much I've actually been a little more involved. I've just been, you know, busy getting this book out so I kind of had a blank space where I know that Bitcoin is getting really big in China right now but I just don't know as much as I should about that topic. You know, there is, I can talk about, there is the whole Xinjiang element, I mean a lot of Bitcoin is mined and produced in this region. And I think that, you know, like, I think that it's always surprising, you know, just going back to the perfect police state and what's happening with the Uighurs it's always surprising how this region of China seems a bit far off and remote. But then, you know, so many industries are, are manufactured there I mean there's Bitcoin, you know, major producer of Bitcoin which is terrible for the environment and that you know just uses up so much energy in Xinjiang but then also this region is a major oil power. I mean it produces has huge amounts of oil reserves and minerals and various various rare earth metals strategic, you know industries for the 21st century, for 21st century geopolitics. So yeah I mean that's, you know, I like I just think so, like whatever China is doing with Bitcoin, like I don't really I don't fully grasp yet what its strategy actually is in the long run I don't understand quite yet whether China is simply trying to rain back, rain back control back to its actual currency and not allowing people to, you know, launder money through Bitcoin, or whatever it may be, I mean Bitcoin Bitcoin based money laundering is a massive problem in China. You know that's something I just I feel that this this recent Bitcoin news in China it's it's a it's kind of recent and I just haven't had a lot of time to process it and to figure out talk to people and kind of figure out what's really going on behind the scenes. Okay, thank you. So, another question was how much time did you spend in that region of China and how many people did you interview were able to gather official reports photos etc. Another audience question. Thank you all. So, my most recent trip to the region was to cash car, which is the heartland of the Uighurs in December 2017. I was told in no uncertain way that I'm not welcome back there so please don't return, you don't want to know what happens then. I've gone back and I've instead been based in Turkey mainly and also out here in Washington DC, where a lot of my interviews come from recent refugees. So, you know, refugees who have left in the in the years mainly 2016 and 17 which is really the, I would say really the final wave of people who were able to escape before you know the the passports were taken and the lockdowns happened. So in total I interviewed about 168 people who were not just Uighurs but also Kazakhs and you know Kyrgyz people from other groups the Kyrgyz group. You know Uzbeks people in Turkey to who work on human rights issues related to Xinjiang in that on top of that, I interviewed a number of government, former government officials. There was one intelligence officer who had defected, who was actually shot twice in the back survived in Turkey because of his defection and because of the fact that he was trying to leak state secrets to various media outlets. Also, you know, in interviewing some of these insiders I interviewed some of the technology workers and spent a lot of time with them who were actually working to build the surveillance state and one of them is a character who appears named Irfan, who was involved in kind of putting together this this piecemeal AI system that watches everyone. And, you know, in interviewing them they provided official documentation they provided the leaks. I had also received a lot of official CCP government documents that were leaked through other sources that were kind of going around. Other journalists had gotten these two there were the Xinjiang papers published in the New York Times. There was the ICIJ papers I mean there were a number of leaks that prove this but then on top of the interviews that I did, we, you know me and my team. We, we spent just years going out just going around the Chinese language, Internet, gathering procurement documents and, you know, various official documents and press releases and official media reports that, you know, that's that in very specific terms described what was happening and described, you know how a camp was being built and you know the supplies that they needed the materials they needed from contractors and, you know, like how do you build a watch tower and you know how many people are going to be surveilled in this region or that region at which companies are involved. Some American companies appeared in this documentation and this is now well known I mean one example is thermal Fisher which does, you know, biometric major scientific firm in America that does biometric gathering that has pulled out of Xinjiang since then but you know was found to be deeply embedded in in this system of DNA collection of, you know, not just not just DNA collection but DNA collection without a consent of people so they could be put in a database and surveilled, you know with their, their genetic makeup to so. So yeah I mean I think that one of the things I try to do with this book was to make it as exhaustive as possible and provable as possible with you know what is now available. But, you know, my book it's I don't intend it to be the exhaustive final word on everything that's happening in Xinjiang, I think there's still a lot more that's going to come out. The region is on more and more lockdown and so you know I don't know when when more documentation is going to come out but you know it will come out. I think over time, as there, there is more descent within the ranks of the Communist Party of China and they're actually saying that there already has been some discontent, you know with among official circles in Xinjiang and that's why these leaks already happened so I'm, I'm just conjecturing that more of this is going to happen in