How US Internet Optimism Turned to AI Alarm with China

US thinkers once looked to the future of Internet technology in China with dreams of liberalization. China and the US co-built and jointly profited from the 2000s digital economy and the smartphone revolution, yet in the 2010s both countries’ governments became increasingly anxious about their vulnerability and interdependence in the digital sphere. By 2020, anxieties combined with trade conflict, Covid recriminations, and AI futurism, cementing a rivalry mindset that today shapes partial decoupling and conditions of continued interconnection. This talk traces how US officials and thinkers acted on their visions of the future, and how reality intervened.

Graham Webster is a lecturer and research scholar in the Program on Geopolitics, Technology, and Governance at Stanford University, where he leads the DigiChina Project. He specializes in technology policy and development in China and US-China relations. His reporting and commentary has appeared in WIRED, Foreign Affairs, and the MIT Technology Review, among others. Graham was previously a senior fellow and lecturer at Yale Law School, where he was responsible for the Paul Tsai China Center’s Track 2 dialogues between the United States and China. In the past, he wrote a CNET News blog on technology and society from Beijing, worked at the Center for American Progress, and taught East Asian politics at NYU’s Center for Global Affairs. Graham holds a master’s degree in East Asian studies from Harvard University and a bachelor’s degree in journalism and international studies from Northwestern University. He is based in Oakland, California.