About

Aynne Kokas is the C.K. Yen Professor at the Miller Center and a Professor of Media Studies at the University of Virginia. Her research examines Sino-U.S. media and technology relations. She authored the book Trafficking Data: How China is Winning the Battle for Digital Sovereignty, published by Oxford University Press in October 2022, which argues that exploitative Silicon Valley data governance practices help China build infrastructures for global control. Her first book, Hollywood Made in China, published by the University of California Press in 2017, explores how Chinese investment and regulations have transformed the U.S. commercial media industry, particularly in the context of media conglomerates leveraging global brands. 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. She has received fellowships from numerous organizations including the Library of Congress, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Mellon Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, and Japan’s Abe Fellowship. Her work has been published and broadcast globally in more than 50 countries and 15 languages, and in the United States, her research and commentary regularly appear in outlets such as CNBC, NPR’s Marketplace, The Washington Post, and Wired. She has testified before the Senate Finance Committee, House Foreign Affairs Committee, and the U.S. International Trade Commission.

Research topics

• Business
• Political science
• Computer security
• Advertising
• Computer science

Selected publications

• The corporate cultivation of digital resignation in policymaking: How weak US regulations enable data trafficking to China

  Big Data & Society · 2024-12-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Studies of digital resignation focus on the idea of the corporate cultivation of digital resignation among users, an area of intense importance when examining user data sharing with corporations. To best appreciate the implications of digital resignation in a transnational context, it is important to consider not just resignation by users, but by policymakers. Weak digital policymaking in the US context enables continued digital resignation by users. It also allows for data trafficking, or government directed movement of user data across borders without clear user consent. This paper compares digital policymaking using three cases of national, regional, and sector-based digital policymaking. The commentary argues that while US policymakers often cast concerns on Chinese influence in the US, such arguments obscure the systematic resignation of US policymakers to a weak and ineffectual domestic digital oversight system. Examining digital resignation through a national government lens enables a more complete view of the transnational implications of this important concept.

