The Hill quotes Cyber Statecraft Initiative Nonresident Senior Fellow Jason Healey on Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to the China-US tech summit in Seattle, and why many Silicon Valley executives felt pressured to attend:

Beijing moved up the date of the annual event to coincide with President Xi Jinping’s U.S. visit and reportedly pressured major Silicon Valley players to send their chief executives to what is normally an annual summit for mid-level management, threatening regulatory scrutiny if they didn’t comply.

“It’s not really voluntary,” said senior Atlantic Council fellow Jason Healey, a former director of cyber infrastructure protection at the White House. “They are absolutely expected to be there, and be there in force.”

[…]

“It’s going to be fascinating to see which companies, if any, do a similar thing to Xi, who has certainly been worse for cybersecurity and cyber freedoms than anything Obama has done,” Healey said. “Either that means the companies are being hypocritical or it means that Xi is better at using hard power and soft power to force them into showing up.”

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