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How to protect elections in the age of AI
Half of the world’s population will have the chance to head to the polls this year in dozens of critical elections worldwide. These votes, which will shape policy and democracy for years to come, come amid light-speed development in artificial intelligence. As Eurasia Group noted in its 2024 Top Risk entitled “Ungoverned AI,” generative AI could be used by domestic and foreign actors – we’re looking at you, Russia – to impact campaigns and undermine trust in democracy.
To meet the moment, GZERO Media, on the ground at the 2024 Munich Security Conference, held a Global Stage discussion on Feb. 17 entitled “Protecting Elections in the Age of AI.” We spoke with Brad Smith, vice chair and president of Microsoft; Ian Bremmer, president and founder of Eurasia Group and GZERO Media; Fiona Hill, senior fellow for the Center on the United States and Europe at Brookings; Eva Maydell, an EU parliamentarian and a lead negotiator of the EU Chips Act and Artificial Intelligence Act; Kersti Kaljulaid, the former president of Estonia; with European correspondent Maria Tadeo moderating. The program also featured interviews with Kyriakos Mitsotakis, Greece’s prime minister, and Benedikt Franke, CEO and vice-chair of the Munich Security Conference. These thought leaders and experts discussed the implications of the rapid rise of AI amid this historic election year.
The group started by delving into what Bremmer has referred to as the “Voldemort” of years surrounding elections, to look at how election interference and disinformation have evolved since 2016.
“This is the year that people have been very concerned about, but have kind of hoped that they could push off. It's not just because there are elections all over the world and trust in institutions is deteriorating, it's also because the most powerful country in the world, and it's not becoming less powerful, is also one of the most politically dysfunctional,” says Bremmer, referring to the US.
The 2024 US presidential election “is maximally distrust-laden,” says Bremmer, adding that it’s “really hard to have a free and fair election in the US that all of its population” believes is legitimate.
And the worry is that AI could complicate the landscape even further.
Hill agreed that there’s cause for concern but underscored that people should not “panic” to a point where they’re “paralyzed” and “not taking action.”
“Panic is not an option given the stakes,” says Hill, adding, “There are negative aspects of all of this, but there's also the kind of question that we have to grapple with is how when legitimate competitors or opposition movements that otherwise beleaguered decide to use AI tools, that then also has an impact.”
There’s no doubt that AI can be used for nefarious purposes. Deepfakes can fool even the most discerning eye. Disinformation has already been rampant across the internet in recent election cycles and helped sow major divisions in many countries well before AI tools — far more sophisticated than your average meme — were widely available.
“With new tools and products that use generative AI, including from a company like ours, somebody can create a very realistic video, audio, or image. Just think about the different ways it can be used. Somebody can use it and they can make a video of themself, and they can make clear in the video that this is AI generated. That is one way a political candidate, even one who is in prison can speak,” says Smith, alluding to ex-Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan’s recent use of AI from behind bars.
Along these lines, there are many serious, valid concerns about the impact AI can have on elections and democracy more generally — particularly at a time when people are exhibiting rising levels of distrust in key institutions.
“It's very important to acknowledge a lot of the important developments that AI and emerging tech can bring to support our economic development,” says Maydell, adding, “but in the same time, especially this year, we need to be very sober about some of those threats that are in a way threatening the very fabric of our democratic societies.
As Maydell noted, this evolving new technology can be harnessed for good and bad. Can AI be used as a tool to protect candidates and the integrity of the electoral process?
A number of major tech companies, including Microsoft, signed an accord at the Munich Security Conference on Friday to help thwart and combat AI-related election interference.
“It's all about trying to put ourselves in a position, not to solve this problem completely, I don't think that's possible, but to manage this new reality in a way that will make a difference,” says Smith. The Microsoft president says the accord brings the tech sector together to preserve the authenticity of content, including by working to detect deepfakes and providing candidates with a mechanism to report any that are created about them.
“We'll work together to promote transparency and public education. This clearly is going to require a lot of work with civil society, with others around the world to help the public be ready,” says Smith.
But is enough being done?
“It's good that both politicians and the companies and society as a whole now has a better understanding where this is all leading us and we are collectively taking actions,” says Kaljulaid, but this is just a “first step” and “next steps need to follow.”
