What, if anything, should we do about TikTok? Is the forced sale of the fastest-growing social media platform in the world a commonsense step to protect America from the influence of the Chinese Communist Party? Or is legislation that would mandate the app’s sale or ban a threat to free speech?
By Andrew Thornebrooke and Jan Jekielek9/30/2022 Social media giant TikTok and its nebulous connections to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) present a threat to U.S. national security, according
At half-past-midnight on September 3, more than 100 police raided the home of Cambodia’s opposition leader, Kem Sokha. The security forces hustled him away to a maximum-security prison just outside of Phnom Penh. More than two months later, he’s languishing in a cell, awaiting trial for treason.
By Geoffrey Cain
The Nation
Nov 21, 2017
Local coverage surprisingly overlooks some serious espionage allegations that states the New Zealand authorities had spied on a former South Korean trade minister when he was a candidate for the top job at the World Trade Organization.
By John Power
The Diplomat
Mar 27, 2015
SEOUL, South Korea — The release of “The Interview” last week was supposed to spark a geopolitical imbroglio just in time for the holidays. Instead — after a last-minute release of the hastily canceled film to select theaters and crowds on the web — this Christmas turned out like any other, and we were allowed to watch Kim Jong Un’s head explode in peace.
By Geoffrey Cain
PRI’s The World
Dec 29, 2014
SEOUL, South Korea — It’s difficult to imagine that kidnappers could get away with abducting a privileged foreign student from a French university and spiriting him thousands of miles away to his home country via a flight departing from a public airport.
By Geoffrey Cain
USA TODAY
Dec 26, 2014
SEOUL, South Korea — In North Korea, Americans caught committing mere peccadilloes — offenses that aren’t even crimes elsewhere — can expect little mercy from Kim Jong Un’s regime.
By Geoffrey Cain
PRI’s The World
Nov 26, 2014
SEOUL, South Korea — Americans are apparently blasé about government eavesdropping. In the days after former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden revealed that Washington spies extensively on its own citizens, polls found that about half of Americans have no problem with such snooping, as long as it protects them from terrorism.
By Geoffrey Cain
PRI’s The World
Jul 18, 2013
In April 2011, a Vietnamese dissident explained to me why he gave up blogging critically about the government. “We have jobs, motorbikes, nice coffee shops, and big luxury buildings,” he said, pointing to the then-recently opened Bitexco Financial Tower, Ho Chi Minh City’s tallest edifice, with a helicopter landing pad jutting out of its side. “The Communist Party has made this blogging unprofitable. If we go up against them, how do we get a piece of that prosperity?”
By Geoffrey Cain
CARNEGIE COUNCIL for Ethics in International Affairs
Jun 28, 2012
What to read next:
Geoffrey Cain on Investigative Journalism, Authoritarian Power, and The Perfect Police State | In a wide-ranging conversation with Jennifer Grossman, CEO of The Atlas Society, investigative journalist Geoffrey Cain reflects on years spent reporting inside some of the world’s most restrictive regimes — and on the research behind his book The Perfect Police State: An Undercover Odyssey into China’s Terrifying Surveillance Dystopia of the Future.
For years, Tim Cook insisted Apple could change China from the inside. Instead, China changed Apple.
The latest evidence? Apple spent billions developing cutting-edge electric vehicle battery technology with Chinese automaker BYD, only to watch its innovations become the cornerstone of BYD’s rise to global electric vehicle dominance. Apple walked away with nothing. China walked away with everything.
This isn’t just another story about corporate research and development gone wrong. It’s a cautionary tale about how even America’s most valuable company has become trapped in China’s web of technological control — and how that web is about to tighten even further.