China’s Surveillance State — with Josh Chin and Lisa Lin

Josh Chin and Lisa Lin, the authors of “Surveillance State: Inside China's Quest to Launch a New Era of Social Control and journalists at the Wall Street Journal, join Scott to discuss the following: How China operates as a surveillance state The role Silicon Valley has played in the development of state surveillance around the world what to consider when it comes to US-China bilateral relations. Scott opens with his thoughts on Apple becoming the leading smartphone provider in the US as well as its plans to move further into the digital ad space. Algebra of happiness: tell someone you admire them. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Scott Galloway?

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• 0:49Speaker 01

  This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. Good times mean competitions between you and your friends, like seeing who can throw some pigskin the farthest or rush the field the fastest. Winner gets an Ultra. Because it's not just a superior-like beer, it's also giving fans superior access to their favorite sporting events. Superior is worth playing for. Visit michelobultra.com/superioraccess to enter. Enjoy responsibly. Copyright 2026 Anheuser-Busch InBev Michelob Ultra Beer, St. Louis, Missouri.

• 1:18Scott Galloway?

  Episode 193. Jurassic Park premiered in 1993. The X-Files debuted in 1993. People born in 1993. Pete Davidson and Ariana Grande. True story. The X-Files is going to have a reboot. It's about David Duchovny yelling at aliens to get off his lawn.

• 1:35Speaker 02

  Do you think I'm spooky?

• 1:37Speaker 01

  Go, go, go!

• 1:47Scott Galloway?

  Welcome to the 193rd episode of the Prof G Pod. In today's episode, we speak with Josh Chin and Lisa Lin, the authors of Surveillance State: Inside China's Quest to Launch a New Era of Social Control. Josh is deputy bureau chief at The Wall Street Journal's China Bureau. And Lisa covers Asia tech news for the Journal. We discussed with Josh and Lisa how China operates as a surveillance state, the role Silicon Valley has played in the development of state surveillance around the world, and what to consider when it comes to US-China bilateral relations. Okay, what's happening? So, most importantly, let's talk about me. I'm back from vacation. I really leaned into my privilege and spent the summer in Aspen and Antucket because that's how I roll. Well-built, pink pants, rich LA people. That's right.

• 2:32Scott Galloway?

  That's right. Where am I going with this? I don't know. Anyways, we are back with our regular scheduled programming, but we're also at the Code Conference in LA where I'm interviewing several people, including Snap CEO Evan Spiegel. So, the obvious first question. Moisturizer. That guy is a tall drink of fucking lemonade. That guy is so good-looking. I'm gonna get his beauty tips and I will share them with all of you. I'll also likely ask him what on earth differentiates Snap from TikTok? And isn't TikTok doing to Snap, Meta, Pinterest, and everyone else what they did to traditional media? I think that essentially Dreamy Evan is getting kicked in the nuts over and over by the CCP, or as I like to call them, TikTok. All right.

• 3:17Scott Galloway?

  Moving on, let's get right into the business news of the week. A lot is happening in Cupertino. Apple has officially captured more than half the smartphone market share in the US. Why is this so incredible? Apple has defied the laws of marketing gravity. Specifically, Apple is the first luxury brand to also be the market leader. Usually, it's the low-cost player, whether it's a Walmart, whether it's Toyota, that offers a great product at a value pricing that is the share leader. Try and think of a company, try and think of a company or a product that is the high-price product, is the luxury product, is the aspirational product, but is also the market share leader. The iPhone is the most profitable product in the history of mankind.

• 4:01Scott Galloway?