A balance will need to be found between legislating the challenges presented by AI and giving tech companies space to collaborate, innovate and address problems on their own.
“Democracy is always in jeopardy. Every generation has to answer the call to defend it,” says Smith, adding, “Now it's our turn. It's our turn as a generation of people to say that technology always changes, but democracy is a value that we hold timeless. So let's do what it takes to defend it, to preserve and promote it.”
The livestream was part of the Global Stage series, produced by GZERO in partnership with Microsoft. These discussions convene heads of state, business leaders, and technology experts from around the world for critical debate about the geopolitical and technology trends shaping our world.
- AI's potential to impact election is cause for concern - EU's Eva Maydell ›
- AI in 2024: Will democracy be disrupted? ›
- AI, election integrity, and authoritarianism: Insights from Maria Ressa ›
- AI explosion, elections, and wars: What to expect in 2024 ›
- How AI threatens elections ›
- At the Munich Security Conference, Trump isn't the only elephant in the room ›
- Ukraine crisis one of many global threats at Munich Security Conference ›
- 4 things to know about the Munich Security Conference ›
- Munich Security Conference 2024: What to expect ›
Live premiere today at 12 pm ET: Can we use AI to protect elections?
Today at 12 pm ET/9 am PT/6 pm CET, watch the live premiere of our Global Stage discussion at the Munich Security Conference, "Munich 2024: Protecting Elections in the Age of AI." 2024 is truly the “Year of Elections” with more than 75 nations heading to the polls, affecting roughly half the world’s population. But an ongoing decline of trust in institutions plus an explosion of AI tools and deep fake technologies could create a dangerous environment. Our panel will examine how AI can also be a way to protect consumers and candidates, helping to shore up the integrity of the electoral process. Can AI be used to quickly flag and even eliminate online lies and misinformation?
European correspondent Maria Tadeo moderates the conversation with an expert panel including:
- Ian Bremmer, President and Founder, Eurasia Group and GZERO Media
- Fiona Hill, Senior Fellow, Center on the United States and Europe, Brookings
- Kersti Kaljulaid, former President of Estonia
- Eva Maydell, Member of the European Parliament and lead negotiator, EU Chips Act and Artificial Intelligence Act.
- Brad Smith, Vice Chair and President, Microsoft
- Special appearances by Kyriakos Mitsotakis, Prime Minister of Greece, and Benedikt Franke, Vice-Chairman and CEO, Munich Security Conference
More about Global Stage:
Global Stage: Global issues at the intersection of technology, politics, and societyyoutu.be
China and Swift: Dual threats?
This is the year of elections, with half the world’s population set to vote in more than 65 elections, so it’s no wonder there’s a lot of urgency over one issue: election interference.
Right now, Canada is holding a critical independent inquiry into election interference from China and Russia and yet, they naively missed the most disruptive election conspiracy mastermind of them all: Taylor Swift.
Or not.
In the department of “Weapons of Mass Distraction,” Swift merits a brief diversion before we get to China and Russia. As we covered in the Daily this morning, there is a double album of MAGA paranoia around China and Russia – sorry, I keep doing that … around Taylor Swift – and her plot to tilt the US election to Joe Biden.
One-time Republican presidential candidate-turned-Trump Hype Man Vivek Ramaswamy courageously exposed how Swift and her beau Travis Kelce, the future Hall of Fame tight end from the Super Bowl-bound Kansas City Chiefs, have it all cooked up. Working alongside, um … Deep Football and the Democrats, Swift and Kelce have, apparently, hatched an anti-Trump football plot.
“I wonder who’s going to win the Super Bowl next month,” Ramaswamy tweeted out knowingly, “and I wonder if there’s a major presidential endorsement coming from an artificially culturally propped-up couple this fall.” What? No way! Vivek doubled down on his doubters, with one of those cryptic-conspiracy bro things that sound smart but then you realize you have no idea what he actually means.
“What the MSM calls a “conspiracy theory” is often nothing more than an amalgam of incentives hiding in plain sight,” Ramaswamy tweeted. “Once you see that, the rest becomes pretty obvious.” To which Elon Muskretweeted, “Exactly.”