  PublisherDOI

• AI Development and the “Fuzzy Logic” of Chinese Cyber Security and Data Laws

  The Journal of Asian Studies · 2023-06-13 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Max Parasol's new book AI Development and the “Fuzzy Logic” of Chinese Cyber Security and Data Laws offers a valuable framework for understanding the competing goals of Chinese technology innovation initiatives and digital oversight regulations. Parasol is a research fellow on the Digital CBD Project, a qualified lawyer, and a former private equity professional with experience in both China and Australia. His comprehensive background and training come through in this strong new book.While scholars and analysts have puzzled over how the Chinese government thinks it will be able to cultivate a robust, long-lasting digital economy under such uncertainty, Parasol instead argues that such uncertainty is precisely the point, a feature of this vision rather than a bug. Such “fuzzy logic,” as Parasol terms it, creates a space for strategic ambiguity, where the Chinese government can rein in corporations using their own fearful perceptions of Chinese government laws, which consequently saves financial, political, and social capital in enforcement efforts.“Fuzzy logic” allows for the concurrent existence of opposing strains of innovation and control. China's “Internet Plus” (hulianwang jia) policies, for example, expand corporate growth by translating tech advancements in the service of industrial growth. In contrast, policies of network sovereignty (wangluo zhuquan) assert national control of national data.The book is organized around the central conceit that the coexistence of innovation and restriction exists in the Chinese tech sector not as a contradiction but as a balanced strategy that allows the Chinese government to benefit from private innovation while maintaining a powerful grip over domestic tech firms. Relying on a combination of expert interviews, qualitative and doctrinal analysis, and “gray” or unpublished corporate and government literature, Parasol diligently reconstructs the murky world of Chinese digital policymaking to give meaning to its “fuzzy logic.” Chapter 1 offers a helpful historical and doctrinal overview of China's entrepreneurial ecosystem, including a discussion of the Western critique that “China cannot innovate,” and then the book moves forward to detail a range of places where fuzzy logic applies.Chapters 2–5 delve into some of the key conundrums of the Chinese tech sector. The book's second chapter explores the contradiction of how some of China's biggest tech firms are also operating illegally according to Chinese laws when they raise capital on foreign stock exchanges that infuse funds into China's tech innovation system. The third chapter digs into the question of innovation and restriction by comparing the pro-growth policies of China's Internet Plus strategy with more restrictive frameworks of network sovereignty and data localization. In chapter 3, the author still makes a compelling case for how the two approaches coevolved and coexist.While chapters 2 and 3 make the idea of fuzzy logic clear—namely, the coexistence of competing laws and principles to create strategic ambiguity and empower the Chinese government in the tech sphere—this comes out less explicitly in chapter 4. Offering a fascinating historical explication of the lead-up to passage of China's cybersecurity law, chapter 4 details pro-industry efforts to remove “backdoor provisions” from the final law to protect China's innovation. However, rather than highlighting a persistent state of fuzzy logic, this chapter suggests a firmer debate about the relative place of law enforcement and innovation. While this chapter does not undermine the idea of fuzzy logic, it also does not seem to fully cohere with the author's helpful and well-defined central conceit. While the author argues that “consultation, internal debate and compromise” (88) to balance commercial and government interests is a key feature of fuzzy logic legislating, it is a practice that most governments engaged in digital policymaking must participate in.Chapter 5 returns to the book's core, where the contradictions and vague authority of China's cybersecurity law, arguably the first law to shape China's global impact on tech firms outside of its borders, drive home how undefined Chinese tech laws advance government power.The book then digs into how the fuzzy logic of China's tech regulations benefits the growth of artificial intelligence in China. It poses the idea that data protection (from companies) rather than data privacy (from the government) empowers the national government to take a lead in AI development over corporations. At a very minimum, the book argues, fuzzy logic strongly incentivizes firms to work with the Chinese government. The third section, by teasing out the relationship between privacy and protection, reveals a core strength of China's AI ambitions: that the Chinese government can both aggregate user data and constrain corporations through oversight mechanisms. Of course, it is not always that simple, as demonstrated by the recent cases of the Chinese government's draconian policy response to the DiDi initial public offering and the disappearance of Jack Ma following remarks critical of the government. Such fuzzy logic does not always work, nor does it preclude a need for more explicit action. However, as in the case of China's strategic ambiguity in other sectors, it does often create more room to maneuver.The book is most compelling when it highlights places not where compromises have been reached but where competing policies coexist, as it distinguishes between the tensions of the Chinese innovation system that have contributed to its unique success. The idea of fuzzy logic is highly intuitive and offers significant value not only for the study of the Chinese tech sector, but also for a whole host of other industries where “illegal” operations are normalized as part of the cost of doing business and create a corporate environment where the rules always favor the house. The idea that such contradictions support the growth of AI by enabling government oversight and monitoring systems that began to proliferate prior to the COVID-19 pandemic is only more prominent now.The book offers compelling insights into the realm of China's digital governance. Rather than puzzling over its contradictions, AI Development and the “Fuzzy Logic” of Chinese Cyber Security and Data Laws makes a persuasive case for their internal coherence, not just to manage a state-led private-sector-driven digital economy but also as a pathway toward China's long-term AI growth. While that path has yet to be set, Parasol's work offers a valuable framework for considering the distinct approaches China is using to promote the growth of the field while still seeking to maintain government oversight over the sector. Challenges related to new investment regulations on Chinese technology globally paired with an increasingly activist Chinese government may limit the long-term power of fuzzy logic, but Parasol makes a powerful case for how and why such murky policies benefited the preliminary stages of China's AI aspirations.

  PublisherDOI

• Epilogue

  2022-09-22

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Extract Data trafficking is only in its infancy. The promises of 5G, such as lightning-fast connection, enhanced service delivery, and more immersive digital environments, are still forthcoming. Companies are already preparing for 6G to enhance digital integration in areas ranging from health, transportation, medicine, agriculture, logistics, and beyond. Each of these areas bring new forms of data exploitation and vulnerability not just within nations, but between them. Nowhere are the stakes higher than in the US-China relationship. Trafficking Data offers a framework for understanding the opportunities that China's extraterritorial data governance practices present to strengthen democracies. The first consideration is learning how to navigate the relationship between the Chinese government and tech companies in democracies that are trying to preserve a global tech sector. The second opportunity is contending with the difficulty of enforcing laws that run up against proprietary corporate resources and decision-making. The third opportunity is reconciling data standards between allied nations to create a more robust global network of data protection. My hope is that as users become more aware of their power, they can advocate for a more stable, transparent future – one where they have greater control of the data they generate not just on social platforms or in games but across all areas that form foundation of our digital world.

  PublisherDOI

• Home

  2022-09-22

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract US consumers are addicted to low-cost products, especially those sold by Chinese companies. However, low-profit-margin consumer products often lack reliable data security. Using case studies of connected (or “smart”) devices ranging from sex toys and home security systems to refrigerators and baby monitors, Chapter 9 argues that cheap consumer products lead to international data security failures. Such “data accidents,” as these failures are often portrayed, emerge from the tightly interconnected, fast-moving, low-margin US-China consumer products landscape, which leaves consumers and their most intimate data vulnerable to exploitation by US firms, Chinese firms, and the Chinese government. With the advent of platform-driven consumer products, new standards for data privacy and security are emerging through national and international standards-setting bodies, corporate standards-setting, and industry associations; however, broader transformations to the consumer landscape are necessary to thwart data trafficking through data accidents.