  No product has ever generated these kind of margins. Maybe the exceptions are the Catholic Church, but I digress. Anyways, the iPhone truly is a revolutionary product, or an unprecedented product in terms of its gross margin dollars because of its brand and technology and the way it signals to the world that if you have sex with me, your kids are more likely to survive than if you have sex with someone who carries an Android phone. So, what is this equivalent of? What if you had a car company with a price point of Ferrari? But the production volumes of Toyota. That's what we have with the iPhone. We have the high-priced product. It gets about, I think about 50 points of gross margin, which is unparalleled in technology. I was on the board of Gateway Computer, which I realize is literally the weakest flex in the world. And our margins, our gross margins were, get this, between 6% and 9%,

• 4:44Scott Galloway?

  meaning if we sold a computer for 500 bucks, we got to keep somewhere between 30 and 50 bucks. Whereas Apple, Apple got to keep 26% or 28% on their MacBooks. Meaning if they sold a $1,000 computer, they got to keep $280. So we had to sell seven computers for every one they sold to make the same amount of gross margin to apply it towards R&D or factories or distribution or whatever the hell it was we did. Actually, Gateway was an assembler. It wasn't vertical. We would just get components and bring them together and put them in a box with a cowhide pattern and try and run funny commercials and sell these things at a decent price. But what did you have? When I went on the board, no joke, Gateway Computer was the, I believe, the second biggest seller of computers. We sold more computers than Apple.

• 5:29Scott Galloway?

  And we used to talk about that. But here's the thing. Apple made a shit ton more money than us because they didn't need to sell a lot of computers because they were getting four and a half times the revenue or margin dollars that we were getting for every one computer we sold. The FT noted that this is the iPhone's greatest share since launch in 2007. This comes right as Apple is about to unveil the iPhone 14, which is expected to operate with the A16 chip and get revamped camera and better Face ID sensors. Now, a better way to think about this is that more than 50% of people in the US who use a smartphone are now on iOS. I think this is a big moment. I think at one point it was 10% or 20% share. I mean, this has just been, it's difficult to talk about the kind of impact. I think the probably the most important or the second most important product,

• 6:14Scott Galloway?

  or maybe the third most important product. I think that commercial jets are maybe the most important product since World War II. Is that true? I just pulled that out of my ass. I think it's pretty impressive that we can skirt along the surface of the atmosphere at 0.8 the speed of sound. In something that you feel very safe in, or you should feel very safe in, or if you don't, or if you're like me, you're up there and sweating and scared and ordering drinks. It's because of irrational fear. Those are not rational fears. The more dangerous part is on your way to the airport. Anyway, I think that's an amazing product. I think vaccines are probably the probably the most important product of the last 60 years. With the other product, and that is polarizing social media. They convinces people to stick their heads up their asses and not take vaccines. Anyways, another talk show. What do we got here?

• 6:59Scott Galloway?

  Let's look at some stats on Apple. As of its last earnings report, the firm generated nearly $23 billion in operating cash flow. That's, I mean, think about that. That's got, it's $100 billion a year in cash flow? You don't, see, it's, it's, you can't even wrap your head around what to do with that number. The latest net sales, $83 billion for the quarter, meaning it's doing about a third of a trillion dollars a year. And the iPhone accounted for about $41 billion of that, followed by services at $19.6 billion. I guess that's Apple TV Plus. That must be the App Store, Apple One. Wearables, home and accessories were at $8 billion, and the Mac at $7.5 billion, and the iPad at $7.2 billion. It's amazing that people still buy iPads. I see them in hotels everywhere. I try and get room service, or I try and turn on the music,

• 7:43Scott Galloway?

  or whatever it is I do in my hotel room. And by the way, you don't want me as a hotel guest. You do not want me as a hotel. I'm the guy that checks in, and then I look at that little map, that fire map they have, and I try and figure out if I'm not in a good room. And if I'm not in a good room, I call them and I pretend I'm more important than I am, and I ask to be moved to a better room. I'm that guy. I'm literally Ken, which is a male version of Karen. I'm like Karen if Karen was like just an awful person. Anyway, mean Karen, Maron, I'm Maron. Anyways, it's no surprise here. Apple's a juggernaut, and it's continuing its quest to conquer all of our attention. Guess what else Apple's interested in? Guess what else? Query you this. The digital ad business.

• 8:26Scott Galloway?

