Digital gangsters threaten to kill democracy

The main news of the past week was not the splintering of our calcified political system. It concerned attacks on it from outside. A devastating report from a Commons committee looking at disinformation highlighted the threat posed by unregulated political advertising. It lambasted the big tech companies as “digital gangsters” for their greedy collusion in this. Another report, by the Royal United Services Institute, showed how the Chinese authorities systematically control foreign academic and media discussion and turn economic ties to their political advantage. If you think you live in a free country, ask when your rulers last spoke out bluntly on topics such as Taiwan and Tibet. The combination of foreign interference and technological change threatens to overturn our political system. How can we have a fair election when unlimited money from murky sources — including foreign ones — can pay for secret messages that most voters never see? That is what Facebook enabled in the Brexit referendum. How can we deal sensibly with the world’s second-biggest economy if our discussions and actions are constrained by greed for its money?