We're doing a lot of things China is doing.

Meta, Flock cameras, Palantir. It's just a public-private partnership rather than purely state-owned enterprise, like the NSA/CIA/DoD.

In theory we have more distribution of power, but it's still surveillance and control that we have little say in.

The issue is that China has done, on the whole, fairly alright for itself. So everyone with any power in the West is looking and thinking: "huh, so the freedom and rights and property were really not important for progress at all - might as well can it".