Exactly what is in plain sight? That there is a Super Bowl-Swiftian election interference plot? That a billionaire musician, her record company, the NFL, Travis Kelce, and Joe Biden all got together to fix the outcome of the NFL playoffs and the Super Bowl in order to support the Democrats and undermine Donald Trump?
The Swift-Kelce-NFL-Biden fever dream has been widely repeated and reported on, but it has zero merit, as we covered this morning. Swift has a history of supporting Democrats in places like Tennessee in 2018. In other words, like millions of people, she supports a political party. That is not a conspiracy, that’s called “voting.” Many other celebrities support Trump and Republicans. That is also called voting.
Yes, Travis Kelce does vaccine ads for a pharmaceutical company. Again, not a conspiracy against Trump, but the choice of a man who, like hundreds of millions of people, believes in the science of vaccines – and in making a buck. It’s no more complicated than that. This isn’t a plot for election interference, as folks like Ramaswamy allege; it’s a paranoid new deflection from the very real act of attempted election interference that was the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.
But foreign election interference is troubling, and Canada’s inquiry merits attention. The independent “Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference in Federal Electoral Processes and Democratic Institutions” – catchy name, I know, so let’s go with the “Hogue Inquiry,” after the commissioner Justice Marie-Josée Hogue, who is overseeing it all — kicked off this week. It is looking into allegations that China and Russia interfered in the 2019 and 2021 federal elections.
Just this morning, Global News reported that it had obtained a secret briefing note from Canada’s spy agency CSIS that says China attempted to interfere with the last two Federal elections. “We know that the PRC sought to clandestinely and deceptively influence the 2019 and 2021 federal elections,” Stewart Bell writes in his superb story today.
That’s exactly why Canada’s allies are watching this case so closely, especially in the US. “Much of the attention about foreign interference in American democratic processes has focused on Russia and its malicious online activities,” Stephanie Carvin, a Carleton University professor and former CSIS national security analyst, tells me. “But Canada presents an important case study in how other state actors, namely (but not exclusively) China, conduct such operations. This includes the harassment of dissidents, alleged interference in electoral nomination processes, and targeting of politicians. Western countries need to observe and learn from the experience of other countries, which may impact them one day.”
Despite the recent assurances from President Xi Jinping to President Joe Biden that China will not interfere in the election, FBI Director Christopher Wraywarned a House Committee on China this week that Beijing has a very sophisticated plan to disrupt the upcoming election and also hack critical infrastructure.
Other countries, like Russia and Iran, are playing copycat. “Unfortunately, malicious actors are learning from one another, and Western countries should expect more foreign interference in the future,” Carvin says. “I am particularly worried about artificially generated content ‘deepfakes’ that may alter perceptions of current events and politicians.”
Canada, the US, and its allies are arming up for a war on the heart of democracy: elections. “If there is a good news story here, it is that countries are not going through this alone,” Carvin tells me. “By working together, states can better inform themselves about what is happening around the world, to make their democratic institutions more resilient.”
Big picture? It might be best not to confuse Swiftian halftime entertainment with political election interference. Both are worth paying attention to, but they play in very different arenas.
Did China meddle in Canada’s elections?
Canada’s long-awaited public inquiry into foreign interference in the electoral process started this week and, in an election year in the United States, it will be monitored closely in Washington.
Calls for an inquiry were sparked by media reports that suggested China had interfered in the 2019 and 2021 Canadian federal elections, attempting to swing the country’s 1.7 million citizens of Chinese descent behind the governing Liberals.
Among the allegations were claims that one Liberal MP viewed as being pro-Beijing was nominated as a candidate with the help of paid Chinese students, bused in by the PRC Consulate in Toronto (The MP in question, Han Dong, denied the allegations and is suing the media outlet, Global News). Another allegation suggested that opposition Conservative MPs were targeted by disinformation, such as the claim that a future Conservative government would require all Canadians with ties to China to register on a foreign influence register (there was no such plan).
Prime Minister Justin Trudeauinitially resisted an inquiry, instead appointing former Governor General David Johnston as a “special rapporteur” to produce a report on the extent of the problem. Johnston complied last May, saying that foreign governments did attempt to influence voters but that the problem was less concerning than the headlines suggested. He said China was generally “party agnostic” in that it tried to help “pro-China” candidates in whichever party.
