The Real Cyber War

The Political Economy of Internet Freedom

Shawn M. Powers, Michael Jablonski

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9780252097102
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Contemporary discussion surrounding the role of the internet in society is dominated by words like: internet freedom, surveillance, cybersecurity, Edward Snowden and, most prolifically, cyber war. Behind the rhetoric of cyber war is an on-going state-centered battle for control of information resources. Shawn Powers and Michael Jablonski conceptualize this real cyber war as the utilization of digital networks for geopolitical purposes, including covert attacks against another state's electronic systems, but also, and more importantly, the variety of ways the internet is used to further a state's economic and military agendas.Moving beyond debates on the democratic value of new and emerging information technologies, The Real Cyber War focuses on political, economic, and geopolitical factors driving internet freedom policies, in particular the U.S. State Department's emerging doctrine in support of a universal freedom to connect. They argue that efforts to create a universal internet built upon Western legal, political, and social preferences is driven by economic and geopolitical motivations rather than the humanitarian and democratic ideals that typically accompany related policy discourse. In fact, the freedom-to-connect movement is intertwined with broader efforts to structure global society in ways that favor American and Western cultures, economies, and governments.Thought-provoking and far-seeing, The Real Cyber War reveals how internet policies and governance have emerged as critical sites of geopolitical contestation, with results certain to shape statecraft, diplomacy, and conflict in the twenty-first century.

1

Information Freedom and U.S. Foreign Policy: A History

We must shape our course of action by the maxims of justice and liberality and good will, think of the progress of mankind rather than of the progress of this or that investment, of the protection of American honor and the advancement of American ideal rather than always of American contracts, and lift our diplomacy to the levels of what the best minds have planned for mankind.
—Woodrow Wilson, “A Message to Democratic Rallies,” november 2, 1912

During the Industrial Revolution the new American nation supplemented native inventiveness with imported information allowing development of industrial systems. Technological artifacts acquired by the United States were useless without acquisition of knowledge necessary to assemble or use machines. Britain protected its industrial hegemony by restricting the outflow of information to protect comparative economic advantages from technology that it invented or refined. The United States adopted an identical policy. The realization that the flow of information encouraged innovation forced policymakers to consider the implications of controlling that flow. The result was that a contradictory view of information became fundamental to U.S. thinking. On the one hand, information should be freely available to all; on the other, access to information should be restricted to reward inventors by reserving to them the economic benefits of their inventions.

This chapter looks at four illustrative case studies after discussing the linkage between information and commerce. The first examines the U.S. challenge to British communications hegemony in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Woodrow Wilson framed the challenge of promoting world peace in terms of a worldwide free access to information that, not incidentally, promoted American commercial interests. The second example explores the view that U.S.-backed ventures to build up underdeveloped countries constituted a policy of creating new markets for U.S. products. As a global information economy developed, U.S. economic policy increasingly required that the rest of the world be able to import and consume “soft” products such as media content. Development promoted U.S. interests, although the rhetoric surrounding it channeled the modernization paradigm, framing access issues in terms of freedom to communicate and the right to expression.

The third narrative discusses the use of international structures such as the ITU and UNESCO by developing countries to assert grievances arising from a misbalance of power in world communication structures. The assertion of independence and demand for recognition in forums such as WSIS and NWICO was countered by the United States employing trade mechanisms—such as GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade), and its successor, WTO (World Trade Organization)—to control the flow of information. The application of trade policy to international communication embodies the shift toward treating information as a commodity. Finally, we establish the formation of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) as a U.S. policy that created an appearance of international cooperation in governance of the internet while reserving to the United States ultimate authority. ICANN, established as a counter to proposals to internationalize control of the internet by groups like the multistakeholder Internet Ad Hoc Committee (IAHC),¹ extends the neoliberal theme of framing issues for the betterment of the world, but doing so in a way that privileges the United States.

Far from a systematic history of American information policies, these thick descriptions aim to establish a trend of using telecommunications laws and information- and technology-related exports to promote U.S. political economic interests globally. Central to each example is the view of information as something apolitical, culturally neutral, able to be bought and sold as part of the global exchange of goods and services. By normalizing information as a commodity, the United States sought to expand markets for its products, including content, software and hardware. By placing information into the realm of free trade and open markets, the United States was more able to export of U.S.-centric media freedoms, regulations, technologies, programming, and infrastructure, enhancing U.S. “soft power” around the world.²

