Ali's Smart City Platform Suffers from Uniquely Chinese flaws

Behind the stories of international exports and privacy concerns, the City Brain reveals a great deal about the political system to which is belongs.

By Luke Cavanaugh, who produces interweave.gov, a newsletter covering digital government developments in Europe and Asia.

In early 2018, Alibaba Cloud executive Min Wanli addressed a packed conference center in Kuala Lumpur. “Every moment [human beings] are sensing different signals either through our eyes, our hearing, our speech, our text messages,” he…