 All right, welcome everybody to today's panel on activist adaptations to emergent technology. We're very glad to have all of you here despite the early hour here on the east coast. I am Matthew Siebel, a research officer with the nonviolent action program here at USIP and I'll be facilitating today's conversation. To start I'll provide some very brief context about this event. We at USIP have spent much of 2021 conducting research on emergent technologies and nonviolent action in partnership with the USAID's Center on Democracy, Human Rights and Governance. We produced two reports which should be available somewhere on the USIP website and partially on the event page that tackle different aspects of this topic. So the first focused on new tools of digital repression and identified two broad challenges that nonviolent activists face when mobilizing against digitally empowered autocracies. The first one is that resistance behavior is now more legible to the state. The state governments are better equipped to figure out what the opposition is doing, which enables autocrats to harmfully interact with activists via online surveillance, more enhanced censorship, better propaganda, and other forms of preemptive repression. Second and as a result of this more effective preemptive repression, digital technologies are putting more and more distance between activists and the security apparatus that represses them, which makes it more difficult for activists to generate security force defections, which a lot of prior research has suggested is really important to nonviolent campaign success. The second report through interviews with a number of activists from nine different countries explored how activists are attempting to adapt to these challenges imposed by digital authoritarianism. This includes technical adaptations such as increased use of end to end encryption and social adaptations such as decentralized movement structures. At the same time, we identified a number of persistent difficulties that activists face, including tradeoffs between security and convenience, group level or movement level coordination problems in implementing best security practices, and damaging or harmful behavior from big tech companies, particularly social media giants that are making it difficult for activists to navigate these ongoing challenges. The second report also identified three key areas for policy improvements where policymakers could help to accelerate activists' adaptations to these new technologies and also impede or slow down autocratic learning on the issue. So these are rectifying inequities in access to digital activism and security training, as English-speaking activists in high priority countries have much more access to these trainings than others. Building transnational networks of activists to help promote learning between activist communities and tightening or improving regulations to prevent the diffusion of digital repression technologies. Okay, so clearly there's a lot going on in these reports. I'm skimming them here, and there's a lot going on with digital authoritarianism in general. Fortunately, to help us navigate some of these issues, I have the pleasure of introducing four exceptional panelists. Glacier Kwong is a Hong Kong democracy and human rights activist currently based in Germany, where she's pursuing a PhD studying personal data privacy. She's the Hong Kong Campaign Coordinator for the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, an international cross-party group of legislators working to coordinate how democratic countries respond to Chinese rights abuses and data privacy violations. Gamanga Sasan is a Nigerian activist with well over a decade of experience, approaching two decades now working on digital rights and development in Sub-Saharan Africa. He's the Executive Director of the Paradigm Initiative, a Pan-African digital rights organization focused on providing underserved young Africans with access to new information and communications technologies. Stephen Feldstein is a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Center's Democracy Conflict and Governance Program specializing in digital repression and the spread of artificial intelligence. His recent book on the subjects titled the rise of digital repression, how technology is reshaping power, politics and resistance is just excellent. Stephen also has past experience at the State Department and USAID. And lastly, Dr. Lisa Podiali is a democracy data and technology specialist in the Democracy, Human Rights and Government Center at USAID. An anthropologist by training her work focuses on fostering digital democracy and addresses technology enabled through work with civil society actors, technologists and partner government stakeholders. Okay, so how will this panel run? We'll begin with a moderated conversation between the panelists. I'll shift to an audience, an open audience Q&A in the last 20 or so minutes. There should be a chat window that's now open on the initial events page where audience members can type in questions and they will make their way to me. Okay, so without further ado, let's start. The research that I just described has highlighted the fact that digital space has alternated between being a friendly and hostile place for activism. 10 years ago, people thought that digital technologies were liberation technologies that fundamentally empowered the opposition against autocrats. And now it seems like that's not the case. Where do you all see that balance falling now? And what do you think it would take to shift it? I don't want to pick on somebody to go first. I can start because I consider... I know that's a smile on everyone's face. So I don't think it's going to shift in any particular direction. I always love to say that there's going to be a balance of forces of both good and evil for any space, especially as the space becomes a lot more prominent. As you know, a lot more people who used to seek control of citizens, and I speak particularly of despots of dictators, of regimes that have a lot of clamped down agenda, and now discovering the online space. It means they're also discovering that big data isn't just useful for getting information and making decisions. It's also useful for getting people into trouble and sending them to jail and things like that. But the good news is that as we see a lot more negative use or a lot more clamped down on the space. And I can even say particularly from some of the research we've done at the last six years, a lot of people who never paid attention to how powerful the digital space is are now paying attention mostly because they can see that there's a lot of repression. Super-asking questions, if government is spending so much energy shutting down the internet, if governments are spending so much time designing new laws to send people to jail for what they are writing online, 10 demos is something special about that online. It's like keeping a special box in the house and telling a seven-year-old not to touch it. Obviously, it means that our box is important. And I think that was beginning to happen to a lot of people who never really paid attention, but now they realize that this is a space that we can use. And I think it's also creating solidarities. And this is what I love the most about the fact that because some governments and non-state actors are creating toxic spaces online, but beginning to see alliances between traditional human rights activists, between citizens who never really paid attention, and now we're illiterate and close with the story. Recently, the Nigerian government released a policy stand that many people disagreed with. 10 years ago, five years ago, three years ago, two years ago before COVID, most likely citizens would have read it and said, oh, my God, this is bad and moved on. And then we at the Prime Initiative and other organizations who work in this space would have created policy briefs, would have created this campaign on radio and things like that to break it down in quotes to people. But this time, even before we finished our strategy meeting, people went online to call out every line, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph of that policy bill. That didn't happen two years ago. That didn't happen five years ago because oppression was then seen as something happening to others. But I think it's come really close to home and everyone now realizes that if they came for them, then they're coming for me. So I think that balance of forces is going to continue. I wish it would tilt a lot more towards us using the online space and there will be no repression. But that sounds like we should think in for now. Amazing. Yeah, this idea that internet censorship kind of perversely triggers more behavior that the regime doesn't want to see, that's an amazing insight. I think that makes a lot of sense. I tend to agree with what he just said because this is the thing that I've observed in the context of Hong Kong and China as well. When the internet was being invented, everybody thought it's going to open up China. When China have the internet, then it would be an unstoppable force for it to open up and become more free and more democratic in a way. But unfortunately, what we've seen is completely different. It has been the tool for surveillance. Basically, they've developed the Great Firewall, one of the biggest achievement, I'd say, in terms of technology, that they have built such a comprehensive censoring system that powered by powerful algorithms, which can censor sensitive words and so on. And they have the social credit system, which harnesses personal data in order to rate your citizens so that if you are considered as a dissident by