the future. So, just to expand on that a little bit in terms of the exporting of this technology by China you talk about Huawei talk about other, you know, sort of the geopolitical considerations can you elaborate or at least just touch on what China is doing from an export perspective on putting surveillance technologies in other countries and who's taking them who wants them what some of the complexities are involved in that. So, Chinese companies are eager to export their technologies and this goes beyond just surveillance technologies but you know Huawei has emerged as a major supplier of smartphones and various components around the world in particular like middle income countries they're very popular. I actually, I used to have a Huawei phone for a little while when I was in, when I was living in Asia in the Middle East that you know just out of curiosity. I wanted to buy this stuff and try it and you know kind of see what is it like if I were, you know someone who uses these products like what do these products do. And I wanted to kind of test them and see you know like our like is there, are they surveilling me I mean is this what is this app here. You know that's just what we journalists do we're trying to kind of, you know, experience the things as people would experience them. So, you know, Huawei is a major name, and you know a lot of it's a lot of what it does around the world is, you know, I think it's just normal, you know, normal the normal sales and normal technologies like smartphones that people use, but many of these Chinese companies they do get wrapped up for both profit purposes but also the need to cooperate with the Chinese government in, you know, exporting and selling, you know, major surveillance technologies and say camera technologies AI surveillance technologies facial recognition to mainly authoritarian nations that are contributing to the or are involved in the Belt and Road program that I'm sure many of the audience have heard about. So, you know what example I got I went through many examples in the book. One of them is, you know, Uzbekistan has been a major benefactor, many of those Central Asian countries Kazakhstan Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, you know, some some elements within their governments have have deep connections to China and they, you know, they do actively purchase these surveillance technologies with the intent of, you know, of watching their people and looking for ways to, you know, to oppress them better. I was actually reading a really just Orwellian article it was in the Wall Street Journal a long time ago but someone in the government of Uzbekistan said that they, they sought to use this Chinese technology to quote, digitally manage political affairs quote unquote. You know, like this is the kind of thing that you come across. And, you know, like when you're going. When you're looking across the world and looking at some of these, you know, kind of semi quasi authoritarian nations in places like Southeast Asia, and parts of Africa and South America that really depends on these kinds of, you know, these kinds of these imported technologies, like you see a lot of, you know, a lot of official materials that kind of dodge the question or phrase it in a different way. They'll often say, you know, that this technology is merely intended to, you know, create a smart city, you know, which in itself is, you know, smart city or a safe city. And that's, that's a fine thing to do. And that's what, you know, that's what China has done for many countries that actually need to fight crime. But the problem is when, you know, these companies take it a step further with the connivance of the government to, you know, to actually set up like an authoritarian system that would benefit an authoritarian government somewhere. Great. An audience member asked what's something that you learn that surprised you while writing this book. Great question. Yeah, good question. So the book was an endless. And you froze. I feel like the best questions right when you're going to say something really exciting and just freezes. Hey, Liesl. Yes. Hey, okay. Okay, start over I didn't hear anything you froze as soon as you started to answer. Okay, so. I'll just repeat the question. What was I surprised with something that surprised you with something that you learned that surprised you while reading this book. Yeah. So the book was an endless series of surprises. There was nothing in this book that seemed normal or anticipated or expected. And that was one of the just most fascinating things about, you know, just just writing it is that I've never, I've written a lot of stories in my career so far and I've never, I've never written a story where it's like you go, you start at a certain point and you just start going down the rabbit hole and everything gets weirder and darker and stranger. And by the end of the writing process, you know, you're just wondering, you know, what the heck just happened and then you just, so I actually had to go back through a lot of my material and think about it again and just make sure that I understood what was really going on here because this the surveillance state just, it became so bizarre over time so, you know, specifically what surprised me. Well, I mean, you know when I started writing the book, you know I had booked a ticket out to Xinjiang I was going to fly there. And now the government of Cambodia, where I have a long history obtained my flight information. I wasn't even in Cambodia I wasn't flying from Cambodia and posted it all over the news and tried to make it tried to make me look like I was like a CIA spook going to overthrow China and they like they use this evidence in the trial of their own opposition leader who was under house arrest and went to prison for a while. You know, I mean like that's just one example of something that I've had to, you know, grasp it with well writing the book and you know that's the thing is that if you know if the government