The House of Commons did not accept Johnston’s findings, particularly given his links to Trudeau, and demanded that the minority Liberals set up a public inquiry before a judge to reaffirm Canadians’ faith in the electoral system.
Quebec appeals judge Marie-Josée Hogue kicked off those proceedings on Monday and will report back by December. In the wake of the murder of Sikh separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in British Columbia last June, the inquiry’s focus has broadened beyond China to include possible electoral interference by Russia, India, “and other foreign actors.”
The subject is of acute interest to American lawmakers. Conservative Party foreign affairs critic, Michael Chong, was invited to appear before the Congressional-Executive Commission on China last fall to talk about a Chinese intimidation campaign against his relatives in Hong Kong. Chong said Western allies could work harder to translate intelligence into evidence to be used by judicial systems and could even go public with intelligence to counter disinformation.AI in 2024: Will democracy be disrupted?
Marietje Schaake, International Policy Fellow, Stanford Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, and former European Parliamentarian, co-hosts GZERO AI, our new weekly video series intended to help you keep up and make sense of the latest news on the AI revolution. In this episode, she shares her reflection on AI in 2023.
Hello, this is GZERO AI. My name is Marietje Schaake. It's the end of the year, and so it's the time for lists. As we see so many top fives, top threes, top tens of the key developments in AI, I thought I would just share a couple of reflections. Not list them, just look back on this year, which was remarkable in so many ways.
We saw a huge explosion of discussion around AI governance. Are companies, the ones that can take on all this responsibility of assessing risk, or deciding when to push new research onto the market, or as illustrated by the dramatic saga at OpenAI, are companies not in a good position to make all these decisions themselves and to sort of design checks and balances all in-house? Governments agree. I don't think they want to let these decisions to the big companies, and so they are really stepping up across the board and across the globe. We've only recently, in the last days of this year, seen the political agreement around the EU AI Act, a landmark law that will really set a standard in the democratic world for governing AI in a binding fashion. But there were also a lot of voluntary code of conduct, as we saw at the G7, statements that came out of the AI Safety Summit like the Bletchley Park Declaration, and there was the White House's executive order to add to the many initiatives that were taken in an attempt to make sure that AI developments at least respect the laws that are on the book, if not make new ones where needed.
Now, what I thought was missing quite a bit, looking at the AI Safety Summit, for example, but also in discussions in my home country, the Netherlands, there were elections where AI did not feature at all in the political debate. Is a better discussion, more informed, and more anticipatory about job displacement? I think it is potentially a most devastating and most disruptive development, and yet we don't really hear so much about it short of reports by consulting firms that predict macroeconomic benefits over the long run. But if you look at the political fallout of job displacement and the need to have resources, for example, to reskill and retrain people. There is a need for a much more public debate and maybe even to start talking about the T-word, namely taxing AI companies.
What I also think is missing still, despite having had more reference to the Global South, is true engagement of people from all over the world, not just from the most advanced economies, but really, to have a global engagement with people to understand their lived experiences and needs with regard to the rollout of AI. Because even if people do not have agency over what AI decides about them, there will still be impact even if people are not even online yet. So I think it is incredibly important to have a more global, inclusive, and equal discussion with people from all over the world, and that will be something I'll be looking out for the year 2024.
What I also think is missing still, despite having had more reference to the Global South, is true engagement of people from all over the world, not just from the most advanced economies, but really, to have a global engagement with people to understand their lived experiences and needs with regard to the rollout of AI. Because even if people do not have agency over what AI decides about them, there will still be impact even if people are not even online yet. So I think it is incredibly important to have a more global, inclusive, and equal discussion with people from all over the world, and that will be something I'll be looking out for the year 2024.
And then last, and certainly not least, 2024 has been called the Year of Democracy. I hope we will say the same when we look back a year from now. There will be an unprecedented amount of people going to the polls, and there are still a lot of question marks about how disruptive AI is going to be for the public debate, the political debate, new means of manipulating, sharing disinformation with synthetic media that is really, really hard to distinguish from authentic human-uttered expressions. Really, the combination of AI and elections, AI and democracy deserves a lot more attention and will probably draw attention in the year where billions of people will take to the polls, 2024.
For now, let me wish you a happy holiday season with friends and few screens, I hope. And we will see each other again afresh in the new year. Happy New Year and happy holidays.