the algorithm, they don't actually get train tickets or even plane tickets in that sense. But at the same time, there are still a lot of creative means that I've seen in China that being used to at least to voice out their discontent. Like recently, the war that is happening in Ukraine. In China, the official narrative is that it's Ukraine's fault. Basically, Russia is doing what's right. And a lot of netizens don't actually have the power to say anything about that because there's the official narrative. But recently, they have found a way is that they will use the official narrative, but they would arrange it in a way so that everybody can basically understand the simple sarcasm or even irony that is basically saying the complete opposite. But then the censorship system can do nothing about that. And they can only watch as the whole thing got like send out to all of the netizens until the government decided we have to take down the similar contents. But the effects and the impact of that has already been done. There are more people talking about different things. And the context of Hong Kong like technology and laws related to have definitely been used to crack down on the movement and on us as activists. But in general, it also enabled a lot of prisoners, political prisoners to continue to be heard, like with very simple platforms like Patreon or Facebook or social media. A lot of political prisoners are still writing from behind bars, telling their stories, telling their political ideologies. And this make it very important because government locks up political prisoners so that they won't be heard again because political actions only matters when they're seen and they're being heard. But when they're locked up, it usually meant that their political career just died right there. But because of the help with like very simple technology that we like we seen as a daily necessity, they're able to stay within the public sphere that people still hear from them and learn what they're up to and what they're thinking. And that kind of preserves the momentum of the whole 2019 movement and also help with mobilization. Like people would be sharing different information about screenings abroad or like small community gatherings that are not political under the current like political context. And there are other stuff like the use of Twitter, spreading news about Hong Kong that will never actually travel out of Hong Kong if it's not for the internet. So the Hong Kong won't turn into like complete black box situation where we completely lost all international attention on what's happening there. And there are a lot of these very simple uses of technology, but that kind of help preserve the pro-democratic camp forces in Hong Kong. And I'd say that balance is super delicate right now in the context of Hong Kong. But I do see people will always have a high level of creativity, especially when we're under oppression, that we'll always find ways to overcome circumvent censorship. So no matter what they do, there will always be different ways to do it. So I think that balance hopefully will remain no matter what just like it's going to be more and more difficult because we are both developing competing strategies in order to express ourselves or crack down on us in that sense. But we that delicate balance, I believe will remain in that sense. Let me add on a comment observation as well. I agree with that. And you know what's interesting is that I was actually thinking, as you mentioned, the ability of some of the those who are in prison in Hong Kong to communicate on the outside. I remember just looking recently at a tweet from Alexei Navalny, who was recently sentenced to an additional nine years or so for opposing Putin's regime. And he tweeted a reaction to that. And the idea that someone based in the United States would be able on an open source platform to be able to kind of see his reaction, despite the fact that he's essentially in prison in a gulag in Russia, I think is a remarkable testament to the power of digital communication technology to transcend these repressive strategies, despite the fact that so many governments are exploiting them for their own ends. You know, what I what I would sort of the way I kind of see things is that, you know, I think there was this moment, which I think we all were sort of further and further away from the liberation technology moment that was birthed from color revolutions. And then the Arab Spring in the kind of early to mid 2000s, you know, sort of culminating in 2011, where I think there was a sense that there would be a transformational moment democratically that these technologies would bring. And clearly that is in the case. And so then we kind of sort of flip the other way to kind of this, you know, digital pessimism that we said, well, if these technologies can't bring about the kind of freedom and change that we're looking for. And in fact, if these tools can be exploited by repressive regimes, then, you know, forget it, that we've completely lost the promise of what they were bringing. And I think to me, the actual area where it is not so much that we're from going from optimism to pessimism, but that we are in this moment of struggle. And I think the reason for that is that we were never going to get to that point of liberation that we thought we were. The idea, I mean, think about the counterfactual, these technologies didn't exist. Would you have otherwise had, would these repressive regimes, whether in China, whether in Egypt, whether in other states around the world, would they have gone away? No. I mean, politically, the underlying factors driving repression still would have been in place. Technology has exacerbated some of those, but it's not as if, you know, that the repression didn't already persist in those contexts anyway. And so I think we have to use a different baseline when we say, what can these technologies bring when it comes to enhancing liberties, when it comes to providing a little more space for activism, and when it comes to, when it comes to empowering citizens on the ground to push back against abuses and to hold their officials to account. You know, I think there are many ways, obviously, that surveillance techniques, censorship techniques are pushing back and making it difficult for citizen voices to be heard online. And yet I also see that there are many creative ways in which those voices are able to carry through despite the types of repressive approaches that we've seen. So, you know, let's, let's see where things, where things go. Maybe to just add on to that, one of the things that I'm hearing across all of these comments is just the power of activists to actually help to shift the direction of the digital space in a more friendly direction for community organizing and for democracy more broadly. I mean, we know we face immense challenges when it comes to state's powers to use technology to enact repression. But I think, you know, Gabanga's point in particular about the public being galvanized around, you know, these new repressive laws in Nigeria and actually coming out and commenting on them and caring about them. And, you know, we wouldn't have seen that many, many years ago is I think a testament also to all of the amazing work that's been done by activists on this panel and others to make the digital space safer for collective organizing. And I think that's this point between sort of examining the online world and the offline world together and thinking about how activists offline organizing in sort of very, you know, normal sort of traditional spaces for organizing, like community centers and religious institutions and schools and, you know, other social spaces can really online spaces more safe for activists and also can help help develop tools and technologies that can enhance the digital security of activists who are using online spaces for organizing. Just maybe to put a point on that from USAID's perspective, we have a program that specifically targets these issues and tries to help support activists to create and to inhabit safer digital spaces. And that's the greater internet freedom program or GIF, which is our sort of flagship internet freedom program working in 38 countries with more than 60 partners and 75% of those partners being local organizations. Gubenga's Paradigm Initiative is one of our regional partners that I should mention. And so this sort of sustained and long-term support to activists I think is one of the ingredients that's necessary in order to, you know, continue to attempt to shift that balance of power from, you know, the digital space being a hostile space to one that can be made a bit friendlier despite, you know, what we know will be continued expressions of repression by states. There's a lot going on there. Activist creativity, online offline languages, sustained external support. These are all great points. We obviously do not have nearly enough time to talk about everything. But one thing that kind of jumps out for me here is kind of the implications of what you're saying for the frequency of protests. So, you know, despite the advances in digital authoritarianism that our reports document and that we've been talking about, you know, we've still seen a fair amount of protests over the last five or so years. Most recently, you know, anti-war protests in Russia have been particularly striking to me, which suggests that, you know, digital repression technologies have chilling effects, but that these chilling effects are somehow limited. I'd be curious to know how you all think we should understand those limits. Should we expect to see fewer nonviolent protests in the future, more about the same? I think that