While the Net was invented by Brits and Americans and developed in Silicon Valley, where the new digital titans worked out how to make it profitable, it was the closed world that would really grasp its potential: the Chinese security services were quickest to appreciate its power of surveillance. The Russians harnessed its ability to amplify and justify rage and propagate lies in the open world. The autocracies understood quickly that their hackers could poison the delicate political anatomy of the democracies by using their very freedoms against them.