- AI explosion, elections, and wars: What to expect in 2024 ›
- The world of AI in 2024 ›
- ChatGPT and the 2024 US election ›
- How AI threatens elections ›
- AI, election integrity, and authoritarianism: Insights from Maria Ressa ›
- How to protect elections in the age of AI - GZERO Media ›
- When AI makes mistakes, who can be held responsible? - GZERO Media ›
How AI threatens elections
According to a new report from Ginny Badanes of Microsoft’s Democracy Forward Initiative, two billion people will have the opportunity to vote in national elections over the next 14 months. So many elections in multiple consequential countries promise authoritarians who want to degrade democracy are gearing up to launch cyberattacks to destabilize and spread doubt in the free world.
And artificial intelligence makes the threat more severe than ever before. “We are in a moment where a new technology is emerging — generative AI — and there are a lot of concerns about what that is going to mean, particularly for information operations.”
She spoke with Tony Maciulis at the 2023 Paris Peace Forum, where GZERO also hosted a Global Stage event, Live from the Paris Peace Forum: Embracing technology to protect democracy.
AI, election integrity, and authoritarianism: Insights from Maria Ressa
There’s a big, big problem with using AI to defend democracy, says Rappler CEO Maria Ressa: “You need to feed it.”
“AI as a defense tool will always be behind the eight-ball because it is reactive," she said, requiring terabytes of data at a time to pick out the patterns that betray malicious actors. By the time they are detected, they can flood social media with lies that amplify ordinary citizens’ fear when they don’t know what to believe.
Ressa spoke in a GZERO Global Stage livestream discussion with Ian Bremmer, President and Founder, Eurasia Group & GZERO Media, Eléonore Caroit, Vice-President of the French Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee, and Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith, moderated by Julien Pain, journalist and host of Franceinfo, live from the 2023 Paris Peace Forum.
Her newsroom, Rappler, is one of the last independent media outlets in the Philippines and operates under tremendous political pressure. The government has filed so many lawsuits against Ressa and Rappler that she could face a century of prison time. What’s more, Rappler’s reporting attracted repeated cyberattacks in 2021, trying to bring the website down. “When we were attacked, it took the platforms years to come back and fix it," said Ressa, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021 for her work to safeguard freedom of expression as a journalist.
Watch the full livestream panel discussion: "Live from the Paris Peace Forum: Embracing technology to protect democracy"
The livestream was part of the Global Stage series, produced by GZERO in partnership with Microsoft. These discussions convene heads of state, business leaders, technology experts from around the world for critical debate about the geopolitical and technology trends shaping our world.
- How are emerging technologies helping to shape democracy? ›
- Maria Ressa: Fearless and fair ›
- Facebook allows "lies laced with anger and hate" to spread faster than facts, says journalist Maria Ressa ›
- AI and data regulation in 2023 play a key role in democracy ›
- Paris Peace Forum Director General Justin Vaïsse: Finding common ground - GZERO Media ›
- At the Paris Peace Forum, grassroots activists highlight urgent issues - GZERO Media ›
- AI in 2024: Will democracy be disrupted? - GZERO Media ›
- How to protect elections in the age of AI - GZERO Media ›
Bonfire of the Sanities: How does China win?
How Beijing wins is a question engulfing US and Canadian politics, with hysteria over spy balloons, election meddling, and Taiwan slouching toward a low-rent neo-McCarthyism. And it’s a fair question. China is spying on everyone (even their friend-with-oil-benefits Russia is busting them for some hypersonic snooping), stealing IP, beefing up their military, and, in the case of Canada, actively undermining democracy.
The wolf warriors are snarling, but these geopolitical noises are nothing new. The question is what to do about it.
In Canada, it’s becoming shambolic. PM Justin Trudeau has managed to turn the political trick of making a problem about someone else – in this case China – into an issue about himself. Self-inflicted wounds are one of Trudeau’s unique skills, but that shouldn’t stop a fair and frank assessment of the problem.