  The Financial Times reported that Apple plans to double its digital advertising workforce. That's, that's interesting, given that Apple's privacy changes are often cited as the reason several tech firms, including Meta and Snap, have declining ad revenue. So they've tried to position it as a feature of our hardware is we protect and revere your privacy, so we're going to make it more difficult for other people to track you. But, oh, wait, maybe it's Machiavellian. Maybe it's like, not only that, just as we castrate our competition, we're going to get into the same business. Anyways, little, little Game of Thrones here, corporate warfare. It's estimated that Apple's ad business could reach 30 billion within four years. It currently sits at around $5 billion.

• 9:08Scott Galloway?

  For comparison, Google's current ad business is 56 billion. Amazon's ad business, this blows me away. This blows me away. We should take pause and think about this. Amazon's ad business is roughly $31 billion. If you were to break up Amazon, and I've said this, I think AWS would be the most valuable company in the world by 2025, but its ad business would probably be a Fortune 50 company. It just, that just blows my mind. Think about this. Amazon as a media company is bigger than Twitter, Snap, Pinterest. I mean, basically, they're bigger than everyone in the media business except for Meta and Google. That's how big Amazon's media business is. But Apple, Amazon, and Google's ad business aren't exactly apples to apples, we'll say that.

• 9:52Scott Galloway?

  Apple's ad revenue mainly comes from display ads in the App Store and Apple News. So the ad business here is going to be very challenging, I think, for Apple, because basically, the ad business, you're in the business of violating people's privacy. And Apple has made that an incredible feature. They've tried to move to the subscription model, where they've said, okay, there's ad-supported TV, or there's HBO, where you pay for better content. That's what they've tried to be. They've tried to be the HBO of the digital ecosystem and said, you're going to pay for everything, you're going to pay for apps, you're going to pay more for your phone, but we're not going to pay you with ads that tell you of opioid-induced constipation. I just saw this other ad, I just saw a fucking, literally, like, watch broadcast news, and it's a lesson in how much it sucks to get older.

• 10:35Scott Galloway?

  I just saw a new one, a pharmaceutical that cures or helps with, there's an affliction for bulging eyes, and I don't mean to mock these people or make light of this. But you watch this and you're like, really? That's what I have to look forward to? Oh, my God, my legs are restless again. Anyways, I think this is going to be a challenge for them to how to thread this needle. It feels like everybody's moving to the middle or trying to be everything to everybody. When Netflix offers ads, when Apple gets into the business of advertising, I just can't figure out if they're so horny for growth and they need, they just have to go everywhere and start eating everything, even if it kind of diminishes their core proposition. I don't know. We'll see. The clash of the titans I can't wait for, I cannot wait for, is when Tim Cook pulls

• 11:19Scott Galloway?

  that recycled dolphin-free meshed cloth off a piece of steel wrapped around four wheels and electric motor called the Apple car. I'm getting on that list. I'm absolutely gonna get on them. By the way, by the way, I sold my Tesla. I moved to London and I sold my Tesla just because I love the car, but I'm kind of like figuring out, do I need to spend $120,000 on a car that is run by a guy that calls me names on Twitter? I don't think so. I don't think so. By the way, it declined quite a bit in value. I bought it for 110 or 120 grand and I sold it for 80 from, I think it was Carvana. They show up and they take your car and they give you a check. It's pretty cool. Trying to think like, what else? Do you want a dog? How about a couple of kids?

• 12:03Scott Galloway?

  Anyways, and I sold my Range Rover, which I really hated giving up. It's got about three miles to the gallon, total midlife crisis car, but a cool car. I just love the design. Anyways, little British SUV carbon into the climate terrorist action for the hound. Where was I going with this? Anyways, the clash of the titans I can't wait for, that's coming, that's coming, is the clash between Apple and Tesla. I think Apple, within six to 12 months of unveiling that car and the waiting list, that's going to be the most valuable waiting list ever assembled. You're going to see a quarter of a trillion dollars, well, let's call it 100 to 250 billion

• 12:44Scott Galloway?

  dollars leak from the most overvalued firm in the world right now, Tesla, to a firm that is overvalued but not crazily overvalued, and that is Apple. Clash of the titans, clash of the titans, Apple versus Tesla.

• 13:03Scott Galloway?