question do not, like, does not only depend on, like, technology, it also depends on what kind of world we will be living in the future. So that kind of comes back to the question of how are different countries' foreign policy interacting with authoritarian regimes in the context of China and Russia in that case? But I think judging by the trajectory that we're going on, I think there will only be more and more protests that are going on. Like in 2019, other than Hong Kong, we also see protests broke out in Thailand and Burma and a lot of other places in the world. The recent, like most recent one is the anti-war protests that we saw in Russia, which again didn't, like, we would have never known that something happened. It was not for the sake of people circulating videos on social media that nobody would have known. There are so many people that are, like, fighting against Putin, even within the borders of Russia in that sense. And I think there will be more and more protests, peaceful protests that are happening in different parts of the world, because we have a lot of different social issues that we need to solve. For example, in Germany, where I live, there are a lot of anti-war protests at the same time Fridays through the future protests are happening on a monthly or weekly basis. Like, people are using different kinds of tools to actually mobilize themselves. Like, we use a lot of these things in Hong Kong, like technology. We use signal telegrams, telegram channels, or even the simple technology of air dropping on transportation. We'll be on a train, on a bus, and someone would randomly try to airdrop you something. And if you, like, I am guilty of that, I shouldn't. But I did, like, open the photos just out of curiosity. And I saw it's actually infographics telling you when will the next protest happen, where is it, when is it, what do you need to do, what do you need to wear, what do you need to bring, and so on and so forth. Or it's message of solidarity telling you to remember to have a sip of water, because it's important to carry yourself, that kind of thing. And I'd say these are, like I said, as again, like, these are very creative ways to use that technology that we have in hand, like that are still accessible to us. And I think when oppression kind of intensifies, we will always be looking for very creative ways to try to express ourselves and organize ourselves because this is just in our nature. It doesn't matter if you're an activist or not, this is just something we would do out of our nature to try to connect to one another, because surveillance or crackdown are usually aimed to make you feel very isolated, makes make sure that you don't feel supported, or you don't feel like you have any people that are like-minded. So it's out of our nature to actually try to find someone and connect. So I think there will be more and more these kind of protests, judging by how we're going. This is quite unfortunate, but I'm still quite hopeful at the same time. Yeah, I mean, Chang is right. And I, you know, so as a father of a seven-year-old and a four-year-old, I can tell you that we're raising a generation of protesters, hopefully not violent, you know, because they can express themselves and things like that. But, you know, what one of it, I mean, I schooled, you know, in a university where most protests ended up being violent, and there was one factor that always led to that. It was the resistance from the institution. You know, they really made, you know, nonviolent change impossible. And so there was almost always some form of, you know, altercation and things like that. So that's one factor that will determine that. There's so much you can oppress people. Some of the things you're beginning to see, I mean, for example, you know, people, you know, protesting in Russia, even though they know that there are sort of implications for that. Or in, you know, look, come to my continent, you know, go to Zimbabwe or Uganda. And many years ago, people would tell you, please don't protest. Or in Nigeria, please don't protest when the secret service is involved. But now you have a combination of many things. One, you have a new generation of young people who have a lot more information, who are connected to the rest of the world. You know, for a fact that the Occupy movement literally spread because, you know, it was all over. Everyone saw it. And people connected and were like, wait a second, this is what I wanted to do, right? People saw the Hong Kong protesters all well kicked up and all that. And we're like, okay, I could actually stay safe out there and do this. People saw a combination of offline and online protests across the world, you know, Black Lives Matter and all of that. So I think what will continue to happen is that there will be an attempt by many people and not just activists. So there was a time when activism was a career, right? But right now, activism is a necessity. Because if you want something to change in the world we live in, and we can't discount the fact that, you know, COVID did a lot to get people to think about a kind of world they want. I'm not surprised that one of the biggest protests in Nigeria happened just towards the tail end of the lockdowns in 2020, October 2020. Unfortunately, it was met with force. The Nigerian government, it is silly thing it always does, shot a citizen, some died. But it didn't stop people from protesting and having other protests, you know, since then. So you also have all of this, you know, all of those factors coming together. My personal preference is that we will have a lot of institutions that will listen to people as they use social media, as they use digital platforms, as they speak up through many channels. But you know, I'm 44, so I'm beginning to get more attuned to reality to the fact that there will be many governments, there will be many people to whom the cost of losing power will be much greater than destabilizing their own country. And we've seen that across many countries. They don't mind holding on to power, even if it means the country will sink with them. And if that happens, we may not unfortunately be able to, you know, predicts that there won't be, you know, we all want non-violence. But unfortunately, there's so much you can push and I'll close with it with a Yoruba proverb. I'm Yoruba, you know, from Nigeria. And it says that there's so much you can do to the goat when you chase the goats to the wall. There's only one thing it does. It turns, it doesn't go into the wall, right? It can't. So it turns around and the goats that run from you is going to come back and bite you. Unfortunately, it's just the way it is. It has no choice. Non-violence is a preference, but unfortunately, there are so many naughty institutions that are too egoistic and do not listen and may just seed, you know, a bit of violence. And we hope that doesn't happen. You know, this is really interesting. And it's also one thing that strikes me. Is that, you know, ICTs cuts across both ways when it comes to activism. So, you know, on the one hand, you know, very much what Chung and Ben are saying, you know, these tools are ways to kind of push back against repressive actions to give citizens a means in which to circumvent these controls and to organize and mobilize. But what's interesting is that what we also see in the U.S. is obviously a context that I think a lot about. We see sort of these counter movements that are illiberal and conservative in nature, that are exploiting these platforms oftentimes using propaganda and false narratives towards political violence objectives, towards objectives that are anti-democratic, but that are, you know, similarly harnessing the power of whether it's encrypted apps, Facebook groups, Twitter, Parler, Reddit threads and so forth, in which to organize and mobilize, except the way that they're organizing as citizens in a peer to peer way is not towards, you know, human rights values, objectives, not towards political freedoms per se, but as a way to undermine and overthrow elected officials. And so I think what that shows you that it's a tough balance all around when it comes to, you know, the necessity of preserving freedom of expression on the one hand, which is an essential and core human rights principle, while also ensuring that some of the falsehoods and the propaganda and the links to hate speech and political violence, which we've seen happen not just in the U.S. context, but around the world, that there are appropriate measures in place as well in which to balance out those harms. And, you know, interestingly enough, you know, some of the biggest regulatory pushes are happening in contexts like the EU and others. And I'm curious as to what kind of broader effect they will have, because I think on the one hand, when these regulations are promulgated in a liberal democratic environment, where you have a transparent rule of law and so forth, you can be assured there's some semblance of accountability in terms of how these regulations will be enacted and how they will be followed through on. And yet what we've also seen is the singular ability of repressive governments to take well-meaning policies developed in advanced democratic states and twist those to their own ends as a way to exploit and suppress and control ICTs. And so to me, that also is another battleground that we have to think about. But just as these ICTs are opening up expression and the ability to mobilize on a peer-to-peer basis individuals around the world, it's not always for liberal democratic, political freedom, human rights-oriented movements. There's also an underside to that that we're seeing emerge in pretty significant ways. One of the things I