Control of Commodified Information

The conflict over internet governance represents the latest manifestation of international contestation over information management. Effective control of information creates a market aberration rewarding actors that can effectively manipulate dissemination. At the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, information was increasingly viewed as a potent resource because of its ability to drive technological innovation. For example, Great Britain enjoyed a comparative advantage in the production of textiles as a result of tweaks that built upon prior innovation: John Kay increased the rate of cloth production by developing the flying shuttle in 1733. James Hargreaves’s spinning jenny (1764) allowed simultaneous production of multiple threads. Richard Arkwright patented a water-powered system producing stronger yarn at a higher capacity with lower cost in 1769. Samuel Crompton created the spinning mule in 1779 by hybridizing Arkwright’s water frame with Hargreaves’s spinning jenny. Richard Roberts automated the mule.³ The cascade of developments revolutionizing cloth production resulted, in large part, from the availability of information regarding prior developments.

The British envisioned a dual policy encouraging the import of information while discouraging export. Resulting technological changes, both open source and controlled, influenced the entire British economy. England transformed itself from a primarily agricultural economy into an industrial one in the eighty years following 1770. James Watt knew of the steam engine developed by Thomas Newcomen, eventually securing patents for improvements in 1768 and 1782. Boldrin and Levine show that the patent system retarded commercial development of steam engines. Watt’s steam engines suffered, due to patent restrictions, from an inability to employ efficiency gains developed by Thomas Pickard. Watt could only employ Pickard’s more efficient designs after the expiration of the patent in 1794. Watt and his business partner, Matthew Boulton, litigated alleged patent violations to prevent the commercial use of numerous improvements. When the patents expired, the efficiency of generally available engines crept up.⁴

Britain controlled the flow of information by granting monopolies to entrepreneurs importing innovative techniques from other countries, as well as to domestic inventors. It also sought to control the outflow of information by making it illegal to transport technical information about certain innovations out of the country. Having developed a comparative advantage in the manufacture of textiles and iron, Britain sought to preserve its advantage by disrupting information flow.⁵

Naturally, other countries circumvented the restrictions. Alexander Hamilton, as U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, recommended to Congress “that it is the interest of the United States to open every possible avenue to emigration from abroad . . . for the encouragement of manufactures.”⁶ Hamilton proposed to Congress a comprehensive policy for the promotion of domestic manufacturing by, in part, increasing the flow of information about manufacturing machinery to the United States. “To procure all such machines as are known in any part of Europe, can only require a proper provision and due pains. The knowledge of several of the most important of them is already possessed.”⁷ The importation of information through immigrants was widespread in America. The most famous case was that of Samuel Slater, who memorized the operation of a textile mill in Britain before coming to America after having declaring to British officials that he was a common agricultural laborer. Slater became one of the most prominent industrialists in the new nation.⁸

The maturation of global trade empires established by European powers established an international communications network, albeit one with extraordinarily low bandwidth. The organization of global trading companies such as the Dutch and the English East India Companies prospered by exploiting technological capabilities to transport rare commodities that were in high demand from across long distances. The relevant technologies were not just ships minimally sufficient to make the journeys but the ability to organize data relevant to a multitude of functions essential to the commerce, such as provisioning ships, knowledge of routes, understanding markets, organizing capital, marketing, and insurance, as well as countless other critical activities. The absence of technology capable of moving information over water at speeds greater than rates maintained by ships meant that vessels operated autonomously once dispatched. Interplanetary robotic spacecraft today operate on the same information principle since the distance over which a craft sends information and receives instruction incurs a time delay greater than the seconds in which an operation requires execution. The inability to communicate information in a timely manner necessarily required that both spacecraft and sailing vessel maneuver with high degrees of autonomy within broad bounds established by their programming (software in the spacecraft; orders and manifests in ships).

A significant difference today is that transaction costs attendant with transnational flows of information approach zero. Hackers probing systems for trade secrets serve a similar function in circumventing information policy that Samuel Slater did by memorizing the operation of textile machinery before physically traveling to the United States.

Information policy is broader than laws and regulations. Sandra Braman defines information policy as “laws, regulations, and doctrinal positions—and other decision making and practices with society-wide constitutive effects— involving information creation, processing flows, access, and use.”⁹ Government regulation comprises undisguised manifestations of policy, but its social effects are influenced by constitutive elements other than ones imposed by state officials. Lawrence Lessig, for example, identifies architecture, economics, and social norms, and acknowledges the existence of many others, as factors regulating behavior.¹⁰ The confluence of all the factors affecting human behavior, not just laws, forms the operating mechanism for policy.

