How often do we consider who watches, interrupts, or reroutes our digital lives? Rarely, for the infrastructures we rely on are designed to conceal their power. Aynne Kokas’s Trafficking Data strips that veil. This is not a book about data privacy or cybersecurity hygiene. It is an inquiry into influence, sovereignty, and the mechanics of control.
I did not expect to read about Tiananmen Square in a book about data. And yet, Kokas begins precisely there, with an unsettling incident. An online memorial service, hosted on Zoom to honor the victims of the 1989 protests, abruptly shuts down. The cause was no glitch but something far more troubling—the long reach of the Chinese state, exercised through a company born in the Silicon Valley.
Kokas dwells on this episode to expose a pattern both familiar and insidious. Under pressure from Beijing, Zoom shuts down the accounts of activists, including Chinese nationals. The US Department of Justice charged a China-based Zoom employee, yet the company itself faced no penalty. Its explanation was stark—it had only followed Chinese law. With more than 700 engineers in China and deep dependence on that market, Zoom illustrated how an American firm can bend to Chinese state demands. For Kokas, this was no anomaly but a warning that American consumers cannot rely on their protections when corporate interests bow to Beijing.
Based on this event, Kokas lays out her premise with clinical clarity. The global movement of data constitutes more than a privacy concern. American firms, driven by profit and often blind to the policy implications of their actions, have enabled Chinese regulators to assert digital sovereignty far beyond their borders. In the process, user data becomes not just a commercial asset, but a tool of statecraft.
To explain how such incidents are possible, Kokas introduces the idea of data trafficking, distinct from both migration and theft. Trafficking is not the orderly, rules-based transfer of information, but its exploitation, obscured by ambiguity, coercion, and imbalances of power. Data migration, by contrast, is a transparent and regulated process, as in the European Union and Japan, where legal standards allow individuals to track their information and even demand its removal. Trafficking, on the other hand, thrives in opaque terms of service and vague governance. Nor is it theft, which discards legality altogether. Rather, trafficking operates under the pretense of legitimacy, making it both sinister and difficult to contest. The consequence, Kokas says, is that in both China and the United States, citizens are denied meaningful consent.
The book reveals how China wields both soft and hard power through data. The struggle with the United States is not merely about privacy; it is political, with grave consequences for democracy and sovereignty. While China often appears as the primary threat, Kokas highlights America’s failings—a patchwork of weak regulations, profit-driven firms, and an insatiable appetite for inexpensive gadgets has left its data poorly defended. China, by contrast, treats data as a national resource, bound tightly by law, even for foreign firms. This grants China what Kokas calls an ‘authoritarian advantage’, enabling the creation of a vast national data corpus drawn from both domestic and international sources.
Kokas shows how this plays out in daily life. Chapter nine lands with particular force, bringing the case into our homes. Smart fridges, baby monitors, security cameras, drones—conveniences on the surface, Trojan horses in effect. They collect intimate details of life behind closed doors and funnel them outward. Kokas names the fallout ‘data accidents’—not a single catastrophic event, but countless small breaches, each invisible until their consequences emerge. A robotic vacuum that maps one’s house or a refrigerator that sends data to distant servers remind us that the front line of sovereignty no longer lies at national borders.
Building on these concerns, Kokas details how Chinese firms, fortified by state backing, exploit America’s fragmented regulatory environment. Haier’s acquisition of GE Appliances tethered American kitchens to China’s Baidu-run cloud. Eufy home cameras collect images not only of their owners but of bystanders without consent, transferring data abroad through carefully worded loopholes. DJI drones, ubiquitous in American skies, fall under military-civil fusion, ensuring data remains accessible to Beijing. Even home surveillance gadgets and intimate devices are compromised, a vulnerability borne most heavily by women, children, and queer communities. In Kokas’s telling, the American consumer is not simply a user, but raw material.
Yet the book does not end in despair. Kokas proposes ‘data stabilization’ as a solution—a middle path between laissez-faire and nationalist enclosure. Unlike ‘data localization’ which cages information within borders, stabilization seeks openness with guardrails. It demands stronger laws, international cooperation, and tailored strategies for the most vulnerable sectors. Kokas remains realistic, acknowledging how difficult such measures are to implement when technology is so deeply entwined with politics and daily life.
Kokas counsels against panic and paranoia. She recalls the ‘Japan Panic’ of the 1980s, when Americans feared Sony, Toyota, and Toshiba were buying up the country. That hysteria acted as a distraction from structural issues rather than addressing them. A similar risk looms today—fearmongering may eclipse the hard task of building safeguards and developing systems to protect the most private dimensions of human life. Kokas’s emphasis on cooperation over conflict is noteworthy, arguing that managing data requires collaboration, learning, and shared responsibility.
Although Trafficking Data focuses on China and the United States, its lessons are global. Kokas makes it clear that sovereignty in the twenty-first century is not measured solely in terms of territory or arms. It resides in the vacuum that cleans your carpet, the fridge that cools your milk, the drone that films your backyard, and the devices at your bedside. The book excels at diagnosis but offers few concrete prescriptions. For instance, Kokas does not specify how international cooperation could be achieved in practice when nations have competing interests, or which legislative frameworks might balance innovation with protection. The idea of data stabilization is compelling but remains abstract without detailed policy paths or tested regulatory models.
Even so, Trafficking Data succeeds as a nuanced analysis of digital sovereignty in the twenty-first century. It is a book for policymakers, technologists, privacy advocates, and engaged citizens who wish to understand how their everyday choices intersect with geopolitical power structures. In a world where every device may serve as a portal for surveillance, Kokas has written a vital study of data as statecraft.
Bhavna Jaisingh is a development professional with a strong grounding in data, design, and impact analysis. She has worked with both grassroots and global institutions, supporting non-profit organizations committed to feminist rights and youth empowerment, and worked as a consultant for the United Nations Development Programme, SEWA Bharat, the World Bank, and the Department of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Finance. A keen reader and poetry enthusiast, Bhavna enjoys exploring diverse poetic forms and the performing arts.