find so valuable, Stephen, about what you're just discussing is sort of pointing to the ways in which digital technologies might be changing the nature of protest or changing the sort of maybe even the people who are more likely to form social movements or connect with one another in more expansive and visible ways than they might have before, like speaking about the rise of a lot of oppressive, repressive movements in the U.S. context, Stephen. And I think one of the things that I think about as I'm puzzling over the ways in which digital repression or technological innovation are changing the nature of protests is the sort of flash protest that I think is it's very easy for everybody to engage now online. It's easy, well, not everybody, but many people to engage online. It's very easy to receive information. You can connect to an activist or a specific campaign very easily. But at the same time, are we seeing the sorts of sustained social movements develop in the same way? And this is one of the things I find Zaynep Tufekshi's work very instructive on thinking through the different kinds of social movement activity that are enabled by digital technologies. And so I think it's something to keep sort of our finger on the pulse of what is the nature of these protest movements that we're seeing emerging and how can we also continue to help cultivate and support the sort of long-standing social movements that are perhaps more likely to make change in a sustained sort of way on the legal and regulatory front than, you know, the shorter sort of bursts of of important, but, you know, different, you know, very specific, discrete forms of protest activity. Nobody told me how hard it was going to be to moderate this panel because I would like to follow up with all of you. And that's just not going to happen. So I'm going to change the direction of this conversation just a little bit. I've got a specific question for Steven, which I think is useful to talk about here. So your work highlights the growing prominence of digital repression, but also that this new repressive capacity is unevenly distributed. Some states are much more sophisticated than others. And these sophisticated states like China and also the U.S. actually export digital repressive technologies to less advanced autocracies. So the question I have for you is how quickly are these second mover countries catching up to more sophisticated autocracies? Is this kind of a critical short-term problem in your view, or is it a medium-term problem? How should I understand the rate at which these new technologies are being diffused and developed? Yeah. No, thanks for the question. You know, I think that just as we saw kind of the proliferation of ICT spread to civic activist movements in a pretty viral and quick way, 10, 15 years ago, I think likewise we're seeing the same type of trends occur on the supply side from a repressive perspective to countries that previously didn't have the capacity to enact some of the more advanced or sophisticated methods that we're talking about. I think so one factor that's important is that the unit cost in general is going down for all types of different technologies. The capacity that's needed, the type of training that in the past was less available has become more wider spread, and then the technologies themselves in terms of the level of investment needed to implement them is also decreasing. And so that means that a lot of countries that in the past perhaps would rely more on physical networks or other types of methods are now more readily able to adapt some of these and more advanced digital techniques. I think a second aspect too is that as threat levels increase, governments will respond. So in the sense that if we believe that being online represents a important modality of power, that this especially in the COVID era where so much of our lives are transacted online, so much of what we do and how we communicate occurs online and therefore so much of the power of civic movements to organize also happens online, well governments will do what's in their best interest in order to respond to the threat. And if that means then try finding ways to free up resources in order to respond back accordingly to these challenges, they will do so. And that's something that we're also seeing occur around the world. So in that sense, I do think there is a bit catch-up that's taking place. And that's part of this kind of cat and mouse struggle where we will see increasingly governments turning to advanced filtering, surveillance technologies and so forth. We also will find citizens have a greater ability to download VPNs, to use mesh networks when there's internet shutdowns, to rely on a combination of technological and non-technological approaches to get around blackouts and so forth. And so there is going to continue to be this kind of back and forth both technologically as well as from an organizational standpoint. Got it. Okay, that was helpful. So another question I have for the group is about kind of how the worldwide web will be structured going forward and how that's shifting now. So one result of the recent Russian invasion of Ukraine has been the withdrawal of many of the major tech companies from Russia. And Russia is now really trying hard to segment its internet off from the rest of the world to be able to kind of stand on its own. China, I believe, can effectively do this already. So in your experience, how concerned are you about internet vulcanization in this way or the segmenting of the internet at the national level off from the rest of the world? And what do you all think the consequences of that will be for future activism? Are there particular problem countries or areas of concern that jump out at you? I can jump in for this one. In my experience, like facing China as a threat, the Chinese government should be precise as an enemy as a threat. I have seen the government basically trying to separate China's internet from the rest of the world, but this has not always been successful. For sure, it has banned VPNs, has banned a lot of access to different technologies for local citizens, Chinese citizens to actually serve the worldwide net. But they're still capable of doing so. Just look at how many trolls we can see on Twitter, on Facebook, on other social media. I think that will give you a very concrete number of how many people are still finding ways to circumvent the censorship of the Great Firewall in order to have access to the information. I think the problem is less about if governments are trying very hard to separate, but they will definitely be in vain. I think it's more what kind of atmosphere they're cultivating behind that Great Firewall. Because in China, a lot of citizens don't have access to foreign news, and they are being repeatedly fed with the same narratives that the government wants them to have. So it's like, oh, the whole world is bullying China. We have to fight back. This is more national pride. Xi Jinping is the greatest leader of the world. Nobody can be compared. And anything that is happening that is not pleasant in the government, I must be colluding with, must be the people colluding with foreign forces. All of these kinds of narratives are the problem that we actually see instead of if the internet is being separated. Because even if they have access, judging by all the like harassing messages I've received in the past, I think it's more of a problem of that narrative that they're fed with. And that kind of decreased the initiatives to actually reach out and see what's happening in the world. And I think another problem is because China does not have to rely on foreign services. They have their own version of WhatsApp, which is WeChat. They have their own version of social media, which is the Chinese local version of TikTok. And they have a lot of other substitutes for social media. And this is why they're so successful when it comes to cutting off internet. And I think they will be very healthy to help Russia out like judging by how they're like reacting to all of the things that are happening right now. And this is very smart of them because they have created another like ecosystem that is not subject to foreign like influences in that sense. And this is a huge problem for activism to be able to happen because even if a lot of Chinese activists actually have Twitter accounts, they will never be able to reach the local crowd. Because the local crowd are not like are not majorly on Twitter or on Facebook, they are majorly on WeChat or at their platforms that are governed by the Chinese government. And the lack of regulations to govern government like to control governments, influences over private entities in China also creates a problem that all of the data, all of the information that they collect have to go to the Beijing government, meaning that there is no way for private entities to try to cultivate a space for its users to speak freely. And this whole thing, it's, it's the actual problem that we're talking about when it comes to activism, because it actually kills the possibility of having a lot of people talking about something before it's being shut down. So I see the problem more like that. And as always also happening in Hong Kong, the Hong Kong government has been very eager to conduct side blocking in Hong Kong right now. A lot of foreign websites are being blocked, including like UK based organizations or websites set up by activists abroad. And so this will increasingly be a problem for Hong Kong. And a lot of Hong Kongers don't actually have the mindset on how to defend themselves digitally or how to do things. But it's very difficult to have foreign help on this now because of the