of Cambodia which is a strong Chinese ally is, you know, doing this monitoring me in this way, like I just can't imagine how, you know, a regular Uyghur person, you know, like either in the region or having left China is being surveilled just day in day out I mean it's not just in China but you know that the Chinese agents, you know Uyghur agents regularly call and harass and kind of cajole overseas Uyghur refugees trying to get them to come home or to, you know, promising them to take care of their families back in the region if they become spies. I mean just the level of intensity of surveillance, it just surprises me because I just I still can't even wrap my head around how, you know, how there could be enough people in the entire nation of China to surveil so many people at such a deep level. Fascinating. I was curious to know how you decide what your process was for leaving all of these different stories together it seemed like it would be very complicated because you kind of take these threads and braid them throughout the book. Can you talk a little bit briefly about that before I ask the next question. The first process is finding a good editor at a great publisher. So, I, I do have to give great credit to my editor, my publisher, you know public affairs because they did a great job of you know taking taking drafts and elevating them to a level, you know that would make me look smart, smarter than maybe I am. So, my publisher, you know, I think that leaving those stories together they were extremely helpful. But you know even even before I was working with my publisher I had spent a lot of time. You know just going just just trying to figure out the chronology of what exactly has happened here I think that the chronology is the most challenging points of writing this kind of story because there are so many. You know there are so many major social and geopolitical forces at play that go beyond the characters themselves that you know once you venture to for far off and in your narrative. The book can just become something else that you didn't really intended to be so I would say that it just comes down to really good planning, you know lots. If there are any writers in the audience, you know it's it's just planning. You know not being satisfied with one draft with you know rewriting things going back, you know, not accepting, you know, just kind of mediocre writing is something that you know it's worthy of publishing so it's hard work but that's that's really all it comes down to. The next question from the audience is that many companies are facing scrutiny over their products being created with labor from the Xinjiang camps, and many have committed that they will not use materials created using human rights violations for their products. Does this type of economic divestment have an impact or place any pressure on the Chinese government. It does. Yeah, it does. And I believe that the Chinese government, especially its top officials, I think that they are terrified of having, you know, their their supply chains their assets their, you know, their way their way of doing business exposed and open there in the world there's been a lot of pushback from the Chinese government and various embassies against, you know, these kinds of stories there have been lots of you know flat out denials and there's been lots of double speak coming from embassies about you know why this is this is necessary and it develops the nation it develops people economically and it gives them a good, a good life and prosperity but essentially what they're doing is defending forced labor and potentially slave labor. You know I do think that you know sanctions to a degree. I mean I think that they work to a degree when they're when they're targeted when they're effectively targeted. I think that you know our government you know I don't I think that we have not actually begun to even scratch the surface when it comes to the potential of how far sanctions can go because, even though many people have been exploring supply chains there are still many dark areas. And it's not even clear. You know just just the nature of how our global supply chains work we don't totally even understand them. I mean I don't think we have, you know we have lots of data on them but you know when you go to a place like China. And a lot of that is a black box and they're had you know they have even been reports from the State Department now that supply chain auditors flying in from overseas to you know say represent a big company that's concerned about slave labor infecting its garments they they arrive in Xinjiang and they're detained by authorities and told you know not to do this kind of work so I think that there's there like I think there are still many unknowns and I think that the scope of the problem is probably bigger than what we understand it to be now. Traditional of a lot of data coming out of China. This next question asked, can the US claim a moral superiority here the documentary 13 highlights the US prison system of mass incarceration of black men and women to use as prison slave labor with the expectation that prison is supposed to rehabilitate. Do you have any thoughts on this. Of course so you know the US also has a history of you know historical atrocities of slavery of, you know, the, the some of the atrocities against the Native Americans, which I see as a similar, a similar story of what's happening to the Uighurs, you know the displacement of an indigenous minority group, you know in efforts to kind of, you know, to turn them into Han Chinese or in America's case to turn them into Protestant Christians and all that sort of thing you know I, you know you mentioned in that question a specific example, you know incarceration so. So one of the things you know so there are differences, you know there are stark differences between what's happening in America today, and in China today, you know there is a race there is an element of racial inequality. The one of the