US Must Build Trust to Counter CCP Authoritarianism: Nobel Nominee

The United States must work to build trust at home and abroad if it is to effectively counter creeping authoritarianism from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), according to one nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize.

“‘Trust’ is the most important word in any language,” said former under secretary of state Keith Krach during an Oct. 4 talk with the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank.

“You do business with people you trust. You buy from people you trust. You partner with people you trust. You love the people you trust.”

U.S. leaders, Krach said, should lead the way internationally by divesting from China-based technology corporations connected to forced labor and investing instead in corporations and nations that promote data privacy, security, and human rights.

This “trust principle,” Krach said, was at the heart of his work with the Krach Institute for Tech Diplomacy at Purdue University, a bipartisan initiative aimed at bridging gaps in knowledge and experience between innovators and policymakers, and for which he has been nominated for a 2022 Nobel Peace Prize.

Such efforts, Krach said, would be invaluable in pivoting critical U.S. technologies and supply chains away from authoritarian nations by demonstrating to business leaders just how risky investments in regimes like the CCP were.

Krach underscored the point by recalling his own experience as a business leader and the widespread lack of understanding in the business community about the extent of the CCP’s efforts and ability to take companies’ data, including intellectual property.

“When I was CEO of DocuSign, for example, I had no idea about [China’s] National Intelligence [law],” Krach said.

“Basically, what that law does is it deputizes every Chinese citizen to be a spy.”

“It requires any Chinese company, state-owned or otherwise, and any citizen, to turn over any information: data, proprietary technology, intellectual property, to the Chinese Communist Party, or [to] suffer the consequences.”

As such, Krach said, fostering economic and diplomatic relations with governments dedicated to democratic values was paramount to escaping the trappings of authoritarianism. Increasing technological ties with governments like that in Taiwan, he said, was “critical” to curbing the power of the CCP’s espionage campaigns designed to spy on and extort Americans.

It was for this reason, Krach said, that CCP leader Xi Jinping wanted Taiwan to be “destroyed” one way or another. Taiwan’s belief in self-determination and transparent, democratic governance dispelled the CCP’s myth that Chinese culture was somehow not compatible with democratic government.