national security law. And we receive funding from foreign organizations, be it like CIA or something, like we've always been joked about having funding from the CIA, despite we don't. The problem is receiving any kind of foreign support, receiving trainings for digital security will be seen as colluding with foreign forces. And that kind of makes the game harder for us to actually educate people to know how to defend themselves. And so it would be it would be a matter of education from now on in the context of Hong Kong. And in China, I think it will be very difficult to try to break through the great firewall in order to break that kind of narrative. But there have always been people like in China trying to do that. But how successful we don't know because we don't have access to the local crowd there. Okay, put a pin in that comment about like transnational activism. I'm going to come back to it in just a second. I just want to make sure I give the other panelists a chance to respond to this question about kind of the segmented internet or increasingly national level internet. I would just echo, you know, everything that Chung just said about how concerning it is that, you know, nationalized or Balkanized Internets really cut off the free flow of information and freedom of expression and just prevent, you know, prevent democracy from flourishing in that sense. I think we've, you know, she mentioned the great firewall in the People's Republic of China. And I think we're also seeing similar trends already in the Russian information space, right? You know, you cannot call the war a war, right? There are censorship laws that are being put in place. And so it's a it's a space that we really have to watch very closely. I'll say that at USAID, we are very committed to a secure, reliable, open and interoperable global internet. This is, you know, a big part of our USAID digital strategy. It's really the driving force behind our digital strategy. And I think it's, it's, you know, critical that we continue to advocate for that global internet in order to ensure that spaces continue to be available for, you know, fact-based reporting to thrive, alternatives to state media to thrive. It's critical for activists and it's critical for the general public as well. So, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. I think we should all be working for a to support this global internet. Yeah, on this, on this issue, you know, my perspective is that Russia, the war in Ukraine hasn't fundamentally changed a paradigm when it comes to, you know, the fracturing and fragmentation of the internet that these are trends that have already been in place for a long time, as Chung has mentioned in terms of the great firewall. But there's so many other instances, particularly not just among authoritarian states, but amongst democracies as well. Look at laws in Turkey, in India, in Uganda. Look at the, you know, Twitter suspension in Nigeria. You know, these are all part and parcel of a range of legislation that has been enacted as well as technical measures that are being used by governments to assert sovereignty and national interests beyond the sort of kind of core values of preserving a free, open, interoperable, and so forth, internet. And, you know, frankly, I think the cat's out of the bag when it comes to these issues. I think what the best we can do as democracies is, first of all, to ensure that these questions of regard to the splinter net won't divide democracies themselves. Already we're seeing new rules being promulgated within the EU and other places that differ from the conceptions in the United States. And, you know, I think there has been a push done by the U.S. government to try to bring together some common understandings and some, you know, basic norms when it comes to how these different rules will operate. But, frankly, there are big differences as well. I also think that, you know, the idea that there is sort of one internet that isn't already carved up by sort of Web 2.0 platforms, you know, by the different regulations and rules that Facebook has in place, or that Twitter uses, or that YouTube uses, and that the algorithms that sort of help these platforms run already aren't, you know, asserting their own kind of value propositions, particularly when it comes to collecting and monetizing user data, you know, I think that's something that we can't ignore, that we have to also think about what that means when it comes to the free flow of information. Because it isn't really happening in a uniform way, in an unimpeded way. I think the way we once might have thought Web 1.0 worked. Now, a lot of people are talking about kind of whether we can bring back some of those initial values with Web 3.0. And that's a whole other conversation. I'm not going to get into that right now. But it's really a complicated landscape. And I do think that we are in a mode where fragmentation is a real thing. It's been happening for a while. And, you know, we have to figure out ways to mitigate the spread or the worst aspects of that. But I don't think we will be able to reverse that anytime soon. Got it. Okay, I'm glad we seem to have lost Kamega but he's back here, which is good, because I have a question for Kamega and Weisscher on transnational or diaspora activism. So we've noticed that this is kind of, I don't know if I would call it a thing that is unique to the digital era, but it is certainly much more common now whereby activists flee their home countries, but they remain connected and engaged online and continue to channel like kind of transnational activist networks back to their home countries. And at the same time, autocrats are getting better at conducting online surveillance or phishing operations internationally. There are a number of amazing examples that Pegasus spyware fiasco is just one of them. So how important do you both think that transnational or diaspora activism is to contemporary protest movements and how are emerging technologies affecting those dynamics going forward? And I can only speak for like the context of Hong Kong because I'm from Hong Kong and currently part of the diaspora community like of Hong Kong. And I'd say it's very important for us because our role as activists that are in like self-imposed exile is to basically fight for the chance of Hong Kong being replaced where we can return, meaning that Hong Kong would have democracy and freedom as it was promised. And we will one day be able to travel back. And so the this is the technology that we have access to is the only thing we have to actually be connected to Hong Kong. And when a lot of news media outlets are being closed, when a lot of crackdowns are happening, it's basically up to activists like me myself to actually tell the world what's happening. Like and when Hong Kong was still relatively free, our job was to amplify the stories that are happening on the ground. But now because of the government was blocking the free will of information, there are not much stories to be told from a local perspective. So it's now up to us to try to find stories to tell. I should put it that way. We are trying to look for things that we can do abroad. For example, we're no longer just telling what's happening on the ground right now. We are also trying to figure out if there are things that we can do abroad when it comes to, for example, foreign legislations, when they're introducing a law that might possibly have an impact on Hong Kong. For example, the EU Digital Marketing Act, it might have an impact on how Hong Kongers and Hong Kong activists have access to technology. How do we take part and implement that narrative that is related to Hong Kong into the discussion? How do we raise awareness for this kind of issue? So that Hong Kong might send a better chance of getting freedom and democracy. And this is how I see my role in relation to how we use technology in that sense. And also this is the only way that we can stay in touch with our friends and loved ones that are still in Hong Kong. And this also brings in another very important debate that is currently happening in the US. That is the debate of encryption. Whether or not encryption is allowed actually plays a huge role in my life, because if I don't have encrypted communication, I dare not to talk to anybody that's still on the ground. Because talking to them basically means putting them at risk. So it would be a very important thing for me. And sometimes I get a bit frustrated because when countries like the US or like entity like the EU, they're talking about these kind of huge topics that have an impact on everyone in the world. They don't legislate. The policymakers don't seem to have an understanding of how much these kinds of debates will influence people outside of the country, outside of the union. And I really kind of hope that there will be more awareness when it comes to these things. Like these are not just domestic issues, because nothing is actually very domestic when it comes to the US and the EU. Like there's all very powerful players in the world. And I think these things are, the things that are very important when we're talking about technology that helps with the diaspora community when it comes to Hong Kong. Whoops, looks like Gamanga accidentally dropped off again. That's unfortunate. So I want to, yeah, Glacier, this is great. I wanted to just quickly tie one of our many loose threads together here. I think the comments about diaspora activism and the Splinternet are interesting because a free and open global internet are doing a lot of work to kind of foster this cultural or normative change about the importance of protest or the social appropriateness of protest. So I think