  We'll be right back for our conversation with Josh Chin and Lisa Lin.

• 13:10Scott Galloway?

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• 13:55Scott Galloway?

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• 14:10Scott Galloway?

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• 15:31Scott Galloway?

  Welcome back. Here's our conversation with Josh Chin and Lisa Lin, the authors of Surveillance State: Inside China's Quest to Launch a New Era of Social Control. Okay, let's bust right into it. Josh, can you walk us through how and why China is operating as what you describe as a surveillance state?

• 15:48Speaker 03

  Right, so we can do the why first. Basically, for the past few decades, China's Communist Party has had a sort of a social contract in place where they deliver double-digit economic growth, and Chinese people sort of acquiesce to their rule and sort of tacitly agree not to make trouble, right? And for a long time, that worked, right? Everyone sort of had the prospect of getting rich, and as long as that was around, everyone sort of, for the most part, fell in line. Well, now China's economic growth is slowing. In fact, last quarter, it was down almost to zero.

• 16:30Speaker 03

  It probably be, it could be below zero this next quarter because of zero COVID controls. But even without COVID, its economy was sort of inevitably going to slow down. And in preparation for that, the Communist Party had to figure out what it was going to do instead. And the answer is a surveillance state, right? So they're now using a combination of mass data collection, cutting-edge AI, and they're melding that with their system of government to create a sort of new, more nimble form of authoritarianism that is both very good at ferreting out dissent, but it is also very good at smoothing out the lives

• 17:12Speaker 03

  of those Chinese people who are well behaved and who sort of buy into the system.

• 17:18Scott Galloway?

  Lisa, is it a change in mentality? Or is it just that the tools are better and they can be more effective at it, or more insidious at it?

• 17:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, so you're right there. The Chinese government has all along wanted to try and use data to keep its citizens in line. What's really changed in the last 10 years or so is the arrival of the current Chinese president, Xi Jinping, who has a lot of belief in the idea that you could mine data or collect enough data and be able to govern with the insight you get from that data. And of course, technological breakthroughs, as you mentioned, also played a role. Somewhere in just before 2010, we saw a big technological advancement in deep learning. It's a field of AI that basically powers a ton of the AI surveillance that goes on in China.

• 18:07Speaker 04

  Just before 2010, researchers essentially found out that you could use high-powered chips like GPUs basically to accelerate deep learning and just help the algorithm, help train the algorithm better. And that's actually really commercialized a lot of the AI applications that you see in China right now, such as facial recognition used in public order or image recognition used by traffic police to pinpoint like a license plate of a hit-and-run car.

• 18:39Scott Galloway?

  And how does, my sense is in the movies, we see someone who's a dissident, and they're saying things, and they're uncovered, and we have this image of police showing up and taking them off to jail. But my sense is it's more nuanced and insidious than that. How does this actual, how does this surveillance state actually play out? Lisa, I'll come back to you and then ask for Josh's comments.

• 19:01Speaker 04

  The way I would characterize the Chinese surveillance state right now is it really runs the entire spectrum. You're seeing the worst potential uses of state surveillance in the northwestern part of China, in the Xinjiang region, which is home to millions of ethnic minorities, predominantly the Uighur. And on the other side, you're also seeing Chinese police using the same sort of tools that you're seeing in Xinjiang to, for example, ferret out potential criminals or

• 19:33Speaker 04

  For example, if there was a blacklist that the Public Security Bureau of a local region had, they could feed it into this AI system. The AI system are both surveillance cameras and a backend system that helped to crunch that data. They could feed that list of faces into the system. And you could use that system to find anyone on that list. And typically, China has got so advanced on that front that it only takes a couple of seconds sometimes to hunt down someone in like a small vicinity. That said, though, I I think for outside of Xinjiang, for the most part, China is still all seeing in a very retrospective way.

• 20:17Speaker 04

  And what I mean is that if you had done something wrong in China and the Chinese police have a photo of you or, um, you know, a a profile shot, they could run it through the system and find where you've been, where you've shopped, who you hang out with. But it's for most part in in parts of China outside of Xinjiang, it's not predictive policing the way you describe it, not yet at least.

