Eye Spy

Digital Artwork: Menachem Weinreb
Photos: AP Newsroom

Geoffrey Cain entered China on a tourist visa, posing as a backpacker. His true intent: to observe the world’s most advanced all-seeing surveillance state up close.

Now that he’s seen the terrifying scope of China’s surveillance state, Cain has a warning for America. The Chinese state, he says, is spreading its long arm westward via a Trojan horse implanted in the phones of 138 million US citizens.

“See a terrorist, strike a terrorist!” shouted the policeman.

He was one of three burly counterterrorism officers at an outdoor market in the city of Kashgar in the far-western Chinese province of Xinjiang, training store owners how to bring down a terrorist. At the ring of a bell, they began the drill: strike hard, strike fast, and pin an imaginary terrorist on the ground.

It was December 2017 and Geoffrey Cain, an expert on the rise of China’s surveillance state, had entered the country on a tourist visa. He was posing as a backpacker and had arrived in Kashgar to see the world’s most advanced all-seeing surveillance state up close.

Cain, in the manner of tourists the world over, casually snapped a picture of the bizarre scene, and began walking away. But in true dystopian sci-fi fashion, one of the officers was wearing sunglasses with a built-in camera connected to SkyNet, China’s central surveillance database, through which the country’s 200 million AI-equipped security cameras are linked. Before Cain knew it, he was surrounded by police.