  PublisherDOI

• Toward Data Stabilization

  2022-09-22

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Attempting to force China to change its strategic vision of cyber sovereignty is a fool’s errand. Because pressuring China’s tech regulation structures has proven to be a nonstarter, the United States’ only recourse is to regulate itself. Chapter 10 argues that the only way to stem data trafficking is to stabilize data flows through complementary, incremental data management practices. Drawing a blueprint for data stabilization, it provides comprehensive recommendations across a range of sectors for managing transnational data flows. The risks presented by data trafficking require China’s trade partners to implement comprehensive data security regulations that incorporate inputs from the government, the private sector, and multistakeholder organizations. More broadly, there is need for increased international cooperation, education, policymaking, corporate social responsibility, and reporting. Offering a pathway to navigate between national data lockdowns and continued corporate exploitation of regulatory vacuums, data stabilization is shown to be the only solution to data trafficking.

  PublisherDOI

• Acronyms

  2022-09-22

  other1st authorCorresponding

  Subject US Politics Asian Politics Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online

  PublisherDOI

• Health

  2022-09-22

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract China’s data-gathering practices in the United States include private health data, or biodata. This chapter shows how the pairing of a dysfunctional US health system and Silicon Valley’s exploitative data-gathering practices allows firms in the United States to gather health data and localize it for Chinese-based firms. The movement of biodata across borders, it argues, presents opportunities in China for genetic research and modeling, health surveillance and monitoring, and massive experiments in personalized and precision medicine. Furthermore, biodata provides a foundation for the development of artificial intelligence technologies in health care, commercial genomics products, and even bioterrorism. Once trafficked, biodata can erode the agency that both nation-states and individuals have over the body politic, making it an important domain of sovereign control with the potential to impact individuals, communities, and international relations for generations.

  PublisherDOI

• How Beijing Runs the Show in Hollywood

  Journal of democracy · 2022-04-01 · 2 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  The relationship between PRC content rules, the Chinese entertainment industry (broadly defined), and U.S. media conglomerates underscores a transition in the role of entertainment in politics. The shift is from "soft power" to "sharp power"—in particular, the type that weaponizes technology and corporations' dependence on political authorities for market access to control content. Beijing deploys sharp power to constrain content by bringing PRC laws and market pressures to bear on U.S. corporate interests. The threat of losing access to the vast Chinese market forces U.S. brands, corporations, and influencers to limit what they say about topics that Beijing deems sensitive (including the Uyghurs, Hong Kong, Tibet, and Tiananmen Square) for fear of having content barred from China.

  PublisherDOI

• Gaming

  2022-09-22 · 1 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Gaming companies create borderless worlds, in the sense that they allow interaction among populations around the globe. Yet as sites that move data between different jurisdictions, gaming companies also redefine borders. Chapter 6 argues that gaming companies based in the United States expand China’s sovereign control as part of their corporate financial interest through their data regulation, storage, and security practices. The case of Tencent, the principal figure in the Chinese gaming industry that has acquired large stakes in US gaming companies such as Activision Blizzard, Riot Games, Epic Games, and Cryptic Studios, offers a prime example. Once trafficked, gaming data can be used by China to conduct mis- and disinformation campaigns, gain strategic industrial advantages, and control important infrastructure in the United States.

  PublisherDOI

• Social Media

  2022-09-22

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Despite their playful uses, social media platforms facilitate data trafficking from the United States to China. Using TikTok, Grindr, and WeChat as examples, this chapter examines how the pervasiveness of social platforms transforms them into critical infrastructure. Chinese firms can then traffic data through unclear notice and consent frameworks as well as opaque community standards. Even when government agencies force Chinese-owned social media firms to divest or change their ownership structure to meet US government demands, as was the case with Grindr and may be the case with TikTok, the companies still hemorrhage data. Chinese social media firms, by contrast, are not required to share their data with other national governments. The chapter argues that pervasive communication platforms generate strategically important data. Without careful transnational oversight, weak data protections can enable AI modeling and misinformation campaigns—or compromise whole communication systems.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Michael Berry

  University of California, Los Angeles

  9 shared

• Chon A. Noriega

  9 shared

• Yulin Sun

  Molecular Oncology (United States)

  9 shared

• Kathleen Mchugh

  Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

  9 shared

• Robert Chi

  9 shared

• Ping-Hui Liao

  University of California, Los Angeles

  9 shared

• Rowena Aquino

  University of California, Los Angeles

  9 shared

• David Desser

  9 shared

Education

• PhD

  University of California Los Angeles

Awards & honors

• Fellow in the National Committee on United States-China Rela…
• Fellowship from the Library of Congress
• Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities
• Fellowship from the Mellon Foundation
• Fellowship from the Social Science Research Council