• 20:44Scott Galloway?

  Josh?

• 20:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, so you know, I think one of the, one of the things we discovered about the way that the surveillance state functions, it was, it was surprising, at least to us, is that it actually doesn't always function, right? Is that it doesn't always work as well as it is, it is portrayed as working. Um, and that's because, you know, the the surveillance state is as much as a propaganda project as a, as a technological project, right? And the idea is that it needs to be just credible enough that people internalize it, right? So they do have facial recognition, they do have systems, they can track down dissidents, and they do, and they make a big deal out of that. Um, but in in a lot of instances, the technology does kind of fall short

• 21:28Speaker 03

  or it's or the, or the, the data isn't quite there, but it doesn't matter, right? Because they've done enough to persuade people, most people in China, that the government can.

• 21:39Scott Galloway?

  So there's a chilling fact.

• 21:40Speaker 03

  Exactly, exactly.

• 21:41Scott Galloway?

  Yeah. And want to talk about the surveillance state outside of the state. And that is, I've always, just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean I'm wrong, but when I've said anti-Putin things, I find I get a lot of comments, a lot of replies in my Twitter feed saying, it's always the same thing, Scott, love your work, but you have it wrong here. Or when I have said that I think there is corporate espionage, state-sponsored corporate espionage, espionage out of China, and I've said, we do it, why wouldn't they do it? I get a lot of replies from accounts with pictures of dogs who are fake accounts, and I would imagine it's the CCP. That's what I would be doing. I think it's a lot less expensive than kinetic power.

• 22:25Scott Galloway?

  Describe if you can, or try and provide some color on the surveillance state of the CCP outside of China.

• 22:32Speaker 03

  That is, that's actually, it's a very difficult thing to know. I mean, that's an area that we're actually just sort of starting to get into. So it's hard to say exactly how that operates. But we do know that they, in the last few years in particular, they have been paying a lot of attention to Twitter. You know, China's leader Xi Jinping has been telling people in state media in the US that they need to tell China's story well. And, and a big part of that is happening on Twitter, on social media, and they have been tracking people who comment on, on China. And there is evidence that they are doing it in an automated way, and that they then have their own armies of commenters who then sort of flood the zone.

• 23:15Speaker 03

  They, they do what's called hashtag flooding, so they, they figure out which hashtags are connected to which sort of critical stories about China, and then they just overwhelm it with, with comments, so basically just blow the hashtag up, so it's essentially useless. So that's, that's a new frontier, and I think they are, they're just sort of starting to, to, to explore that, but it's definitely an area they're interested in.

• 23:39Scott Galloway?

  And Lisa, what role does Silicon Valley or American tech firms play unwittingly or wittingly in this apparatus?

• 23:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, so in our years of research, we found that US technology actually was there right from the beginning. And I would probably point your audience to a pretty groundbreaking report that a surveillance researcher, Greg Walton, did in 2001. He basically profiled and chronicled the companies that were at one of China's very first public security exhibitions. And the customers there were local police. And the companies there were all Western names. Some people might not recognize because they've gone out of business, but most of them still exist. People like Cisco, Sun Microsystems, Nortel Networks from Canada, Siemens from Germany.

• 24:31Speaker 04

  All these companies were there and willing to sell to Chinese police. Ultimately, Sun Microsystems did sell its equipment to Chinese police. It helped China create its first national fingerprint database. So fast forward two decades on, we're seeing the same sort of involvement and possibly at even deeper level, just because the surveillance state's demand has gotten so much bigger. When you look at commercial partnerships, when you look at financial investments into Chinese surveillance companies, when you look at supply chain relationships, you always find US tech companies involved. So Josh and I, when we were researching this book, we ported through a ton of government

• 25:12Speaker 04

  contracts, government contracts calling for the building of Xinjiang-style or Hangzhou-style type surveillance states. And in these contracts, you would always see a huge demand for hard drives. And typically, these hard drives came from Seagate and Western Digital. And the same thing for processing power. You know, a lot of these AI applications relied on chips from Nvidia, chips from Intel. And I'll probably just close with the financial connections. You can look at a company like SenseTime, which is China's largest AI surveillance company. It's the most valuable one and one of the pioneers in the industry.