biggest problems, I would say there are two big problems in China that are more magnified than what's been happening in America and the first is the extent of the extra just judicial concentration can't system. So, you know, for, for whatever problems we have here, I mean, ultimately, you know, people are going through a system of courts, you know there there is a system set up of trying people and you know a jury that looks at them that can make some of crime. The thing in China is the it is the completely arbitrary based on, you know technology systems that we don't understand just the arbitrary detention and disappearance of 1.8 million people as an upper estimates into concentration camps where you know I think they, they just simply disappear from the system they're not, they're not being accused of a crime they're not being tried for a crime they're simply being told that you need to cleanse your mind you need to cleanse your viruses and you need to spend all these years in a camp. So, the magnitude of that is just, it's truly startling and terrifying. The other thing going so this goes back to technology that I talked about before there have been, you know, especially with the George Floyd protests. There, there have there has been a major discussion in our country over the role of various say predictive policing programs and algorithms and whether they discriminate against minorities more than you know they more than against whites and especially white men. So, you know that, like, that is happening on much more massive extreme in in China right now. So, first of all, the thing is that over there in Xinjiang. No one can have these discussions no one can, you know, ask the questions and say, Well, wait a second, what, what kind of technology are you using and why does it discriminate so much against people from Muslim fates and related ethnic backgrounds. If you ask that question then they're simply going to go to a concentration camp. So, yes, so I mean I think that there are some comparisons to be made but you know I think that what's happening. You know what's happening in this particular region of China is just it's it's an atrocity beyond the scale of you know I think what humanity has seen in a long time. Can you talk a little bit more about what you think the global response should be you see calls for change from the private sector based on legal forced labor. The United Nations has shown some movement Human Rights Commission has shown some movement toward doing conducting their own investigation. Obviously the United States State Department declared a genocide. What is in your view, should the international community be doing to address this issue. And in particular, what should the response of the United States be. So, you know, this is something that always gets me because I think that you know, like the international community often has limited power, you know short of actually invading a country, which is completely off the table. Limited authority limited influence to really, you know, make these situations change I tend to think that changes, changes in political systems I tend to think come from the inside first I mean I think that I do believe that there is discontent with the presidency of Xi Jinping in China and I do think that you know there might be some kind of shift happening in the coming years I don't know when that will happen but I just I don't foresee this, this personality cults continuing forever personality tend to consume themselves. And it's just not something that you know can easily be kind of continued and built so you know I think in the meantime, you know as change, you know as we wait for hopefully a hopeful change to happen in China and with its government. I think that in the meantime, you know I think that targeted sanctions do work, and you know these are sanctions that target specific business interests that are employing slave labor that are that are essentially making it impossible for you know people who use slave labor to sell their goods to the American market or the EU market. You know I think that there is a lot to be said for you know making sure that markets do reflect the values of democracy, you know I do I don't think that markets are separate from that you know there are many people out there now who argue that you know with the trade wars, we should keep trade and human rights separate but you know I think that that that you know protecting the market and protecting it from being corrupted. More than it already is really means you know ensuring that it you know that the way the market is structured reflects the ideas and the vision of you know a democratic society. You know I think that they work to an extent. I also think that I mentioned this before but you know many Chinese elites are quite scared of their assets being revealed and exposed overseas I think that we also have a I mean just generally in the world I think that we have a weak anti money laundering regime I think that it's it's very easy to longer money, you know through various Caribbean islands and you know through Bitcoin, and I think that finding ways also in the US state of Delaware is a major laundering concern. I think that you know finding ways to just make the market more transparent to make sure that we have good data and more data on where the financial flows are going from you know from places like Xinjiang and also other you know human rights abusing entities, just just being able to see where they put their money and where it flows and then looking for ways to act against it or to block it or even to freeze it to seize it I think that these are all, you know effective tools in at least advancing causes of human rights. Do you another audience member asks if you, if there are any leaders fighting for human rights and Xinjiang. There were not so much anymore to my knowledge I think that the region has pretty much been cleansed, so to speak of descent. I don't think that anyone there can can stand up