Aynne Kokas, C.K. Yen Professor at the Miller Center, Director of the UVA East Asia Center, Professor of Media Studies
On August 6, 2020, the Trump Administration issued a ban on TikTok in the United States, requiring the owner—Beijing-based Bytedance— to sell the company to American investors or shut it down. The Chinese government refused the sale on national security grounds and continues to use Tik Tok to gather information on Americans, their government and companies.
Chinese technology firms in China and overseas and the Chinese government worldwide including embassies, consulates, ships and aircraft, continue to exploit weaknesses in American government policy (and/or the lack thereof) to gather information on US technology and the information contained in that technology.
This American complacency yields an unprecedented opportunity for Chinese government and companies to gather data on American corporations, government agencies and individuals around the world. China uses this rich harvest of data to put U.S. security at risk.
To date, the U.S. has yet to establish nationwide protections for user data, and firms like TikTok and others continue to operate throughout the U.S. Professor Kokas argues that fragmented U.S. government tech leadership, Silicon Valley’s disruption fetish, and Wall Street’s addiction to growth have fueled China’s technological gold rush.
Dr. Aynne Kokas research examines Sino-U.S. media and technology relations. She is the C.K. Yen Professor at the Miller Center, Director of the UVA East Asia Center, and Professor of media studies at the University of Virginia. Kokas is a non-resident scholar at Rice University’s Baker Institute of Public Policy, a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a fellow in the National Committee on United States-China Relations’ Public Intellectuals Program. Dr. Kukas holds a PhD from UCLA.
She has received fellowships from the Library of Congress, National Endowment for the Humanities, Mellon Foundation, Social Science Research Council, Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, Japan’s Abe Fellowship, and other international organizations.
Her writing and commentary have appeared globally in more than 50 countries and 15 languages. In the United States, her research and writing appear regularly in media outlets including CNBC, NPR’s Marketplace, The Washington Post, and Wired. She has testified before the Senate Finance Committee, House Foreign Affairs Committee, the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, and the U.S. International Trade Commission.