it's important to maintain that, or that has a relationship to whether we expect to see kind of protest movements like the ones we've been observing for the past five or so years continue to generate steam or gain steam into the future. And so hopefully we can continue to work to avoid internet vulcanization. Okay, we have just a couple more minutes before this Q&A. Oh, Gamanga is back. Can you hear us? Do you want to chime in here on the question about diaspora activism? Maybe not. Looks like we're still having technical difficulties. In that case, okay, so we just have a couple more minutes before I will open the floor to Q&A. So I'll ask one final question for all the panelists, which is, what do you think the next big technology or innovation that will shift the balance of power between regimes and activists will be? Does anything jump out to you? Are there particular areas of importance that you think will really change the nature of the game, or is that kind of just non-transparent to everybody here? What do you think would be the next big thing? Just offer just two thoughts. So I think one is, as we continue to see advances in artificial intelligence and deep learning, I think these are techniques that will have a myriad of effects, which are hard to precisely know. Certainly I've written about in my own work how, as these techniques are used by different regimes, they allow for a greater ability of a small number of individuals in power to monitor and track large numbers of individuals in terms of sentiment analysis, in terms of finding and identifying different modes of descent. And so I do think that's something to continue watching. I also think that when it comes to platform governance as deep learning, reinforcement learning, and other techniques are used that will have more precise effects as well, both in terms of monetizing and collecting data, but also as in terms of identifying negative speech patterns, anti-democrat behavior, and so forth. So it's hard to say exactly where they'll end up, but I think that these techniques are certainly at the vanguard in terms of where we'll see changes and innovation occur from a technological basis. And then the other thing that I mentioned a little earlier was this idea of Web 3.0 in terms of whether this will lead to changes or break the monopoly of platforms, whether it will be a greater ability to rely on crypto and other means, especially when it comes to ensuring transparency and accountability through the blockchain of information. Right now, so much of it feels very speculative and nebulous. And most of what we've seen are just really big attempts to monetize through NFTs and so forth and cryptocurrencies, different aspects. And so some of that seems a little bit more like a gold rush than an actual kind of paradigm shift technologically. But I do think there is something that's worth watching that's underlying this transformation and that there is possibilities that this could be positive in terms of what it does democratically. Yeah, I would just agree with what Steven just said. I mean, there's a number of different technologies that are on the horizon or that are already at play, including blockchain, Web 3.0, quantum computing, and these are things that we're all tracking. But I think there's another way of thinking about this problem that focuses less on a particular technology and focuses more on the ways in which technologies are created and the people who are involved in their creation and dissemination and use. And so maybe just to focus on that for one second, I think we need to consider more deliberately the ways in which software engineers and technologists who are building and designing myriad programs, platforms, systems, regardless of the technology have this tremendous power to shape the impact of the technologies. They don't have total power or total control, obviously, but I think it's a space that we haven't focused enough on. Certainly, it's something we're thinking about deeply at USAID, especially vis-a-vis our technology initiative under the Summit for Democracy, advancing digital democracy. I think the tech sector is just critical to bring on board when we're thinking about how to prevent authoritarians from misusing technology to consolidate control and how to help activists to foster democracy. And so while on the one hand, discrete technologies are critical like anti-censorship technologies or content provenance technologies, we need to consider not just those discrete technologies, but also the way in which data is generated when people engage with technologies. So that's whether passively when their face is being captured by a camera in a public square or actively when they're engaging on social media and their metadata is being collected and sent someplace. And so I think data management practices and data governance policies are pieces that should be at the forefront of our thinking when we're considering sort of shifting this balance of power from authoritarians to activists and democratic actors. And just to follow on Steve's point about deep learning, I mean, this is a really good example when we think about machine learning models that can be built transparently or built non-transparently. And if they're built transparently, they can enable audits, they can enable impact assessments to happen, they can enable accountability essentially. But if they're not built transparently, then they can't do any of those things. And we know that algorithms themselves are difficult enough to sort of understand for those who aren't, you know, part of the process of building them. I mean, in a sense that the technology obscures our ability inherently to understand the impacts of it, because we need to actually understand how algorithms are built in order to really understand what, you know, what is that translation process between what's going into an algorithm and what's coming out of an algorithm, and what does that enable in terms of potential repression. And so, you know, I think bringing developers on board, focusing on developers, focusing on how to bring them into the folds to design technologies that are more transparent and that can be more accountable and underlying data that can be more traceable is one way that we can think about this way of shifting the balance of power. And then the second point is just supporting governments and oversight bodies to produce and enforce legal and regulatory safeguards on both discrete technologies and also on the data that underlies them and how that data is governed. So this is another area where I think, you know, activists and technologists can really join forces in order to, you know, promote foster democracy. And I think more than any particular technology, this is what could really move the needle in terms of shifting that balance of power that that you're talking about. I actually have nothing to add like on top of what Lisa and Stephen has talked about. I was thinking about blockchain at the beginning, and then Stephen mentioned it, and I was thinking about like, like open stories or transparency when it comes to use of technology. Lisa mentioned it. So I basically have nothing to add to that. Yes. I also have nothing to add to that. That was just a remarkable set of comments. Yeah, I do strongly agree with this, this idea that kind of more so than any technological development, there's a lot of regulatory work and kind of existing partner work to be done on the ground that could dramatically shape how things go look in, you know, the next two or three years even, if new regulations or new kind of norms about data privacy and what our what our objectives are in that arena were to comment to play. Okay, we are now at kind of past time to start Q&A. There are a couple of pretty good questions that we've gotten so far. So Rebecca Aberg asks a set of questions about bilateral training. So the general question is, how can donors train and support activists, presumably on, you know, digital security measures while ensuring a do no harm approach? And then she kind of specifies that it's possible that autocrats might see public training materials like lots of NGOs, lots of international organizations are putting out training materials on digital security and activism in general in the public sphere. So she wonders whether, you know, governments might might also observe that training material and then somehow develop countermeasures. I'd be curious for what you all think about that. I guess particularly Lisa given that USAID is in the business of of attempting to inculcate these online spaces. Yeah, I'm happy to kick it off. It's a great question. And I think, you know, it reminds me of a sort of theme that's run through this entire discussion, which is that, you know, digital repression causes activism to flourish, activism flourishing causes digital repression to increase, right? There's the sort of back and forth process that we witness that I think the question speaks to. I will say, I mean, at USAID first, you know, off the bat, we're very committed to working with civil society organizations and media organizations and human rights defenders to enhance their digital security. I mentioned earlier the Greater Internet Freedom program or GIF, which is our flagship program for doing work. And I think, you know, it is, it is, we cannot know how governments will necessarily respond or potentially use digital security training material, right? We can guess perhaps. But what we do know for sure is that this training material is critical for those actors that I just mentioned, civil society organizations, journalists, human rights defenders. And so I think from our perspective, you know, it's absolutely