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The Current Transcript for November 16, 2022

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

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Social media has provided activism with a really powerful tool. It allows for faster dissemination of information to wider populations, and it makes activism more accessible.

MATT GALLOWAY: There are many reasons to get off of social media. Nastiness, misinformation. Time spent scrolling that you'll never get back. But as Twitter slides deeper into chaos under new owner Elon Musk, activists around the world are already mourning what could be lost if the site disappears in 30 minutes. The case for Twitter as a force for social good in Iran and beyond. Also this morning, as Canada gets set to reveal a new strategy for engaging with China, a former Hydro-Québec employee has been charged with obtaining trade secrets for that nation. Coming up, the growing threat of economic espionage. And later.

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So right now, we are entering the airlock doors right outside the challenge unit. So you can come on in and follow me.

MG: Why exactly would someone agree to deliberately be infected with whooping cough in an hour? Meet the participants of a Halifax study who are getting sick on purpose to help create new vaccines. We start, though, with fears of a dangerous escalation in the Ukraine war and what might come next. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current.

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Russia’s continued aggression as winter creeps closer

Guests: Sviatoslav Yusrah, Kerry Buck

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[Sound: Missiles]

MG: The attacks came fast and furious. Across Ukraine, air raid sirens sounded as Russia launched its biggest barrages of missiles yet. Kyiv, other parts of the country, even neighbouring Moldova, were plunged into darkness just days after Russian troops withdrew from the city of Kherson and for the first time a missile strike crossed the border into Poland, killing two people there. At this point, the source of that missile is unclear. These attacks came as world leaders met at the G20 in Bali. Today that group released a declaration saying they deplore in the strongest terms Russia's aggression against Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed the G20 summit.

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I want this aggressive Russian war to end justly and on the basis of the UN charter and international law. Ukraine should not be offered to conclude compromises with its conscience. Sovereignty, territory and independence. We respect the rules and we are people of our word. Ukraine has always been a leader in peacekeeping efforts and the world has witnessed it. And if Russia says that it supposedly wants to end this war, let it prove it with actions.

MG: Sviatoslav Yusrah is a member of parliament in Ukraine for the Servant of the People Party. That's President Zelensky's party. He is in Kiev right now inside the Ukrainian parliament. So he has his love. Hello.

SVIATOSLAV YUSRAH: Hello.

MG: What is the mood in Kiev today? We have seen these images of dark streets and buildings in the wake of lack of power. What is the mood in the city right now?

SVIATOSLAV YUSRAH: Certainly by far on just inside Ukraine, there were attacks, crippling infrastructure, water supply, heat. Basically, the Russians with their strikes are trying to basically targets. And that is very emblematic of what Russian warfare look like.

MG: How are people faring with no power? Winter is on the doorstep.

SVIATOSLAV YUSRAH: Well, people have to basically remember what their great grandparents told them on how to survive in these circumstances. Basically, we are trying to be creative about it. We are importing generators, we are cutting firewood and basically trying to get everything, the food, and to find a way to survive this winter.

MG: Practically. What does that mean? I mean, people can talk about resilience. We've seen a lot of that from the Ukrainian people. But this is a really difficult situation and so are people. Is there a sense people are willing to stick it out? Are people looking at trying to perhaps get out of the country if they can?

SVIATOSLAV YUSRAH: Well, again, we have more than 10 million refugees and internally displaced people, and that includes people who are displaced inside Ukraine and people who left Ukraine. But again, Ukraine was a country of 40 million people in the largest country in Europe. So the attempt by Russia to destroy our statehood is another example, basically, of that policies all around the world. But as far as this, again, we are very clear. We are not going to sacrifice or compromising on independence because Russia wants this all because Russia want that or because Russia is going to cause of this conflict. Ukraine is, it was basically something that was achieved by our ancestors who sacrificed a great deal for our country. And we're not going to throw away that sacrifice.

MG: You just returned from Kherson. What did you see there?

SVIATOSLAV YUSRAH: Yes, well, I saw people jubilant, jubilant that Ukraine is returning. When you come to Kherson again, there is no electricity. There is nothing works except for the water supply because of the largest river in Ukraine, Dnipro, be nearby. But people are very happy to see Ukraine, very happy to see Ukraine return and they want to see Russia leave. I can tell that by the Russian posters plastered all over town that are essentially destroyed by the residents in the city. And you can see the crowds gathering, then welcoming every bit of support of any kind. People are happy to have Ukraine back.

MG: We've seen these extraordinary images, as you say, of people tearing down those those billboards that say 'Russia forever' and people cheering and singing as the Ukrainian troops come into the city. What have they told you about what life was like under Russian occupation for months?

SVIATOSLAV YUSRAH: Well, Russia basically was targeting everybody that has any connexion with Ukraine and a meaningful way. I mean, they were essentially trying to find mothers whose sons were fighting for Ukraine, trying to get any kind of activist actually imprisoned them. I mean, every single time we liberated them best grain, the Russians were making all the people they killed portable torture spots where they tortured people. Again, it's the only original capital that the Russians managed to take over and the city was as bad as it was everywhere else.

MG: What do you want from the international community at this point in this war, which has gone on for many months now?

SVIATOSLAV YUSRAH: And again, the world was willing to compromise the rules because Russia wants it. We are very clear all around that world the borders don't change because the individual countries, the countries cannot take over other countries because the [unintelliglbe] of that country wants it. It's not a question of Ukraine. A question all around the world, many other countries are watching. They will remember that and they will use that. And again, the more that the world invest in Ukraine and in our efforts to detect Russia, the more clear that it is a sign that the world is willing to support the principles that built into what is right now.

MG: You will have heard no doubt at the top, U.S. General Mark Milley say that winter provides an opportunity to begin peace negotiations with Russia. What did you make of that?

SVIATOSLAV YUSRAH: Would that happen to have these negotiations [unintelliglbe] Russia leave the country? Peace is the ultimate goal of all sides in the situation. But again, as long as Russia occupies our country and wants us to essentially be dragged into other processes which will actually keep our country occupied for many long years, it is not acceptable for us. We sacrifice too much to let Russia have anything from our country. Again, Russia has no claim to any part of our country. So Russia can leave and then come negotiations about how much Russia will compensate us for the horrible, horrible damage wrought almost in the economy, tremendously as it is right now.

MG: Could you imagine that there is heightened anxiety around the state of this war given again, people are trying to figure out the cause of those explosions, but the explosions in Poland and that that might lead to international the international community saying now is the time to push towards some sort of peaceful resolution.

SVIATOSLAV YUSRAH: It's the time to finally implement this, implementing a no fly zone over Ukraine and so be the Russians and not indiscriminately shell every part of Ukraine and well and can now restores civil infrastructure and the entire system defence systems that the world was promising to let them finally come into Ukraine. Again, peace negotiations are well and good, but Russia occupied the port of my country. And as long as we are finding those mass graves in the towns liberated, it's very clear that much worse and that much worse happening in the towns that are still occupied by Russia. We cannot allow Russia to be killing our people and destroying our country. We will fight back until Russia leaves our country.

