Cambodia Shows How China Exports AI Surveillance — SkimNews
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- China has become Cambodia's largest foreign direct investor and is involved in the Funan Techo Canal and expansion of the Ream Naval Base on the Gulf of Thailand, embedding economic and military ties alongside its new AI surveillance footprint.
- Cambodia's "Smart Police" initiative, backed by Beijing, deploys AI-enabled surveillance to track and crack down on dissenting voices — a piece of the Digital Silk Road that Carnegie Endowment experts warned in 2022 had already exported surveillance technology to more than 50 countries.
- Xi Jinping told the World AI Conference in Shanghai earlier this year that unequal AI access risks "new historical injustices," signaling Beijing's bid to shape global AI governance — a topic the source says is set for his US visit this week.
- Hun Manet, educated in the US and UK, took power from his father three years ago, but Phnom Penh has doubled down on Chinese ties rather than opening democratic space, leaving younger Cambodians frustrated, according to the source.
- Samady Ou, a Cambodian youth activist and Human Rights Foundation Freedom Fellow, calls on Washington, the EU, the UK, ASEAN, South Korea and Australia to jointly craft AI governance safeguards before authoritarian digital practices harden into permanent infrastructure.
Why it matters: If this week's US-China talks focus only on strategic competition and trade, they will miss the surveillance export fight already playing out in Cambodia, where China-backed AI tools are giving an authoritarian government new ways to identify and intimidate critics — and where the Digital Silk Road's footprint in 50-plus countries means the template can spread fast.
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