critical that we are getting those groups, the knowledge and the tools that they need in order to protect themselves online. I think it's, it's an absolute fair point that we need to be very thoughtful about how we do this and how this material is disseminated. But I'll just provide one sort of anecdote about how powerful this sort of material is. I mean, in Ukraine, our local partner and by our, I mean, GIFs local partner is continuing to provide that support to local civil society organizations and human rights organizations, you know, in the face of very, very challenging circumstances, increased cyber attacks during the current conflict and, in some cases, successful attacks. And our partner is providing emergency response support when those attacks are successful. And then it's also providing training and information and resources to assist organizations to help them to ward off potential attacks. This information is absolutely, I mean, it is, it is foundational to keeping activists, civil society organizations safe at this time. And I just want to point to, you know, one aspect of the model that undergirds GIF, which might be a sort of safeguard in a sense for the concerns that this question is raising. And that is really focusing on building networks between local organizations, regional organizations, and, and transnational ones. I mentioned that Gabenga's Organization Paradigm Initiative is one of our regional partners. And I think, you know, the, the success of GIF and the, the, the sort of strength of the GIF model is these partnerships and the capacity building that they can help generate for local organizations because it is local organizations that have their best, that have the most knowledge on what is most risky in their particular context, right? What information might be, you know, taken up by the state and used for nefarious purposes. And so it really is making sure to build, strengthen, and support those, those local organizations and build their capacity on digital security issues so that they can use whatever training materials or tools that are provided in the way that's going to keep them safest. So I was, I was on this call for a few minutes and I had a very, very good chance to think about what people go through when they got, when they get shots out of the internet. And I also think it's important to talk about keeping people safe, you know, how activists use the internet. To also talk about something as basic as being connected and staying connected and meaningful connectivity. This is, this is my lived reality, for example. There's so many assumptions that you can stay connected. But this is my lived reality. I get knocked off from time to time, either bad internet or power failure or something like that. So I think we need to do that. Just on cue. Firstly, I'll public information that everyone has this too, right? There's that first layer. And it's fine, right? But people, bad actors will have access to that information. But somebody somewhere is going to find that information useful at some point. But at a second level is where we have trusted networks, where that information doesn't go out of trusted circles. We know what to do. We know that when there is a shutdown, we know where to meet. We know where it's like, you know, what we used to do when I was young, we would keep the key to the house somewhere outside the house. And everyone knew where the key was, except people who were there to break into the house, right? It was a trust thing. But I think at the top most level is the importance of strengthening people on the ground. We need to get resources in the hands of the people who are facing the issues and who know the solutions to the problems, but unfortunately disconnected from resources. And I think it's really, really important. And like Lisa said, this is, this is where we as an organization are excited, not just because we've been supported for this project. The, you know, Britain is an effort on project, but also because we're able to work with other in-country institutions across the East and, you know, Eastern, you know, Central, North, you know, regions of Africa, so that they can in the next five years be able to do what pain is doing now. And in the next five years, others that they also strengthen can do that. You know, that kind of handshake, you know, is where we're able to get resources and power into the hands of those who know where the problem is and how to solve the problem. I completely agree with that. And I just want to add a bit on what Lisa and he has just said. It's the thing about digital security is not to have a one-size-fits-all solution or have something that's being 100% safe. It's more like you're stepping up the game so that it will cost your opponents more to try to hack into your system or get hold of the documents or the data that you're trying to secure. And so even if the government will see every guidelines that I have read as well, like those offered by EFA or many other organizations, it doesn't mean that they are not useful. Of course, there are ways for them to crack down. For example, if an organization is just suggesting the use of VPNs, they can just completely block it on App Store or block the whole access to that technology like they did in China. But there are still people who manage to attack savvy enough to manage to do that. But the problem usually is there are not a lot of tax-savvy people. And it's always been a pain to try to tell people that you need to learn certain things when nothing happened. I experienced that in Hong Kong, like before 2019, a lot of us are trying to provide trainings or trying to localize the knowledge that we have received from attending trainings or reading these online guidebooks. But the thing is Hong Kongers most of the time, even activists, don't actually feel the necessity of learning those things. But when things happen, it's usually a bit too late for them to start learning because the learning curve is quite steep, to be honest. And we have had occasions where prominent activists were being arrested and his chat records with friends are being used as evidence. It's not because the government was so sophisticated that they hacked into his phone. It's simply because the fact that he was using a four-digit passcode that took them less than seconds to basically got into his phone and get everything out of his phone. So these are the things that it's more about how people feel like they're threatened enough to learn those things. Or if they have people that will have the time and the knowledge they actually teach them, instead of if the materials are publicly available that the government would know as well. Because everybody needs different sets of trainings and different sets of digital security measures in order to fit their profile. And for some people, prominent activists, they will need more. And for all nurses, they will need less. But more or less, it comes from the same logic. But if everybody set up the security game, it would be much more difficult for the government to crack down on everybody because the cost of doing so would be much higher. And for international organisations to try to facilitate these kind of trainings, in the context of Hong Kong, it's increasingly difficult. All we can do is have local trainers that are already trained to try to train more people and try to train more trainers. But most of these technically sufficient people, they are not full-time trainers, they have a day job. And it will be very difficult for them to vote the time and the effort to do that. But receiving funding, as I said, is not possible because of the current national security law that's being implemented. And a lot of these implementations of different tactics are intertwined with different things. Legislations, being them local or broad legislations, internal policies of type platforms and content moderation, that kind of thing. And the local culture of things. In Chinese culture, in Asian culture, privacy is not such a strong concept. So you really have to do a lot of things to try to implement that concept into daily life settings. And all of these things compel up into the huge problem that we're trying to solve by having those guidelines. And those guidelines present to be a one-sided all-thing. But it's more about how you assess your own profile and do that. So I don't see having those guidelines as a huge problem. It's more like, how do we make sure that people follow that? Because most of the time, the biggest error we ever have is ourselves. So it's a problem that we need to solve by more trainings and more education in that regard. Yeah, your point about the need to raise the just broad level of digital hygiene across society at large for this stuff to matter is really important. It's not enough for half of the people to be really good on digital security and the other half not to be, because that's not how group level coordination works. Everybody meets some floor level of digital security to make things more difficult. Man, we are rapidly running out of time. I will ask one last question here from the audience, from Ben, named Mark Rose. He asks about the relationship between online and offline activism. He wonders whether, kind of as we were discussing, I don't know, three years ago at this point in this conversation, about whether people are trading off online activism for offline activism or whether this kind of new forms or new modalities of activism online are leading people to not do as much networking offline. And maybe this offline networking or offline relationship building is important to movement success and we're losing that. What do you all think about that? Yeah, I