MG: Sviatoslav Yusrah, we will leave it there. It's good to speak with you. Thank you very much.

SVIATOSLAV YUSRAH: Thank you very much.

MG: Sviatoslav Yusrah is a member of parliament in Ukraine for the servant of the People Party. That is the party of President Vladimir Zelensky. The phone line, they're a bit noisy, but that's because he was actually in the Ukrainian parliament as a vote was getting set to take place. Kerry Buck is Canada's former ambassador to NATO's. She's been listening in. Kerry, good morning to you.

KERRY BUCK: Good morning.

MG: When you heard this news yesterday that a missile had apparently hit inside Poland, that there had been explosions in that NATO country, what went through your mind?

KERRY BUCK: Well, two things went through my mind. First, I thought it looked like an accident, but I was surprised that it had taken this long for an accident like this to happen with the increased activity with Russia lobbing missiles into Ukrainian territory and other Russian activity. It was only a matter of time before there was something that went astray.

MG: There were a lot of alarm bells that went off immediately. People wondering whether where this missile had come from, whether it was an accident, whether it was more than an accident. The US President Joe Biden said it's unlikely the missile was fired from Russia. AP and Reuters are reporting sources saying that preliminary assessments suggest the missile was fired by Ukrainian forces at an incoming Russian missile. This has been copied by the Polish leader who said that the blast appeared to be an unfortunate accident, not an intentional attack. What sort of if there's an investigation into this, what does it need to sort out? What do we need to learn about what happened?

KERRY BUCK: Well, we need to learn whether there was intent. We need to learn whose missile it was and what it was doing. And that'll take a little while. But Jens Stoltenberg, the section of NATO just held a press conference a couple of minutes ago, and he said three things. He said there's no indication it was a deliberate attack. There's no indication Russia's preparing an offensive military action against NATO. And he also said and this is really important, it's likely Ukrainian air defence missile had fired against Russian missiles. He also went on to say that it is not Ukraine's fault, that this is happening only because of Russia's choice to invade a sovereign country next door to it, and Russia's choice yesterday to start raining missiles down on to civilian infrastructure across Ukraine.

MG: That in many ways was repeated by the Canadian prime minister. He was speaking in Bali. Let's take a listen to what Justin Trudeau had to say.

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Regardless of the details of how it happened, the ultimate responsibility lies with Vladimir Putin and the Russian decision to launch an illegal and unjustifiable war against Ukraine, and more specifically over the past couple of days, launching over 100 missiles in a terrifying attack against civilians in Ukraine in violation of all international law.

MG: How should NATO react at this point?

KERRY BUCK: Well, NATO's yesterday there were indications that Poland was going to formally ask for Article four. And what does that mean? Article four is like as I said, it's a formal request when a country thinks that its territorial integrity or its security is being impacted. My understanding is that Poland withdrew its formal Article four request after indications that maybe this was not only an accident but might have been a result of a Ukrainian missile gone astray. So NATO North Atlantic Council met anyway this morning in Brussels, and they do that all the time and they'll do that to share intelligence, talk about how they can offer further support to Ukraine, talk about how they might further bolster NATO air defence on NATO borders, and likely talk about how they can increase their communications with Russia and other measures, measures to mitigate the risk of accidents.

MG: The Kremlin today said that there had been a hysterical, Russia-phobic reaction to the missile that hit Poland. How do you think? I mean, again, there's a lot of caution for all of the obvious reasons. Do you think that world leaders have handled this news with the appropriate degree of caution?

KERRY BUCK: Oh, absolutely. You know, World War Three is a bad idea.

MG: To put it bluntly.

KERRY BUCK: Yeah. NATO's been walking a very careful line. Absolute support for Ukraine, but not becoming directly a party to the conflict itself. That's an important line to stay on the right side of. The other thing is that Russia has also apparently been somewhat careful. They could have attacked, you know, closer to the Polish border where a lot of the NATO weaponry is coming in to support Ukraine. And they haven't done that. So they're aware of the risk themselves of starting a direct confrontation with NAITO. So I do think that that kind of caution is absolutely warranted, not just because of the risk of, you know, war, but it's also the credibility of the alliance, too. You don't want to escalate in response to a mistake. You want to de-escalate if indeed it was a mistake. And it looks today like it was.

MG: I guess just finally, the last point on this is what does it tell you that in that fine line of a war, there is a real danger that that line could be crossed, that mistakes could happen, and that this could have been much worse.

KERRY BUCK: Oh, no, absolutely. Listen, when Russia first invaded Crimea in 2014, the North Atlantic Council, NATO started to look very, very seriously at steps that could be taken to mitigate the risk. I mean, when you have planes flying close to each other along narrow borders, which has been the case since 2014, or ships close to each other, the risk of something going wrong is really high. And a lot of the channels of communication with Russia since that had been in place in the Cold War had had, you know, disappeared. So we took NATO in meetings of the NATO-Russia Council, talking directly to the Russian steps to try and increase transparency around exercises. Tell the Russians to keep transponders on in their planes. Make sure there were lines of communication with the Russians in the event of accidents so we could de-escalate. You won't hear NATO talking about it publicly, but my guess is there have probably been conversations, military to military with Russia to say, okay, what do you think happened to seek to de-escalate?

MG: What do you make of the call from the Ukrainian lawmaker that we just spoke with saying that's what we need, we being Ukraine right now is a no fly zone. Again, this is a call that's been made since the war began. But much months, months later, it's still being made.

KERRY BUCK: Yeah. So I understand completely the Ukrainian call for a no fly zone. It would be a game changer for them. But when that call was first made, the reaction of many, including myself, is that that would be a direct confrontation between Naito and Russia, and that would catapult us into something that looks much more akin to World War Three, not a place that leaders are willing to go. But after the last call for no fly zone, the air defence support went in, increased exponentially. And today there's a meeting of the U.S. led contact group for Ukraine and I would expect to see more air support, more air defence announcements coming out.

MG: All of this is happening while many of those world leaders are in Bali, the G20 is unfolding right now. There was a declaration that came out deploring in the strongest terms Russia's aggression against Ukraine, though, with the caveat that while most members strongly condemn the war, there were other views. What do you make of of that statement and the needle that they're trying to thread there?