• 25:50Speaker 04

  All its early investors, pre-IPO investors included Fidelity Capital, Silver Lake Capital, Qualcomm.

• 25:59Scott Galloway?

  We'll be right back.

• 26:06Scott Galloway?

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• 26:51Scott Galloway?

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• 27:13Speaker 01

  This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. Good times mean competitions between you and your friends, like seeing who can throw some pigskin the farthest or rush the field the fastest. Winner gets an Ultra. Because it's not just a superior light beer, it's also giving fans superior access to their favorite sporting events. Superior is worth playing for. Visit michelobultra.com/superioraccess to enter. Enjoy responsibly. Copyright 2026 Anheuser-Busch InBev Michelob Ultra Beer, St. Louis, Missouri.

• 27:43Scott Galloway?

  So Josh, I'm at this conference called Code today in LA, and they're interviewing Tim Cook. And when I think about privacy or surveillance, I think that the ultimate tool would be either a social media platform or a handheld device. And the most valuable company in the world is domained in the US, but it has more employees in China than in the US. It just seems it's impossible not to really think about this or get to any sort of depth of this conversation without thinking about Apple. Can you provide, can either of you provide any texture or observations around the relationship between Apple and the Chinese government? And obviously, the sensitivity is there around economic value and shareholder value.

• 28:27Scott Galloway?

  Because over here, Apple has positioned itself as the privacy product. That is a key component of their marketing positioning, is we're the ones that will not turn over an iPhone to the FBI, even when we have the iPhone of a terrorist who's just killed 27 people. They have kind of doubled down on privacy. And yet China, you know, as goes China, as goes kind of the iPhone. Any thoughts on Apple and China? I'll start with you, Josh.

• 28:55Speaker 03

  Right. I mean, I can comment on the, on the sort of political side of it. And then, you know, Lisa, Lisa's been following it on the, on the business side a lot. But Apple's a really fascinating company in, in China. I mean, they, they are one of the most popular phone makers and device makers in China. And they also produce, they source the production of a lot of their devices in China. They're invested in, in the country in a way that very few other American tech companies are. You know, they do have, they're required by Chinese law to store Chinese customer data in, inside China. And they do that on servers that are controlled by a state-run company.

• 29:37Speaker 03

  And so, you know, Apple says that they, you know, that they have, that that data is encrypted. They're not handing it over willy-nilly to the government, but it's still nevertheless stored on, on servers that they don't ultimately control. And, and so if you are an Apple user, a Chinese Apple user, your level of privacy protection is much, much lower than an Apple user anywhere else in the world. That said, you know, the, Apple's products are still popular amongst dissidents because they are still, and an iPhone is difficult to crack. It still has some, some of the best, probably the best security in a, in a kind of, in a consumer device. And so in Xinjiang, you know, the police there have these handheld scanning devices

• 30:18Speaker 03

  and they'll sort of wave people down on the, on the sidewalk and just randomly plug smartphones into these scanning devices. And a lot of those devices actually just don't work with Apple. So, you know, if you're a Uyghur and you have the money and you, and you want to protect your data, you'll still go for an iPhone.

• 30:35Scott Galloway?

  Lisa?

• 30:37Speaker 04

  Sure, I'll talk about it from the supply chain perspective. Apple walks a very fine line in China between not wanting to anger the Chinese government and trying to continue to do business with China. And the reason why I say this is because it's got very strong supply chain links to China. China is by far the best place in the world to produce smartphones. And you can tell because Apple produces most of its smartphones, Trufoxcon, in places like Zhengzhou in China. And any sort of gadget or component, any tiny obscure gadget that you're looking for for your phone, you can definitely find in China. And that's the reason why it's been very difficult for Apple to actually move its supply chain relationship away from the country,

• 31:21Speaker 04

  despite all that pressure from the US government and from advocates to try and diversify its supply chain. And, you know, the second thing I probably would point out is Apple has huge consumer base in China, even though, and this has continued, even though Chinese smartphone brands have fast become some of the best selling brands in the planet, things like, brands like Oppo, Vivo, Huawei at a certain point in time as well. And Apple was able to do this because it's got the cachet. And people are still willing to pay for Apple products. If you still remember, Apple introduced a Go iPhone in China years ago. I mean, that was predominantly for Chinese market. It knew its position.