can kick it off. I think it's impossible to separate online and offline activism at this point, especially in my experience. One of the reasons why a lot of protests that I've seen gain momentum in the offline world is because it gained momentum on the online world first. For example, in the Hong Kong movement, it's very easy for people to find a trigger point or an incentive for them to participate, because everybody is posting something on social media on stories of Instagram or on Twitter, so that you will definitely connect with certain things. For example, you're just trying to get dinner, but then you got being beaten up by batons. These things triggered a set of people. And for me, it's like, oh, my friends are being bullied on the street, so I want to take part in the movement as well. And this kind of, we kind of make use of that fear of missing out in the online space and take advantage of all of us, including myself, being very addicted to social media. That is, it became even if it's a very unfortunate, very brutal thing to be going to to went through, but it feels kind of like hip in a neutral way. It feels hip to be and feels like you have to be part of those oils you're missing out. So we kind of make use of the bad sides of social media in order for people to feel more engaged with the social movement. And if it's not for the fact that there are things happening in real life and they get amplified on the online world and then get feeds back into the offline world so that people would participate in real life movements, I think none of the things that we have seen in Hong Kong would have happened. So it's intertwined to a point that we can't separate it like social media or the online world has become part of our lives that are like inevitable. We can't just say, oh, this is the online world and offline world. They intertwine in so many ways that we can't distinguish it properly and it all feeds into each other rapidly so that things will happen. And so I say it's very difficult to to separate out, but Lisa mentioned a point that's very important is how do we make sure that this kind of movement is sustainable? Because it's very easy to lose momentum on the online world and the momentum in the offline world will quickly fall apart as well. So it's very important for us to adapt and find new ways to kind of maintain that kind of momentum. I would just say, I think Chung described it really well in terms of kind of what we're seeing and that it's sort of this idea that has really kind of emerged in research scholarship of communication and organization or the logic of connective action. This idea that essentially the digital has given rise to new forms of hybrid offline online organizations where there's a real no longer are we in a mode where you have completely separate organizations where one is exclusively virtual or exclusively offline instead the what we are seeing is very much a movement from one to the other where online narratives help to mobilize offline support offline actions then kind of are galvanized online and they kind of move back and forth. And so that what we're really seeing is more of kind of a very fluid hybrid type of situation. And that to me is where we're seeing the logic continue to move. I would also just sort of reinforce the point that what is important is finding ways to build in sustainability that oftentimes you can see certain hashtags or certain moments trigger action in outrage and backlash. And this can give rise and give fuel for a few weeks or a few months on a particular issue. But then the question is what happens when the initial emotional charge from the issue begins to dissipate. Is there a way to continue on and connect this issue to a broader political agenda one that can continue to occur to persist and to address kind of underlying and structural issue as opposed to reacting more towards a particular event that has occurred. That to me seems to be the kind of big challenge some groups and movements have been able to do that well. And oftentimes those that have I think have had a basis in a strong level of offline organization to carry that that message forward. I mean I think to be honest online is a new offline and I say that you know to mean that there's a new generation that sort of gets confused when you say offline and online because as far as they're concerned all of the actions they're taking are actually an extension of a conversation they were having on a medium. So many years ago we would gather around a table to have a conversation to plan you know either political action or to plan protests. It's just that the table is now a tablet or a phone and it's connected right to the internet and that makes it a new medium. And you and I agree very much of course with Steven that we have that flow from you know online conversations that sort of amplify issues and then galvanize action offline and then they go back online you know to be able to have a lot more conversation bring us to the issues and things like that. And I think the fact that you know as someone actually described it that you know a lot of us are now prosumers we're producers and consumers so as we're taking action we're documenting the action and we're sharing the action we're basically saying that you know what I'm doing this and I'll give you a very practical example you know one of my interesting brushes with the with security agencies in Nigeria I tweeted that you know I got a letter from the secret service and I'm going in there now and typically what happens is when you go in people don't hear from you they know that you either have disappeared or they need to make noise and because I shared that online it definitely you know created offline action they were lawyers they were diplomats who were calling the secret service and asking questions and that helped and when offline action was taken and then took again the conversation online so I think we're going to have this fluid movement between online offline and I think that the best of both worlds will be enjoyed by people who are able to understand the power of each medium. So there are certain characteristics that belong offline that cannot be replaced by online otherwise all of us will continue having Zoom meetings and not say that we miss in-person activities. There are certain things that happen best in certain places I think that we will continue to have opportunities to amplify what we're doing offline online so that more people can be aware and it can get across to people who are not usual suspects because that's that's one of the advantages of being able to do this things online you're able to reach people who are not usual suspects who are not typically people who are you are able to reach through many of your actions but I definitely react in the with a very strong know when I when I get questions like oh do you think people are getting you know sort of they have become click activists so they are not protesting as much unfortunately the times have changed you're probably not going to see certain things you used to see many years ago but what that also brings is that it brings new realities it means that when you're going to see offline action it's not going to be based on what of mouth or letters that are sent it's going to be based on the combination of all those things plus the massive power of social media you know and like John said earlier formal fear of missing out I don't want to be the one who is going to be watching the videos of my friends speaking the truth to power I also want to do the same and that's going to be something that will definitely you know make good use of I love benga's formulation of online is the new offline I feel like we're all maybe dating ourselves a little bit in the way initially talking about the relationship between the two I think the only point that I would add is you know in addition to the sort of traditional organizing of in-person organizing and you know the work that is better suited to in-person interactions I just think we need to be paying you know so much attention to the attention economy and to crafting of narratives and what narratives work with different populations so you know a narrative that's produced for policymakers is going to be completely different from a narrative that's produced for certain sections of the public and a narrative that's produced you know for other forms of media right trying to amplify messages on social media in you know television or radio or other spaces I just think it's incumbent upon activists in order to think very carefully about how they're shaping different narratives alongside the organizational you know on the ground sort of structural building that they're doing because that's what that combination I think is what you know actually builds and sustains a movement and enables you know activists to achieve their goals in this current environment where we do have these these different spaces and lots of different information constantly circulating and flowing around oh unfortunately I'm gonna have to to call it a wrap there this has been an unbelievable panel I am overwhelmed by all that I've learned and I hope that the rest of you found it as illuminating as I did I believe that there will be a recording available online I certainly hope there is because I intend to re to re listen to it I think there's a lot going on here that you know if you were looking for an introduction to these issues I don't think you could have done much better than this today so thank you all very much for attending thanks again to these wonderful panelists for spending their time with us and we will see you around at USIP in the future I hope thank you all