Tech Experts: US Must Increase Investments to Combat Digital Authoritarianism

With increasing threats to cyberspace in the era of rising authoritarianism and global competition, technology experts told members of Congress on Tuesday that the United States must increase its technology investments to combat digital authoritarianism.

During a Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on East Asia, the Pacific, and International Cybersecurity Policy hearing on Tuesday morning, Chairman Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., explained that authoritarian governments are using “a host of technologies to track and disrupt dissent.”

“As authoritarian and repressive governments deploy technologies to suppress dissent, we need to find ways to counter their efforts so technologies can be used in a way that sustain and support democratic values and norms rather than undermine them,” Sen. Van Hollen said.

Ranking Member Mitt Romney, R-Utah, stressed that the best way the United States can “prevent the bad guys from doing bad things” is to invest and develop technologies “that are superior to theirs.”

“Telling them, ‘No, you can’t spy on your people,’ is simply going to be laughed at because they will spy on their people,” Sen. Romney said.

“The only thing that will allow us to defeat the spread of authoritarianism and digital authoritarianism is by having the tools and capabilities to push back against it and exercising our strength,” he added.

Laura Cunningham, the president of the Open Technology Fund, underscored the importance of this issue by noting two-thirds of the world’s population – or nearly 5.5 billion people – live in a country where the global internet is censored.

The Open Technology Fund (OTF) helps to combat digital authoritarianism by providing open source tools that provide secure and uncensored access to the internet, such as virtual private networks (VPNs).

However, Cunningham said that the United States is “woefully outspent when it comes to innovating and supporting these technologies.” In the last two years alone, she said the demand for OTF-supported VPNs has increased by over 500 percent, and the nonprofit doesn’t have the resources to support VPN users around the world who want to access independent information.

“The challenge, frankly, on that front, is not a technical one. We have VPNs that work well, that are secure and effective, but we just don’t have the resources to be able to meet the demand for users around the world who are facing online censorship for the very first time,” Cunningham explained.

“When we’re competing with China and Iran, who are spending billions of dollars on these technologies, it is hard with only millions to be able to meet the accelerating demand we see around the world,” she added.

To combat this issue, Cunningham said that the United States needs to increase its investments in internet freedom technologies to “reduce the efficacy of repressive tools.”

Jamil Jaffer, the founder and executive director of the National Security Institute, echoed a similar sentiment, telling the subcommittee that “strongly worded letters from the Senate or from our diplomats or the like are not going to get this job done.”

“What is going to get this job done is providing people who want freedom in those countries access to news and information the way that the Open Technology Fund is doing,” he said, adding, “And ensuring that we’re investing here at home, that we’re building the best and most awesome technology here at home.”

“The right approach is to invest here, invest in our allies, and invest in trust, safety, and security,” he concluded.