Should Canada’s intelligence agency have warned politicians earlier that they were being targeted by Chinese attacks? Yes. Should Trudeau have acted more transparently and quickly on this? Of course. Was it a mistake to appoint David Johnston to investigate everything? Sadly, yes. While Johnston has a lifetime of impeccable nonpartisan service (he was appointed as the governor general by Conservative PM Stephen Harper, for goodness sake), in the current climate where politics has been essentially criminalized as a calling, Johnston – a lawyer, intellectual, university dean – has been luridly dismissed by opposition leader Pierre Poilievre as a party lackey of the PM brought in to slap a coat of whitewash on China.
Johnston is baffled by the absurd and baseless allegations, but if his old-world naïveté resembles a man with a musket facing an army of modern culture warriors armed with rhetorical AR-15s, it’s as much Trudeau’s fault as his. In 2023, trust does not just have to be established – it has to be perceived to be established.
Trudeau, a political creator by birth, knows this all too well. Johnston’s anodyne, civic-minded associations with Trudeau and the Trudeau Foundation may have a genuine perception problem, but they don’t have a substantial ethical one. The fact that it’s impossible to distinguish between the two is one of the distinguishing characteristics of our free-for-all age. Johnston’s work so far may be perceived to be biased, but intel sources I’ve spoken with do say it’s accurate. That matters.
There is much to criticize about how the Canadian government handled the Chinese election futzing, but here’s the thing: It didn’t work. The last Canadian election, like the American one, was fair and free, and the results stand on their merit, despite all partisan squawking to the contrary. There is no substantial evidence to say otherwise.
Even the threat isn’t new, which may explain why the government looked so embarrassed when the first allegations were revealed. Didn’t we know all this already from the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians' sober and thorough report tabled in March 2020? It disappeared from public view because it was literally published the week the global pandemic was declared.
But the work of this nonpartisan group openly revealed that China was attacking Canada and gave many details on how China attacked the West. Quoting the Australian expert John Garnaut, it said: “In classical Chinese statecraft there are two tools for gaining and maintaining control over 'the mountains and the rivers': The first is wu (weapons, violence) and the second is wen (language, culture).” The report goes on: “The PRC utilizes its growing economic wealth to mobilize interference operations: "with deep coffers and the help of Western enablers, the Chinese Communist Party uses money, rather than Communist ideology, as a powerful source of influence, creating parasitic relationships of long-term dependence.”
So it was all there three years ago, with prudent redactions for society's purposes.
The fact that this is barely mentioned says everything about how politics has overtaken the principles of governing, and how the need for some secrecy around national security has been used as a negative proof point of some hidden conspiracy
So, we have known about China for years, and their efforts are not working. All good? Nope.
The Chinese are still winning because the real game is not just to disrupt elections – though they will still try. It’s to try to weaken the West internally. And are they ever getting a return on their investment ...
In Canada, the debate around China has evolved into allegations that the entire democratic system and those running it – like Johnston – are all corrupt. Don’t trust anyone. They are all out to get you!
In the US, it’s worse. Marco Rubio was on Fox this week reverting back to the Trumpian mean – declaring that Biden is mentally incompetent, America is a weak, desiccated country, and that its politics and the military are poisoned on all levels by woke culture. Ron DeSantis has based his entire Twitter-delayed presidential campaign on this same stuff. The West is broken, etc …
China is gleeful. The culture war cat is amongst the Western democracy pigeons, ripping out the feathers. China wins when debate turns into demagoguery, and democracies forget about reason, facts, and that rarely mentioned quality that lies at the heart of free societies: empathy.
When Tom Wolfe wrote “Bonfire of the Vanities” in 1987, he was torching the culture of greed and narcissism that was, at the time, both supercharging and corroding America – and to a lesser extent – Canada. Those twin traits have hardly diminished in the 36 years since. Still, they now seem like almost quaint, Calvary soldiers in the new, AI-boosted culture assaults raging over the phantom menace called “woke culture” — that gaseously defined, almost Delillo-esque “White Noise” threat that is proving to be a most convenient foil for the aria of multi-partisan, paranoid complaint that passes today for politics.
But that’s a bread and circus sideshow. The real risks facing folks today – AI, China, Russia, climate change, and nuclear proliferation, to name a few – need more genuine, reasoned debate. Too bad reasoned debate is becoming a campaign relic. If Wolfe were writing today, his book might be called “The Bonfire of the Sanities.” In fact, that’s likely the entire Chinese strategy: Burn down reason and turn a paranoid, angry West on itself. When that bonfire burns, China wins.