AND The internal documents anticipated by an unknown Chinese company withdrew the veil of how digital censorship tools are sold and exported all over the world. Gedge Networks sells what comes down to the commercialized “great dam” by at least four countries, including Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Ethiopia and Burma. A groundbreaking leak shows in the detailed details of the possibilities that this company must monitor, intercep and hack internet traffic. Scientists who examined files described them as “digital authoritarianism as a service”.
But I want to focus on another thing that the documents show: while people often look at the Great Dam of China as a single, all -powerful government system unique for China, the actual process of development and maintenance, works in the same way as supervision technology in the West. Geedge cooperates with academic institutions in the field of research and development, adapts its business strategy to match the needs of various customers, and even transfer the remains of infrastructure from its competitors. For example, in Pakistan, Geedge concluded a contract for work, and later replaced the equipment made by the Canadian company Sandvine, show leaked files.
Accidentally, another leak from another Chinese company published this week strengthens the same point. On Monday, scientists from Vanderbilt University made public 399-page document From Golaxy, a Chinese company that uses artificial intelligence to analyze social media and generate propaganda materials. The leaking documents that include internal decks, business goals and meetings of meetings could come from the dissatisfied former employee – the last two pages accuse Golaxes of incorrect treatment of employees through their underpayment and ordering long hours. The document has been sitting on the open Internet for months, before another researcher marked it Brett Goldstein, a research professor at the Vanderbilt engineering school.
Golaxy’s main business differs from Geedge: it gathers Open Source information from social media, maps relations between political figures and information organizations, and moves targeted online narratives through synthetic social media profiles. In the leaking document, Golaxy claims that it is “the most important brand in the Big Data analysis” in China, serving three main clients: the Chinese communist party, the Chinese government and the Chinese army. The attached technological versions focus on geopolitical problems such as Taiwan, Hong Kong and the USA. And unlike Geedge, Golaxy seems to be focused only on government entities as clients.
But there are also a few things that make both companies comparable, especially in terms of the functioning of their companies. Both Geedge and Golaxy maintain close relations with the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), the highest research institution related to the government in the world, in accordance with index of nature. They both sell their services to Chinese government agencies at province level, which have localized problems that want to monitor and budgets to spend on supervision and propaganda tools.
Golaxy did not immediately answer at the request for comment from Wired. In the previous one answer To the Up-to-date York Times, the company refused to collect data addressed to US officials and called the sales report disinformation. Scientists Vanderbilt claim that they testified to delete websites from their website after a preliminary report.
Closer than they seem
In the West, when academic scientists see the possibilities of commercializing their most up-to-date research, they often become the founders of startups or starting operations. Golaxy seems to be an exception. Many key researchers in the company, according to the leaking document, still take up places at CAS.
But there is no guarantee that CAS researchers will receive government subsidies – just like a professor at the US Public University Instead, they must follow government agencies, like every private company followed clients. One document in a leak shows that Golaksa assigned sales goals to five employees and aimed to secure 42 million RMB (about $ 5.9 million) of contracts with Chinese government agencies in 2020. Another calculation sheet from around 2021 lists the current clients of the company, including Chinese military branches, state security and province police, as well as other potential clients.