KERRY BUCK: So there have been a number of states, including some of the world's major democracies, who have abstained consistently on U.N. General Assembly resolutions condemning Russia's aggression in Ukraine. And some of those states either abstained or are countries in the G20 who voted against. So it actually was a pretty important step to have the G20 without naming the countries that aren't in full agreement to have the G20 condemn the war in Ukraine. That actually was an important step. Yes, it only said most countries, but we haven't yet seen any of the G20 members kind of peel away from the G20 declaration and come out publicly, strongly against it. What that means is that slowly a wedge is being driven between Russia and even its most stalwart supporters like China. And that's a really important move. Russia's increasingly isolated. So it was a pretty important step that the G20 took, considering who's in that G20 grouping.

MG: You also had those comments that I mentioned to Sviatoslav Yusrah, made by the U.S. General Mark Milley, who saying that winter is now the time to really look at. Negotiations between Russia and Ukraine to try and find a peaceful resolution to this. The U.S. government tamped down so that it doesn't look as though they're trying to sell out the Ukrainians. But is there, do you think, pressure or going to be increased pressure on the both parties from the international community that has been fairly supportive of Ukrainians to try to figure out a way to end this war. As winter takes hold and as the misery in Ukraine continues.

KERRY BUCK: Well, I mean, at some point, negotiations will be needed. Is that point now at the Ukrainian government? The Ukrainian leadership has to make that decision. The challenge is with the atrocities committed by Russia and the gains made by the Ukrainian military. Politically, there's not much room for the Ukrainian leadership to start to soften and say, okay, we're going to enter into talks. So there's not a lot of room for that. And if they do it too soon, they'll lock in a military status quo that, you know, is really not to their advantage at all. Russia still insisting on its ownership of those four territories that it said it had annexed about a month ago. And, you know, it's not in defacto control of those at all, but it hasn't backed away from its claim to ownership and it's still completely in Crimea. So I don't see this happening any time soon, to be honest.

MG: And in the meantime, war continues. But also, as you say, the real possibility of a mistake in that war looms large.

KERRY BUCK: Yeah, absolutely.

MG: Kerry, good to talk to you as always. Thank you very much.

KERRY BUCK: Thank you so much,.

MG: Kerry Buck, former Canadian ambassador to NATO. Your CBC News is up next. And then.

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Elon Musk's ownership of Twitter will simply increase the likelihood that Twitter will be exploited as a tool of surveillance and repression.

MG: Elon Musk is putting his stamp on Twitter, making changes to the platform, firing a number of people who are instrumental in helping keep that platform, not just online, but safe online. And as he does that, activists are worrying the changes at the company will dilute the power of the platform. Turning a tool into a weapon. We'll talk about Facebook and Twitter and social media broadly as a force for good. And what happens in those countries where social media has been used as a powerful tool if the platforms themselves are compromised. It's coming up in siz minutes. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current on CBC Radio One. Stay with us.

Back To Top »

How Twitter’s new ownership could make activism more difficult

Guests: Mahsa Alimardani, Ron Deibert

MG: Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway and you're listening to The Current.

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MG: Still to come, why some people are being infected with Pertussis or whooping cough on purpose. But first, activists who fear Twitter is losing its lustre.

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[Protestors chanting]

MG: That's the sound of protesters taking to the streets in Iran last night, blocking off a road, lighting a bonfire and chanting on Twitter. Activists feed videos like this from cities across Iran every day. The hashtags are women, life, freedom and Mahsa Amini, the name of the young woman who died in hospital after being arrested for not wearing a hijab. Twitter and other social media platforms have become powerful tools for activists who want to get their message out. But organisations like Human Rights Watch and even the United Nations are sounding alarms. They say new ownership at Twitter could make this kind of activism more difficult and perhaps even more dangerous. Mahsa Alimardani is a senior researcher for the Freedom of Expression Organisation. Article 19, she's in Beirut. Mahsa Hello.

MAHSA ALIMARDANI: Hi, Matt. How are you?

MG: I'm well, thanks and great to talk to you. Twitter, as you know, takes a lot of abuse for what's on its platform. How important has it been in amplifying the voices of people like the people we just heard in Iran since these protests began a couple of months ago?

MAHSA ALIMARDANI: So just to step back a little, we have to kind of look at the media environment in Iran. It's heavily controlled. Traditional media is controlled by the states. Foreign correspondents, if they do have access and oftentimes they don't, they're heavily controlled by the state. What they see, what they report on is controlled. So essentially, to know the truth, to be able to see what human rights abuses are being committed by the state, to even see what protesters are saying and doing. We rely on social media. So, you know, the power of these platforms is incredibly important because without them, the voices of Iranians essentially would not exist. You know, recently, though, we have really been seeing how Twitter is important. And so, you know, the playing field for access to all the different social media has become level. Twitter has been long blocked in Iran. Instagram only recently had a block placed on it during the beginning of these protests, but before we really saw expression and documentation on Instagram. But now that every platform needs a circumvention tool or a virtual private network VPN to be access, we're seeing more and more people turn to Twitter. And it is essentially a place where, you know, international media comes to find what's happening on the ground in Iran. It's hashtag the hashtag that I mean, and Persian has become a historic and unprecedented hashtag with billions of, you know, posts on that hashtag. So it's become a very significant part of the archive and of this protest, if not this potential revolution that's happening.

MG: So when you take a look at what's happening at Twitter now, we can talk about specifics, but broadly those changes at that company, what could that mean in terms of impacting the work of the activists that you just been describing?

MAHSA ALIMARDANI: So, you know, we have the grassroots folks on the front lines. And then you have folks like me who work at human rights organisations that are involved in policy discussions. And so, you know, Elon Musk came in to the position of CEO and you know, within a few days we saw massive firings. And so one of the teams they actually did fire was the human rights team. And this was a team filled with human rights lawyers who have been responsible for upholding corporate social responsibility and human rights standards within the platform. And so actually, two days before this team was fired, we were engaged in discussions about how state media in Iran was making use of Twitter to promote forced confessions, forced confessions that included like depictions of arrested protesters clearly under duress. And so we were involved in discussions to try to get them to remove this content using human rights, international standards. And these conversations have come to an abrupt halt because these teams are now gone.

MG: What does that mean? I mean, with the teams now gone, what's happening or not happening on the platform that might have been safeguarded, might have been shepherded by that human rights team?

MAHSA ALIMARDANI: So, for example, when, you know, ISIS beheading videos are being put into place, Twitter didn't necessarily have policies ready to, you know, approach that. Those really terrify that terrifying footage that was essentially, you know, fear, propaganda by ISIS that we saw, you know, back in 2014, 2015. And so it was teams, it was advocates within the company that had to attune and understand how to, you know, evolve the company's policies to the realities of these, you know, horror, horrifying crimes, potential crimes against humanity that were occurring. And so these were the advocates that we would turn to to have these conversations and to move these policies forward. So it's a bit harder now to have those conversations with the remaining people who aren't necessarily equipped with, you know, the knowledge and the international human rights frameworks.

MG: What does that mean, then, for those activists on the streets of Tehran and other cities who are taking great risk in being out there, but also in helping to spread the word of what's going on?