• 32:06Scott Galloway?

  So I want to put forward a thesis and have one or both of you respond to it. China has a vested interest in America declining in geopolitical power. They're a competitor, if not an adversary. They have now the ultimate propaganda tool in a company, the most ascendant tech company in my view, in history. And if I were the CCP, I would find a way to elegantly put my thumb on the scale, these are the algorithms, to dial up slowly but surely content that was anti-American from Americans and create a generation. I mean, as far as I can tell, China's superpower is their long-term thinking. They played a long game. So why not slowly but surely have an emerging generation of youth feel worse and

• 32:51Scott Galloway?

  worse about capitalism in America? I think TikTok is an existential threat to the well-being of the United States. Josh, I'll start with you. Do you want to respond to that?

• 33:02Speaker 03

  You know, it's interesting, looking back to the debate about TikTok during the Trump administration, right? When Trump wanted to ban it. And, you know, I think a lot of the arguments against banning it was that it's just dance videos, right? What does it matter? And I think, I think you're right in that we've all sort of come to appreciate just how influential and powerful this platform is. TikTok itself, of course, says that it's not, you know, that it sort of operates separately from ByteDance. It doesn't, you know, it's not taking orders from the Communist Party. Ultimately, it's impossible to know how that relationship is going to work, but ByteDance, to the TikTok parent, it's a Chinese company.

• 33:46Speaker 03

  All Chinese companies have Communist Party cells that wield increasing power. And I do think that that's something you do, you have to take into account.

• 33:54Scott Galloway?

  Lisa?

• 33:55Speaker 04

  We put it this way, all Chinese companies have to play by China's rules. And China has very vaguely worded national security, internet, and content laws. That means, and I'm talking about data at this point, that also means that when the Chinese government, for national security reasons, asks ByteDance or TikTok to turn over user data, TikTok cannot say no. Realistically, TikTok cannot say no. There are no checks and balances in the legal system. And on the content front, I would agree with you as well, because in the past, we've definitely seen TikTok employees tweak or downplay content that hasn't been favorable to the Chinese government.

• 34:39Speaker 04

  And just given that TikTok has a ton of engineers and a ton of employees still based in Beijing and Shanghai, you know, there is a very strong risk that the Chinese government could go to a Chinese employee, a Chinese national, and ask this person to tweak the algorithm, to downplay, or to promote certain sorts of content. It would be very difficult for this person to refuse.

• 35:04Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, and I've always thought the person committing espionage doesn't think they're doing anything. It's okay, you're a Chinese now. I mean, I think they'd be stupid not to do this. We promote our interests overseas using whatever media vehicles we have influence over. It strikes me that they have stronger influence than we do because of, you know, lack of whatever you want to call it, privacy laws. What can the US do? And I'll put forward another thought. I think it's difficult for us to wave our finger at the Chinese when we have insurrections, when we have this income inequality. This strikes me, we've lost a lot of moral authority other than forcing a spin of TikTok to wave our finger

• 35:45Scott Galloway?

  at the surveillance state of China when, you know, we have people storming our capital. So let me, let me start there. What, what can a citizen, if a citizen says, okay, I'm concerned about just generally the well-being of people in other countries. I'm concerned about our geopolitical position. What should we be advocating for as citizens and voters here for the America to do in terms of action?

