New technologies provide many benefits and efficiencies. They also raise a number of important questions about who controls information and what they do with it. When technology is being developed, produced, and marketed by an authoritarian regime, the stakes are raised. China's growing economic and military influence is a major force in shaping the 21st century. As it rises, western leaders have serious questions about the security of US supply chains, the Chinese government's domestic use of artificial intelligence and the adoption of ubiquitous social monitoring and surveillance across China. US policy makers in particular remain concerned about a range of issues including intellectual property theft, use of advanced technology for domestic repression of political dissidents and religious minorities, censorship and dissemination of dis-and mis-information, marketing of the surveillance state in locations around the globe, and the possible use of Chinese-produced technology in supply chains of western firms for Chinese espionage. How can the US balance our economic interests and technological advances with our national security? How did we get where we are today in US-China relations when it comes to technology and how do we move forward? Can we harness the tools of the information age to advance human rights, individual freedoms, and the right to peaceful dissent or are we facing a future of increasing government control, led by the Chinese government, of what we hear, where we go, and what we are allowed to say?

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Sponsored by the UMD College of Information Studies and the UMD Maryland Global Initiative for Cybersecurity (MaGIC).