MAHSA ALIMARDANI: I mean, it's incredibly hard for morale to see, you know, the state who's controlling the traditional media is also thriving on these platforms as well. And so, you know, we do talk to folks on the ground. They're incredibly angry because, you know, they're facing these this gruesome reality of what this regime is doing to them daily. And at the same time, they feel this betrayal by platforms who aren't taking policies that, you know, are proportionate to the crimes of these actors that are also making use of these platforms to their advantage. And so you mean in reality, they're still on there. They're making use of the platforms, but it's incredibly credibly harmful for morale, for the narrative and for the kind of resistance these protesters are leading and trying to, you know, take advantage with with these platforms.

MG: Elon Musk seems to spend most of his time on Twitter these days, and he's tweeted that Twitter's strong commitment to content moderation remains absolutely unchanged. What do you make of that?

MAHSA ALIMARDANI: I mean, I have to say that, you know, in practise, we haven't necessarily seen a rollback in the existing policies. But, you know, the world and contexts are evolving. And so we do need people there because, you know, the content moderation standards at Twitter were not perfect. They're not perfect on any platform. It's constant conversations between advocates and experts with these companies to ensure that these standards are upheld. And so now that we're seeing this blockade, like, we're not seeing the evolution that we need, we haven't, as I haven't in the research and work I haven't I've been doing, haven't necessarily seen it being eroded, but I have, for example, seen, you know, very nefarious state entities suddenly have verified badges that didn't have before because they have access to, you know, international credit cards and and were able to buy the Twitter blue subscription. And so now this is going to be a new battle in terms of, you know, state propaganda and misinformation in terms of these state entities that now have this feature to help them.

MG: He said that everything that he's doing on this platform is around free speech. What does that mean to.

MAHSA ALIMARDANI: I mean, we're seeing him via Twitter employees for criticising him. I mean, I whenever he discussed free speech, I never for a second thought or believed in him to actually uphold free speech because of course, there's free speech and he's not abiding by it. But then there's limits to free speech. You know, there has to be limits that abide by human rights standards to prevent harm, to prevent nefarious governments like the Islamic Republic or ISIS from taking advantage of limitless free speech, because, of course, we know it's harmful.

MG: What happened to the idea that because in addition to Twitter, he has other companies, one of which is StarLink, the Internet service. What happened to the idea that he was going to help set up StarLink inside Iran and that that would, as we were talking about Ukraine earlier, that it helped people in Ukraine, that that would help activists on the ground in Iran?

MAHSA ALIMARDANI: Yeah. It's very ironic because, you know, this was a much celebrated event at the beginning of these protests back in September when Elon Musk tweeted that he was activating StarLink, of course, after, you know, tech sanctions were loosened. He did this. It was celebrated. A lot of people thought he was going to bring Internet freedom to Iran. Of course, there's a number of limits to this actually working. You know, as far as I know, there are a certain number of terminals working in Iran. I haven't necessarily heard of or been in touch with anyone who's using a StarLink connexion. There's a lot of different risks. I mean, uplink connexions via satellite are easily detected and monitored by state authorities. So it really concerns me that, you know, finding ways to anonymize or, you know, make these connections not evident to authorities hasn't necessarily been developed before this was deployed. So I'm not sure about that. And it doesn't seem like Elon Musk has necessarily donated any of the terminals for free. And as I understand it, he didn't do that in Ukraine either. The US government had given him a grant and others had paid for it. So I do see a certain irony in him, you know, trying to present himself as the saviour of Internet freedom, but then, you know, actively eroding these policies and teams that were trying to help uphold kind of freedoms on Twitter itself, which is such an important platform.

MG: Just before I let you go, let's end where we started, which is it's easy to run down this platform for all of the things that are nasty on it. But you said that one of the things that is at risk, because people are talking about the fact that Twitter could collapse, it could disappear. One of the things that's at risk is an archive of what's going on right now. Tell me more about that and why that is so important to preserve.

MAHSA ALIMARDANI: Of course. I mean this the Mahsa Amini hashtag, the Zan Zandegi Azadi hashtag, you know, the woman life freedom hashtag. They are really a part of the archive of the revolution. It's how this revolution has unfolded. If one day it does come to, you know, the successful completion that everyone wants to see. So Twitter will be, you know, an important component of Iranian history. It already was a component of, you know, the 2009 Green Movement protests with the, you know, Iran protest hashtag. Back then, it was more of a international consumption than consumption for inside Iran back in 2009, of course. But, you know, that has been referred to endlessly as an archive, what happened in 2009 as well. So and it's not just Iran, obviously. It's it's a global kind of history of different events that have turned to this platform. So it is a very big loss of, like you said of an archive, if it does collapse.

MG: Mahsa, good to talk to you, as always. Thank you very much.

MAHSA ALIMARDANI: Yes, thanks for having me.

MG: Mahsa Alimardani is a senior researcher for the Freedom of Expression Organisation, Article 19. She was in Beirut, as she mentioned. Human rights activists using Twitter to get the word out aren't just, of course, limited to Iran. Many of the early adopters of the platform were in places like Egypt.

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[Protesters chanting]

We have drastic and major reform programmes that we need to do because we don't have health, we don't have education. Our economical system is way beyond your imagination. We are living below the poverty lines. So if you just stop supporting Mubarak's regime, maybe we can elect a good president who's going to show us a good vision for the country and help us to reform.

MG: When protesters occupied Tahrir Square in Cairo in 2011, Twitter was a critical, even lifesaving tool. Protesters use the platform to coordinate plans, notify one another of danger and find escape routes, not to mention garner international support for their efforts. And since then, we have seen digital activism using Twitter in Myanmar, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka and here in North America with the Black Lives Matter movement. Ron Deibert is director of the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto. Ron, good morning to you.

RON DEIBERT: Good morning, Matt.

MG: Just pick up briefly if you would first on what Moussa was talking about, that idea of Twitter in some ways as a repository of a revolution, how important is that to understand that there is an archive that exists through this platform of things that have happened.

RON DEIBERT: Well, I think Mahsa articulated very well most of the issues that we should be concerned about right now with respect to the archiving, of course, I mean, this is a a public sphere, a platform that people have been using for all sorts of very important discussions that should be documented and archived. But we have at root here a structural issue, which is that this public sphere is operated as a private company. And now, as we've seen with Musk's take over, it's it's operated by a single billionaire. And of course, whatever his whims are from one day to the next, determine what might be preserved or not. So I'm actually seeing a lot of people scrambling to download all of their Twitter content and preserve it. It's quite possible that it could be gone.

MG: Is it quite possible that it could be gone?

