A conversation in Singapore revealed a stark reality: nations in Southeast Asia opt for Chinese, Israeli, or French facial recognition vendors over American firms, not for technical limitations, but because "the Chinese just ship." This highlights a global surveillance infrastructure buildout occurring fastest in regions with the least power to resist.
The "surveillance stack" encompasses biometric IDs, facial recognition, behavioral analytics, and predictive policing, often sold separately but forming a cumulative system. The global video surveillance market, projected to exceed $80 billion by 2026, sees its fastest growth in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Latin America. Governments there are leapfrogging to comprehensive biometric surveillance, frequently funded by international loans or export credit agencies.
Companies like Huawei, ZTE, and Hikvision are deploying "Safe City" initiatives across Africa and Southeast Asia. Israeli firm Cellebrite and French company Idemia supply vital tools to law enforcement in developing nations. Despite this widespread activity being documented in public filings, a meaningful conversation about it remains absent in Western tech circles.
Silicon Valley's silence stems from market logic, competing for cloud contracts in these same regions; ideological adherence to a "technology as liberation" narrative that excludes authoritarian applications; and geographic parochialism, focusing AI ethics discourse on domestic issues rather than global impacts.
This surveillance infrastructure, unlike traditional weapons, is self-reinforcing. Once installed, data collection justifies expansion, creating institutional interests in its perpetuation. Examples include Kenya's Huduma Namba, Brazil's São Paulo metro cameras, and Bangladesh's biometric data collection from Rohingya refugees.
The issue extends beyond China, with European firms like Idemia and Atos, and even U.S. cloud providers like AWS and Google Cloud, playing significant roles in hosting and facilitating this data. The venture capital funding also predominantly flows from American sources.
Addressing this requires treating surveillance technology exports with the seriousness of arms controls, holding cloud providers accountable for the data on their platforms, and shifting tech media focus from market opportunities to the lived experiences of those affected. The "identifiable victim effect" is exploited at an industrial scale, where the distance between the surveilled and decision-makers renders the human cost invisible.