• 36:10Speaker 03

  Right. I mean, I think if you're, if you're American and you're concerned about, about how this is all playing out, you know, the biggest thing that democracies need to do is figure out how democracy interacts with these technologies, right? I mean, we just, democracies, they're schizophrenic on this front, right? So if you, so China has a very clear position, which is that governments should be able to use these technologies in whatever way they want, for whatever purpose they want, because it's, that's just the right of governments, right? And Russia, Russia aligns with them on that, right? And so if you're, you know, any other country around the world, if you're, especially if you're a developing country and you're kind of trying to choose between, you know, China

• 36:52Speaker 03

  and Russia on the one hand, and Western democracies on the other, well, China has a very clear vision about the future, and democracies don't. And this is one thing that, you know, I think everyone needs to think about more, right? I mean, in Europe, they have a bit of a vision, right? They're, They regulate data in a very strong way. They now have a draft rule that's in the works that would ban all real-time biometric surveillance, period, in the EU. And so they've taken a position. The US is much more schizophrenic, right? We have NYPD has a gigantic smart policing platform. It's basically a legacy of nine 11 that is connected to thousands of advanced AI sensors.

• 37:36Speaker 03

  And they use predictive policing and facial recognition. In California, on the other hand, you have a pretty robust debate. San Francisco implemented in 2019 some really strong restrictions around the police use of this kind of technology, although they're now sort of rolling it back as the mayor, London Breed, there is just trying to do it, trying to crack down on crime. The LA Police Commission recently passed some new rules around how police use this technology, but privacy advocates there, you know, some people say that that's just a fig leaf. They're actually enabling, they're making it really easy for police to get permission to use these technologies and they're calling for bans. So, you know, I think one of the main things people in democracies need to do is figure

• 38:20Speaker 03

  out what is the approach to these technologies that conforms with democratic values? And I don't think that's, I don't think that's an easy question to answer.

• 38:27Speaker 04

  To add on to that, I think what's really needed is, you know, just as a citizen to work to strengthen democratic institutions, like a vibrant civic society or a healthy journalism scene, fundamentally just be a democracy. Show to the Chinese citizens the benefits of a democracy. Every time America or some country in the West does something to shoot itself in the foot, the Chinese propaganda department plays this up and it's all over Chinese social media. Any fumble by a US politician will be plastered all over state media and all over social media platforms in China as well.

• 39:10Speaker 04

  Being a functional democracy helps Chinese people realize that what they have doesn't compare to what's out there.

• 39:21Scott Galloway?

  Josh Chin is deputy bureau chief in China for The Wall Street Journal, and Lisa Lin is a China correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, based in Singapore. Their new book, Surveillance Day: Inside China's Quest to Launch a New Era of Social Control, is out now.

• 39:45Scott Galloway?

  Algebra of Happiness: A Quick Exercise. And I'm not just saying do as I say, not as I do. I am trying to do this almost every day. I'm training in prime, trying to do it every other day. We'd had Dr. Emily Anhald on the pod, and she had this wonderful idea of an emotional push-up, things you can do, kind of hacks, to keep an emotional shape. I'm a big fan of fitness. It's my antidepressant working out, and I like this idea of emotional push-ups. And here's my idea for emotional push-up. I'm gonna do it, and I'm hoping you're gonna do it. Text somebody today and tell them you admire them. Tell them why you admire them, or maybe you don't even do. "I admire you," or "I admire your strength around this type of issue," or "I admire your professionalism."

• 40:28Scott Galloway?

  "I admire what a good friend you are. I admire how you're always able to handle situations with grace." I think it makes that person feel so good, and you can literally feel that goodwill, and it makes you feel more confident, and it makes you feel like your time here, amongst the many things you're accomplishing, that you're in a position to demonstrate concern and care and generosity for other people. Trust me on this one. Trust me on this one. Your emotional push-up for today: Text somebody and tell them that you admire them. Our producers are Caroline Chagrin, Claire Miller, and Drew Burrows. If you like what you heard, please follow, download, and subscribe. Thank you for listening to the Prop G Pod from the Vox Media Podcast Network. We will catch you next week.

• 41:23Scott Galloway?

  By the way, did you see that video of Mark Zuckerberg wrestling? The guy got serious like Steven Seagal in Putin fake judo vibes. And I gotta be honest, turned me on a little bit.

• 41:35Speaker 05

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• 41:50Speaker 02

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