RON DEIBERT: Yeah, it's you know, what we're looking at right now, I mean, insert disaster metaphor here. Basically, it's a train wreck and we've got an egocentric billionaire as the conductor. So, you know, many people are predicting that the platform might collapse, it might go insolvent. Even Musk himself said it may go bankrupt. So we just don't know one day to the next because you have one person effectively determining the operations of a major component of our global public square.

MG: And yet he says that this will become an even more Democratic town square now that he has his hands on the levers of power.

RON DEIBERT: Well, he says a lot of things that are simplistic and deathless and lack nuance. For example, he's an advocate of free speech, which okay, that sounds great. But then he turned around when asked, well, what would what would you do with content? Moderation? He said, Well, it's simple. I'll follow laws. Well, Twitter operates in hundreds of countries worldwide, including many authoritarian regimes. Does that mean Twitter will follow the laws of, for example, Saudi Arabia, where people routinely get beheaded for their activism and and countries like that request from social media platforms to remove or censor content or take down accounts. So it's a very complicated business. And I think, as Mahsa said, quite rightly, you know, it was a company that was not doing things very well before we knew that. And now they've been made much, much worse. Just looking at the lay off of the human rights team. These are people that are doing their best in spite of some of the design features of the platform to help at risk marginalised communities that are regularly targeted or harassed or the focus or the object of spying over the platform. They weren't doing it very well before because they lacked capacity and resources. Well, now they're gone. So that means that people like me and others who are in the human rights space, who regularly hear from activists, you know, help me, my account has been taken over or help. I'm being threatened by, you know, seemingly hundreds of trolls. You know, we used to have points of contact, but at least we could try to get some action from the company. Now, there's simply nothing. And that's just one example of many problems that he's precipitated just in the last three weeks.

MG: We spoke with one of those activists, Kirsten Hahn, who is campaigning against the death penalty in Singapore and the laws limiting freedom of expression in that country. Take a listen to what worries her about Elon Musk and his takeover of Twitter.

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The main worry just stems from a sense that I get that Musk doesn't really have a good grasp of the complexities of running a global social media platform like Twitter. So he seems to view things through his own personal experience of Twitter. At best, a very US centric lens. So he doesn't seem to realise that different sorts of implications that things could have in different parts of the world. If Twitter's content moderation gets worse, that opens the door for more authoritarian and controlling governments like mine to justify further regulation of online content and online speech. So governments could say Musk and Twitter can't be trusted. Then we are the ones who have to step in. And for countries where the government already has a lot of power, already restricts freedom of expression, and that's a very worrying thing to me.

MG: Could you, Ron, see that? Could you could you see more authoritarian control of the social media platform? Because at the same time, you have a push from democratic governments to lean in and regulate a bit more of what's on social media platforms.

RON DEIBERT: Yeah, for sure. I think there are two areas that we need to kind of separate out. One is the content moderation layer, and then the second one be the, you know, the bare bones security layer and they're slightly different. So definitely on the content moderation layer. Elon Musk has other businesses, as you pointed out before, and there are quite complicated geopolitical businesses for various reasons. And it wouldn't be surprising to me at all if he caved in to demands of various governments to implement some kind of censorship or content moderation that suited their needs because this ultimately affects his bottom line. But then don't forget the security part of the story here. So, again, companies like Twitter were not doing very well before. It was just in August. We heard from Peter Zarco, who became a whistleblower. He was the former chief of information and security at Twitter. And he and he stepped forward, testified before Congress and said that the entire security architecture of Twitter was broken, fundamentally broken. And foreign governments, governments like Saudi Arabia and China were accessing various parts of that infrastructure clandestinely to target people who were using the platform. Just within the last three weeks, because of measures that he's taken and layoffs that have happened and resignations that have occurred. It's as if the defences of this already weak platform have suddenly been dropped. And so what concerns me is that you will have nation state actors, you know, having a field day targeting the people on the platform. You know, things like two factor authentication or the verification checks that that massive mention, which now anybody can purchase. Those are defences that are built up on a platform to prevent the very type of thing that I'm talking about. And don't forget that these government actors, the security agencies of countries like Iran, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, Saudi Arabia, China and so on, they've developed since the Arab Spring a whole toolkit, a repertoire of information operations that directly targets social media platforms like Twitter, which is now a mess. And so, you know, I suspect that unless things change, we will be hearing about real life harms that were precipitated by the insecurity of this platform.

MG: You mentioned the Arab Spring, and I guess just in the last few minutes that we have, one of the things that people remember of that time is that this tool offered.Access and offered communication that perhaps wasn't available to those protesters in that way before. And I just wonder, when you look back at that and you take a look now at what's going on, is there still value in Twitter as a tool for for activism, activism in the human rights scale?

RON DEIBERT: Well, I think I wouldn't go so far as to say, is there still value in Twitter? Remains to be seen. A lot of people are leaving and platforms like that depend on a kind of network effect, a centre of gravity. You know, if everyone's communicating there, then it has value. But, you know, important people leave as they are, then it doesn't. I think what does have value undoubtedly is the the ability of people to connect with each other over the Internet using platforms that are constructed as social media. And here I think it's a good reminder for all of us to remember that there are alternatives to platforms based on this business model of surveillance capitalism, which is basically you get to use it for free, but the platforms are going to monitor everything that you're doing and then target you with advertisement while there are alternatives that aren't based on that business model. One of them is Mastodon. A lot of people are moving to Mastodon and you'll see that there's a a different tone to the conversation, at least now, because it doesn't have that underlying business model.

MG: It requires that critical mass, as you said. And if people aren't there, then isn't the same thing.

RON DEIBERT: Yeah, it does require that critical mass, but it had a huge increase of users just within the last three weeks. So that may take care of that problem. And of course, you know, platforms like that will also have both security and content, moderation, challenges of their own. So it doesn't magically make all the problems go away. But what it does is is provide an alternative. And I think that's what we desperately need, is alternatives to private companies operating public spaces like this. And so maybe this will be a silver lining out of this disaster around Twitter that we may see alternatives emerge and become popular.

MG: And that we have to think of them as public spaces. Again, you wouldn't go to the town square and think that the town square is owned by X Corporation. You want the town square to be owned by the people.

RON DEIBERT: That's right. And also have certain rules that everyone agrees upon and have a sense of security. So if you go and stand up on your soapbox in the town square, you're not going to get, you know, machine gun by somebody. I mean, that's those are parameters around how we want to construct social conversations in a safe and welcoming manner. And that requires effort. Right. And basically, now the company has been eviscerated. All the people responsible for maintaining the security of the platform and making sure those rules are followed are no longer at the company.

MG: Ron, I'm glad to talk to you. As ever, thank you very much.

RON DEIBERT: Thank you.

