Introduction Back to contents 17 and English language announcements. In addition, we collected other government announcements and news reports and investigated pieces that came out after the coup. Our mapping focuses on stages of procurement as we find that a number of systemic issues are rooted in how and why technologies are purchased in the first place. Although local media reports have given much attention to the billion kyats (as per the 2019 exchange rate this would be approximately USD 675,000, as per the 2020 exchange rate this would be approximately USD 540,159) spent on CCTV megaprojects with Huawei, the focus has primarily and exclusively been on Chinese involvement and potential spying13 through backdoors, as opposed to a systemic analysis of public procurement. These findings are important but run the risk of missing crucial insights into the procurement process that state actors in Myanmar are pursuing to buy this technology, regardless of where it is coming from.14 Our focus on CCTVs – as opposed to a specific type of AI technology like facial recognition – is a deliberate one, as we view CCTVs as an entry point to understanding the larger ecosystem of smart cities in Myanmar. CCTVs do not exist in isolation within smart cities, but rather, as discussed earlier, form an integral prerequisite for many smart city infrastructures to exist and function. This approach enables us to analyse broader goals implicit within Myanmar’s ‘smart’ future – a majority of government documents simply refer to CCTV cameras at the time of procurement, without specifying what kinds of surveillance capabilities they wish to implement, such as face recognition, emotion recognition, gait recognition, automated number plate recognition and so on. We highlight this elision throughout the document.