Mapping China’s Technology Giants: Supply Chains And The Global Data Collection Ecosystem

Most of the 27 companies tracked by our Mapping China’s Technology Giants project are heavily involved in the collection and processing of vast quantities of personal and organisational data— everything from personal social media accounts, to smart cities data, to biomedical data.1 Their business operations—and associated international collaborations—depend on the flow of vast amounts of data, often governed by the data privacy laws of multiple jurisdictions. Currently, however, existing global policy debates and subsequent policy responses concerning security in the digital supply chain miss the bigger picture because they typically prioritise the potential for disruption or malicious alterations of the supply chain. Yet, as we have defined it in this report, digital supply-chain risk starts at the design level

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