MG: Ron Deibert, director of the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto. Well, coming up, after your regional update, after living through a pandemic and a lot of time spent in isolation. Pretty good chance that you would not sign up to retreat into enforced solitude once again. In Halifax, though, some people are doing just that, opting to be injected with whooping cough bacteria all in the name of science. Why would they do such a thing? We'll find out what's coming up in 90 seconds. I'm Matt Galloway. This is The Current. Stay with us.

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Researching whooping cough by deliberately infecting volunteers; and the growing threat of economic espionage

Guests: Lauren Pelley, Wesley Wark

MG: Hello again. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current.

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VOICE 1: So right now we are entering the airlock doors right outside the challenge unit saying come on in and follow me.

LAUREN PELLEY: And what exactly is the space here?

VOICE 1: So right now we're in between two airlock doors that help prevent the unit from having pathogens leave. So right now...

MG: That's health reporter Lauren Pelley heading into a secure facility in Halifax where volunteers are getting infected with a pathogen on purpose. Also, scientists can study them in the hopes of one day developing better treatments and vaccines.

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VOICE 1: And as you can hear, the doors are locking behind us. So right now we are in the airlock and we're going to go into the challenge unit itself.

MG: This is a rare type of research that's been a decade in the making. And in this case, volunteers agreed to be infected with Pertussis bacteria known for causing whooping cough. The CBC, Lauren Pelley joins us now to share more about their journey, such as it is. Lauren, good morning.

LAUREN PELLEY: Good morning, Matt.

MG: Tell us about where you were. These airlock doors are kind of closing behind you.

LAUREN PELLEY: Well, we don't normally get that kind of access to scientific research in motion. But in this case, we were able to get inside this facility, a highly controlled area that's part of a hospital in Halifax. You cross through the airlock to get in and then you go down a long corridor where participants who get infected with pertussis are kept in isolation inside ten hospital rooms.

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VOICE 1: The rooms are highly specialised. They do have a negative pressure system that allows for additional precautions for any of the respiratory diseases that we work with.

LAUREN PELLEY: So they don't leave. Nurses just come in and out of their rooms, which requires putting on layers of protective gear. Things like a face mask, a gown, a visor, very familiar items, I think, for most of us now. Good morning. And of course, the staff washed their hands before they head in for daily tests to check how the participants are doing.

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VOICE 1: I'm just going to leave it on and re-check it after you get [unintelliglbe].

VOICE 2: Yeah.

VOICE 1: It's 99 again, it's happened yesterday. I'll get you to do that.

MG: How do you go about actually infecting someone with Pertussis?

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VOICE 1: We would have our colonies, and they're spread around the plates evenly as much as possible.

LAUREN PELLEY: Well, it all starts in the lab. Teams there grow the bacteria cultures. They show up as tiny dots on a petri dish.

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VOICE 1: You're looking at what they look like drops on a plate, drops of water on a surface.

LAUREN PELLEY: The researchers can use those bacteria cultures to infect the participants. So basically they just shoot a dose up someone's nose. It's not painful or anything like that, but it's meant to replicate naturally inhaling this kind of pathogen out in the world.

MG: And then so having inhaled the pathogen, what happens next?

LAUREN PELLEY: Well, once the participants are infected, then they're isolated and they're monitored day by day. So the researchers can see exactly how the infection progresses. Scott Halperin is the director of the Canadian Centre for Vaccinology, the facility doing this research.

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SCOTT HALPERIN: These types of studies have been done for over 70 years, but they've been a really a re-emergence of interest in them in order because of the number of things that one can learn from them. And there's some criteria ethically that are pretty well established of what needs to be done in order to make this type of study ethical.

LAUREN PELLEY: And yet the participants in the study are mostly young adults. So these are people who are not at a high risk of getting seriously ill from whooping cough.

MG: So you want them to get sick, but not to too sick?

LAUREN PELLEY: Exactly. You want to be able to see how the bacteria or the pathogen spreads in someone's body. But you don't want someone to ever be at, you know, a serious risk of of death or falling very ill. And once medical tests show that the infection is actually spreading, Halperin says participants are given antibiotics in this case to quickly clear it up.

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SCOTT HALPERIN: There has to be a rescue medication, so there has to be a way that one can treat so that symptoms can be terminated early in the course before it gets too serious.

MG: So who are the people doing this? Who are the people who are willing to sign up to get infected with something? Because given what we have been through over the last little while, you catch a virus, you live in isolation for weeks. It all sounds a bit familiar and perhaps uncomfortably familiar.

LAUREN PELLEY: I know it's a bit of deja vu, and that's what intrigued me about this study is who does this after living through a pandemic. It's not something most of us would sign up for.

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AMY MULLEN: Good morning.

TITO CRISANTO: Good morning. It's challenge day, day zero.

LAUREN PELLEY: But we did meet two participants who did just that.

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TITO CRISANTO: Hopefully they, like, challenge the inoculation, whatever they call it, won't be uncomfortable because...

LAUREN PELLEY: Those are the voices of Amy Mullen and Tito Crisanto. They're two friends in Halifax who decided to sign up for this study and do all the paperwork allowing themselves to be intentionally infected.

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TITO CRISANTO: But it's cool, at least for now, we know to have each other.

AMY MULLEN: Yeah.

LAUREN PELLEY: We asked them to record video diaries for us to walk us through their entire experience from start to finish.

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TITO CRISANTO: So it's day six of my stay in the challenge unit feeling normal today and no symptoms again. It's Monday.

MG: What is their experience involved?

LAUREN PELLEY: Well, basically, they're stuck. You're in, you know, a very small space, essentially a hospital room with a bed, a desk, tile floors and all kinds of medical equipment sticking out from the monitors to blood pressure cuffs. Not exactly a cosy, warm hotel room with a tiny window to the outside world. So really just a fishbowl.

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TITO CRISANTO: It is takeout day. So I got shrimp, pineapple fried rice and some spring rolls.

MG: So takeout day, that could it could be worse, I suppose.

LAUREN PELLEY: Most days they seem to just be eating hospital food, you know, delivered on trays by nurses. Again, not a vacation of sorts.

MG: How were these people filling their days, stuck in this room alone for weeks and weeks and weeks?

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[Indistinct chatter]

LAUREN PELLEY: Well, almost every morning involved a battery of tests, like round after round of having blood drawn. So you definitely cannot be afraid of needles.

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AMY MULLEN: Those are two two break from blood work after that.

LAUREN PELLEY: There's also so much alone time. They tried to do movie nights.

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TITO CRISANTO: We watched Casper. It was a cute first movie for Halloween. Halloween season.

LAUREN PELLEY: Even yoga sessions from their separate rooms.

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TITO CRISANTO: Three, two, one. Let's go [Music starts].

LAUREN PELLEY: You know, in all those cases, they were hitting play at the same time and then chatting by phone, trying to at least spend some sort of time together. Tito also tried to learn a few songs on their ukulele.