and lead any protest any kind of any kind of mass gathering anymore I just think it's it's We lost you again. Jeff we lost you. Sorry. Hey, please. Yeah, can you hear me. Yeah, yeah. I'm sorry about that I don't know what's going on with my connection today it's just acting funny on the day that we have a talk. Always always on the important days. Yes, and the most important question so you're saying that there aren't any human rights leaders in Xinjiang anymore, but there used to be but I think So in the book, I document one of the major stories of a famous activist and scholar named Ilham Toti who has been sentenced to prison in China. He has now started serving a sentence. I believe the sentences changed once in a while but I think it's a life sentence now and you know he's it's just a terrible situation for him but this is an example Ilham Toti is just a man who is deeply respected among the Uighur community who you know people even here in Washington DC. I remember him and talk about him and talk about what what a great figure he was. So he was someone who, you know, far from being, you know, far from being, you know, kind of a violent or like an extreme figure who wanted to fight the Chinese state and you know his own state. He favored a path towards moderation. You know he was more like a Nelson Mandela type figure and he often held students that is he would bring weaker students and other students to his classes and Beijing on the weekends and he would you know tell them stories about how nations are built and how nations are formed and the importance of having, you know minorities and various groups that, you know that we that understand each other that respect each other that all see themselves as one part of a bigger whole. He would talk about various figures like this, you know in Asia but also he would talk about people like Nelson Mandela and you know some of the major social movements of the post Cold War world. And because of this, he was, he was tried for sedition he was just arrested one day, and the Chinese government just sentence him, and you know he's now he would be I think the best example of a major activist who, you know, had a great going in a great cause who has been kind of removed from the scene and I think it was a strategic, you know attack by the Chinese government because I think they realized that so many Uighurs just so deeply respected him and wanted him to be their leader, but that just just to clarify that from I've spoken with a lot of his family members and old friends and they all say that he actually did not want to be a leader he was you know he was a pretty simple man he enjoyed the intellectual he wanted to, you know, read books and talk about history he did not want to, you know, rise up and become this Mandela figure for the Uighurs but that's sort of how the Chinese state saw him and feared what he would become. So, you know he's someone who I just, I just hope that he's being treated with some kind of dignity in that prison over there, I'm not too hopeful but I just hope that, you know, he will one day get out and be able to, you know, to return to his old life. Okay, well we are a little bit over time so I wanted to quickly ask you so people read this book. They start to pay attention to these technologies. What should the average American who reads this to uses us technologies that are amplifying information that might not be true or that you know the question whether or not it's true. Should they do how can they help what how should they respond to this, the situation and to your book in particular. You mean to to helping the cause to improve. If they read it it's great to be informed but if they think okay so what do I do now. Do you have any thoughts on how people can be involved. There are numerous excellent groups all over America is out in DC and also in Europe in places like Norway, also in Turkey that exists to help legal refugees and refugees from other groups. And you know what they do they will they will help them, you know, kind of undercover to help them find ways to escape this region as much as it might be impossible anymore. So once they do arrive, you know, the Uighurs do suffer a great deal of psychological, you know, anguish and torments and you know they often have to rebuild their lives. So, you know, there, there are many groups that help Uighurs get through these tribulations that help them, you know that give them therapy that you know help them, kind of transition and you know I think that volunteering for one of these groups or giving them to another nation is always helpful there's the there's the weaker human rights project here in DC, they do great investigations into this topic. There's a group called weaker help out in Norway, and they do a lot to, you know, to kind of help people rehabilitate into, you know, into society. And also there are, there is a new group and I wish I could. I don't recall the name now but I could if anyone's interested and you know, email me later. There's a new group that's actually working specifically on mental health issues for Uighurs arriving in America. And I think that's the most important part that's been neglected so far and that's the I think that's the area that's going to start growing in significance in the coming years. Yeah, your description of Mason's mental health progression was really fascinating in the book I thought it was really interesting to see the impact that had on her psychology. And I think that's the most important part of it. So thank you so much for all of this. For those of you who are still on the perfect police state can be purchased at the link in the chat. Thank you all for attending and for your great questions. Jeff, thank you for your work and for writing this great book and Angela and New America, thank you for all of your work and Alina for all of your help with this. With this effort we really appreciate your attendance and for making the time. Alina, thank you so much. Thank you, Liso.