Resurgent Authoritarian Influence
Data & Forecasts
Monthly monitoring economic, political, military, and diplomatic influence activities by Russia and China in developing countries
In recent years, the authoritarian governments of Russia and China have increasingly leveraged economic, military, and social power to shape political and public opinion abroad. Yet most existing monitoring systems capture only isolated events, missing the broader patterns of influence that reveal how these powers operate in practice.
The Resurgent Authoritarian Influence (RAI) dataset fills this gap by using advanced AI to track both the occurrence and intensity of Russian and Chinese influence worldwide. Built on the Machine Learning for Peace (MLP) platform, RAI draws on more than 120 million locally sources news reports across over 66 countries. It identifies 22 types of influence events—ranging from media campaigns and economic pressure to political lobbying and cyber operations—at a subnational, monthly resolution, generating actionable insight into where and when authoritarian influence is rising.
Explore RAI through two interactive dashboards – explore the influence event types, track changes over time and across countries, and see forecasts predicting influence spikes over the next seven months.