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[Music]

MG: Okay. So I like playing the ukulele. That does not sound like fun at all, though. What did you learn about why they signed up? What motivated them to throw their hat into the ring for this?

LAUREN PELLEY: Well, to be clear, money did play a role. These are not volunteers. They each made a few thousand bucks for their stay. Amy said she was going to put that towards paying off her student loans. But she was drawn to this study because she works in health care herself at the facility connected to the trial, this hospital in Halifax. And she spotted it in their online newsletter.

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AMY MULLEN: This is my first time being a big part of medical science with, like, my whole person. I think it's neat. I've kind of always wanted to be helpful to research in whatever ways they can be. I mean, once a lot of people kind of get to university, you're exposed to like what research can look like and how you can participate. And so this is this is a nice way to feel like I'm doing something really helpful.

LAUREN PELLEY: And for Tito medical sciences in their blood.

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TITO CRISANTO: So both my parents are nurses, they practise nursing in Saskatchewan. So I just grew up in a very health care related family.

LAUREN PELLEY: They were okay with you signing up to be infected with the bacteria?

TITO CRISANTO: Yeah. I mean, funny enough, growing up with both nurses, any time I was like feeling ill or something like that, I'd be like, Hey, I don't know that I can go to school. I feel very sick. My parents would be like, You're not sick. Like go to school, I guess. They were just kind of like, We've seen so much worse than you. You're fine.

MG: And so the point of going all through this thing is to get sick. Did they get sick? That's the big question.

LAUREN PELLEY: Well, yes and no. Neither of them got whooping cough in the traditional sense with that horrible cough that you hear sometimes in children. But they were, you know, technically infected.

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TITO CRISANTO: Today has been a very eventful day and you got to go on today, which is very exciting, but also at the same time very sad.

LAUREN PELLEY: Amy, in the end, got to go home first. But Tito ended up having to stay longer because all the tests showed there was a clear pertussis infection.

TITO CRISANTO: We said goodbye through the glass doors. That was kind of an emotional time for us.

LAUREN PELLEY: So at that time, the bacteria was spreading. But to be honest, they never actually felt very sick.

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TITO CRISANTO: Still no symptoms. So I guess it's just going to be me here until the end of time. But here we are, surviving.

MG: So if people aren't getting the full whooping cough, what is the point of this?

LAUREN PELLEY: Well, this research was meant to help the team understand the adequate dose of this bacteria to actually get someone sick in the first place. So each round is meant to sort of fine tune that amount, find the sweet spot, if you will. Once researchers figure that out, they can use the ideal dose to keep infecting more rounds of participants to keep studying their infections. So this is not a quick process. To be clear. This is years and years of research ahead.

MG: Why are they studying whooping cough in particular?

LAUREN PELLEY: Well, certainly an illness most of us think about in Canada, especially now, living through all the other respiratory viruses circulating. But every year, around 1 to 3000 people are thought to still fall ill with pertussis, and there's typically a handful of deaths. Dr. May al-Sharif runs the lab that's involved with the study in Halifax.

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DR. MAY AL-SHARIF: The disease was quite well controlled prior to the 1980s, and then all of a sudden they went out of control again. And that's when we started to realise that the vaccines don't provide long term or lifelong protection. What's even more interesting is that natural infection doesn't provide protection either. So we started to see pertussis occur again. The current outbreaks from the outbreaks are in cycles of 3 to 5 years, and then the morbidity and mortality continues in children, particularly in infants, under six months. And by that we mean it could be a fatal infection in that age group.

LAUREN PELLEY: And when kids get really sick, that's when parents often hear that terrifying tell tale sound.

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[Sound: Child coughing]

MG: Yeah, as a parent, I mean, nobody wants to hear that sound.

LAUREN PELLEY: It's scary, right? I mean, we're dealing with a nasty pathogen here. And the vaccines we have basically aren't controlling the spread of whooping cough anymore. So down the line, we need better options. The tricky thing is these types of infections are really tough to study when they just happen at random.

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DR. MAY AL-SHARIF: These infections happen naturally. However, when they happen in the community, we don't know the timing. We don't know when it started. We don't know when the you know, the individual was exposed. We don't know how much bacteria caused the infection. There's so many unknowns. So all of these sort of unknown pieces are what we make feasible using a challenge study.

MG: So that's the why. What happened to the participants in the study, Amy and Taylor?

LAUREN PELLEY: Well, Amy got to go home first. Today was stuck a bit longer, but in both cases, the rounds of antibiotics did their job.

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TITO CRISANTO: Is day 21 since I got here from the study. And guess what? I tested negative, so I get to go home today. I'm so excited.

LAUREN PELLEY: You can definitely hear the joy in finally getting to escape. The two friends did get to reunite back in Halifax after being so close. The rooms were right beside each other. Yet so far, for weeks on end.

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TITO CRISANTO: I am finally joined by my beautiful, beautiful cellmate.

AMY MULLEN: Cellmate.

TITO CRISANTO: Amy.

AMY MULLEN: From hospital Jail.

TITO CRISANTO: From hospital jail. We escaped together.

LAUREN PELLEY: It's actually not the end, though. It's not the end of their journey. They're still going to be doing check ins back at the hospital so the researchers can look at what's going on inside their bodies after their infection.

MG: It's amusing. They refer to themselves as soulmates. Do they think that I mean, what they went through was worth it?

LAUREN PELLEY: Definitely. I mean, it was just a few weeks of being stuck inside that could indirectly save lives. Since the goal one day is developing a better whooping cough vaccine.

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TITO CRISANTO: The amount of times people been, like, you could not pay me enough to intentionally get Pertussis. And I was like, well, that's you. I'm different, but that's okay.

MG: This is fascinating, Lauren. And thank you very much.

LAUREN PELLEY: Thanks, Matt.

MG: Lauren Pelley is a health reporter for CBC.

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This is The Current on CBC. My name is Matt Galloway.

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The RCMP is announcing the arrest of Yuecheng Wang, age 35, from Candiac. Mr. Wang was charged with espionage for obtaining trade secrets. In the course of his duties with Hydro-Québec, this is the first time this charge has been laid in Canada. He is also facing three charges under the Criminal Code of Canada. It is alleged that he obtained this information to benefit the People's Republic of China to the detriment of Canada's economic interests.

MG: That was Inspector Dave Beaudoin from the RCMP Integrated National Security Enforcement Team, and the man he's talking about was allegedly operating as a Chinese spy in Canada. It is an historic charge. The first time that the obtaining trade secrets charge has been laid under the Security of Information Act, designed to protect Canada from foreign interference. Wesley Wark is a senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation Independent think tank based in Waterloo, Ontario. He's in Ottawa. Wesley, good morning.

WESLEY WARK: Good morning.

MG: Max. Briefly, what do we know about this former Hydro-Québec employee accused in this case and what led to these charges?

WESLEY WARK: Yeah. It's an interesting case. I think it's going to be an important test case for Canada's ability to protect economic secrets. What we know in the public record is that this individual, Mr. Wang, is a 35 year old physicist who was trained and got his Ph.D. in China, then came to the West and did some postgraduate research. We're not sure exactly where at this stage in the UK, in the United States, he was hired on by Hydro-Quebec to take part in a research institute it runs in 2016. Just to follow the timeline a bit further, and it's alleged that around 2018 he began to dabble in economic espionage. But Hydro-Quebec, who eventually, I guess, cottoned on to his activities, only reported this to the RCMP in August of 2022. The RCMP launched an investigation and charged Mr. Wang earlier this week on Monday.

MG: He was charged under the Security of Information Act. The act passed in 2001. What was the aim of that law?

WESLEY WARK: Well, the aim of the law was really designed. It was an update to an older Official Secrets Act, which actually dates back to to the First World War. The Security of Information Act was really just a kind of refresh of that old legislation. It was passed, of course, as part of the anti-terrorism legislation in 2001. It was really designed, I think, for the most part, to protect government secrets at a time when there was increased kind of anxiety about, you know, the changes to the national security environment. The economic espionage portion was a bit of a carry over. No such law had ever been used in the past. And as we know, it hasn't been used until earlier this week. So. So it was an add on at a time when in Canada there wasn't much concern about what we might call commercial spying because that's really the the intent of the legislation. But that concern is, of course, grown immensely in the in the last few years, last couple of decades, and particularly around the activities of of foreign states like Russia and China.

MG: How prevalent is that? Because, to your point, security experts have been warning about not just Chinese corporate or economic espionage, but in some ways China has been at the centre of these discussions recently for some time now. So how prevalent is that, do we think?

WESLEY WARK: I think it's fair to characterise China as a kind of avaricious spying actor and it uses a lot of different tools to try and gather both government secrets worldwide and and commercial secrets. It really is, I think, the world's leading kind of espionage act these days and in it does kind of amount to a very broad front espionage offensive. This has been long known and some of its targets have have tried to to respond just as actively in recent years, especially the United States, which has engaged in a lot of attempted prosecutions against Chinese spies. We haven't seen that same kind of level of activity against Canada, although it may well be happening below the radar. And we've had very few prosecutions under the Security of Information Act or attempted prosecutions. And again, this is the first time that we've gone after the the more commercial espionage aspect of what is going on.

MG: How do you go about proving that a person like the one we're mentioning now is actually sharing trade secrets?

WESLEY WARK: Well, that's a good question, Matt. And you know, this will this will be an interesting case to follow through through the courts. You know, the crown nevertheless charges, unless it has a reasonable belief that it's going to succeed in this case. But but there's no case law. There's no precedent for for trying to, you know, lay and prove these charges. It is going to revolve around the whole question of what is a trade secret and what exactly was it that Mr. Wang was doing and was it illegal? It's important to to note that in the charges laid at least so far by the RCMP in this case, Mr. Wang is accused of obtaining a trade secret, but he isn't accused of the other part of the Espionage Act, which is communicating a trade secret. So he obtained it. It says in the charge sheet by the RCMP that that it was for the benefit of China. But the allegation really is that Mr. Wang was was sharing protected information, trade secrets with other researchers in China and therefore for the benefit of China that, you know, that could be potentially a stretch. So it's a bit of a murky world that is going to be exposed, I think, in this case. And that is the world of essentially university research and and, you know, patent protections and trade secrets. It'll be fascinating.

MG: I mean, the context is also fascinating here. The relations between Canada and China have been used, whatever phrase you want on shaky ground, thin ice frozen solid for some time now. We saw the Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, berated by the Chinese President Xi Jinping at the G20 earlier today for essentially sharing details of their conversation earlier in the summit. How might a case like this impact those relations, such as they are?

WESLEY WARK: Well, relations with China are not good, although the nature of our bilateral relations with China are probably going to pivot around the extent to which the Biden administration is able to improve its own relations with China. So we'll see how that goes. And I think it's very clear we haven't yet seen the Pacific strategy that the foreign minister has promised. But but it seems very clear that it moves quite closely to the U.S. approach to China. So we'll see on that. I think this case is sufficiently small in nature. I put that in quotation marks. So it's not really going to aggravate those relations. There's no accusation that, you know, Chinese intelligence officials were directly involved. There's no charges laid directly against Chinese officials. So the Chinese government will no doubt, you know, take some umbrage at this case. But but I don't expect to see kind of major recriminations or, you know, tit for tat activities taken against China in this particular example, taken against Canada by China.

MG: We were taking some time earlier this week on the programme to talk about that forthcoming strategy that is going to in some ways define what Canada's relationship with China is in 2022 and beyond. Is something like this going to be the language people talked about, you know, a fairly aggressive tone that was in what's already been telegraphed about what could be in that in that strategy? Is something like this going to be material in what that strategy looks like? Well, will the issue of espionage and economic espionage be part of how we think about our relationship with China in the future?

WESLEY WARK: Yeah, I think I think clearly it has to be you know, we don't know the exact language of the strategy. And it's a global affairs strategy. It's not necessarily a whole of government strategy, but there's been lots of indications that that the Canadian government intends to do more to protect Canada's economic security and kind of fend off, you know, unwanted intelligence activities on the part of malicious foreign actors. So I expect, certainly, that there will be references to being able to better protect critical sectors of Canadian economy. We've seen some of this from the the I said minister, Minister Champagne around tightening up the rules about foreign direct investment and protecting you know, protecting in particular the critical minerals sector which is really at issue in this case of Mr. Wang. And he was working as essentially an expert on battery materials in this research centre for, for Hydro-Quebec. And the Quebec government has launched a, you know, a major kind of initiative to try and put itself, at least in the Canadian context, in the forefront of some of this research that's being done to try and produce much more efficient and effective batteries for electric vehicles. So it's a critical piece of of Canada's kind of economic push into the into the green economy. And being able to protect Canadian trade secrets against, you know, loss to foreign actors is going to be very important for us.

MG: We'll be watching. Leslie, good to talk to you. Thank you very much.

WESLEY WARK: My thanks.

MG: Wesley Wark is a senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation. He was in Ottawa. That's The Current for this Wednesday. q's up next on CBC Radio One, Mr. Neil Young speaking to Tom Power on the programme. Neil Young has won two Grammys in his career, just two Grammys, which is kind of surprising. Beyoncé already has 28 and presumably more to come. Yesterday, the Grammy nominations were announced. She collected nine nominations. And there is a Canadian connection here. Toronto's Boi-1da received four nominations, one of them for his contributions to Beyonce's album Renaissance. And so from that recording Grammy nominated, this is Cuff It. I Matt Galloway thanks for listening to the current and we'll talk to you tomorrow.

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