The regulation of information by laws establishing property rights to promote advanced technical enterprises was consistent with economic policy promoting rapid industrialization. Information freedom, except where restriction promoted U.S. goals, formed an unstated theme that still permeates policy today, based on two changes in the way that United States viewed information. Woodrow Wilson’s administration issued the first clear expressions of a U.S. information policy when it sought to include provisions guaranteeing access to information by all peoples in the negotiation of terms ending World War I. A second inflection point appeared during the Clinton administration. Vice President Gore led an effort both to publish information about the government online and to migrate government services as much as possible to Web pages available to the public. These efforts reflected a general understanding that information constituted a resource that could be harnessed to achieve other policy goals, like the spread of democracy, which developed as the United States progressed from an agricultural to an industrial to an information economy.

The Clinton administration’s approach to information was pervasive. Beginning in 1997, any official statement regarding the collection, storage, or use of information was deemed to constitute an “information policy instrument.” A broad range of items became policy instruments. Statutes, regulations, guidelines formed the basic corpus of information policy instruments, but the Clinton doctrine expansively categorized presidential executive orders, Office of Management and Budget circulars, bulletins, and memos—including internal agency documents—as documents regulating the use of information.¹¹ The breadth of information available to citizens was substantially curtailed in the name of national security after the 9/11 attacks. The tension between making information available and restricting it forms the principle debate of information policy domestically and globally. (NWICO and WSIS proposals, discussed later in this chapter, positioned the desire of developing countries to control information against a U.S. policy of alleged openness.)

Two principles emerge when the history of U.S. information policy is examined. The first is persistent discourse suggesting that unfettered access to information promotes democracy and global peace. The second is an empirical understanding of how fettered access to information, such as occurs with copyright and patent restrictions, promotes U.S. business interests. Both shape U.S. policy. As we have argued, this duality governing information flows stems from practices that the United States adopted from England during industrialization. The oppositional nature of these core beliefs resulted in the United States at once encouraging the flow of information into the country while at the same time trying to block the outflow, at least where the United States enjoys competitive advantages or a protected trade status.

The United States coupled freedom of expression to the availability of technology and information in its foreign policy. President Obama spoke of a fundamental human right to freedom of expression using technology.¹² The National Security Strategy of the United States for 2010 dedicated the country to freedom of expression through technological means.¹³ The statements reflect a policy position that formed during the Industrial Revolution but became primary as the world developed an information economy dominated by the United States.

U.S. Information Policy on a World stage: Commerce and Free Flows

Information policy is a creature of the historical and political dimensions in which it developed. The quest for economic growth drove the United States to adopt a policy encouraging the importation of information regarding industrial processes while at the same time restricting exportation of similar material. In this, as we have seen, the United States was not alone. The policy mirrored that of other countries. We focused on Britain because the diffusion of information across the Atlantic set the stage for global conflict over the regulation of information infrastructure. As Winseck and Pike suggest, the global information struggle after 1860 and lasting until 1930 shares “many commonalities with, and being the closest predecessor of, our own times.”¹⁴

The international diffusion of information experienced a tremendous boost with the refinement of submarine cables capable of reliably transporting messages between countries separated by oceans. Numerous cables laid beneath the surface of the Atlantic at the end of the nineteenth century suffered from problems of low bandwidth and short lifespan. The Atlantic Telegraph Company, a transatlantic cable project undertaken by Cyrus Field, took four years to construct a seven-wire link between County Cork, Ireland, and Trinity Bay, Newfoundland. Field was an American who moved to Britain to obtain financing for the project. Completed in 1858, the line never worked as expected. Queen Victoria’s celebratory ninety-eight-word telegram congratulating President Buchanan upon completion of the project required sixteen hours to transmit. The cable went dead within a month.

President Buchanan’s reply to the queen—characterizing the communication system as “an instrument destined by Divine Providence to diffuse religion, civilization, liberty, and law throughout the world”¹⁵—reflected the American belief that the flow of information would be globally transformative. Despite the problems, investors remained excited by the possibility of commodifying the speedy communication of information. Technology improved until, by 1866, Field’s next enterprise, the Anglo-American Telegraph Company could both lay new cable and repair the old.

The link across North Atlantic waters spurred competitive development of cable systems. Britain dominated worldwide systems for several reasons. On the demand side, the assemblage of a global empire provided commercial and government traffic for cable systems. Shipping companies could wire instructions to captains as they reached foreign ports. The flexibility inherent in being able to alter a voyage while it was underway gave traders and shipping companies a comparative advantage over competitors. Empire had another demand-side effect. Several British colonies were settled with relatively large European immigrant populations. The existence of these groups created a demand for synchronous, timely news. British newsp...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• List of Abbreviations and Acronyms
• Introduction: Geopolitics and the Internet
• 1 Information Freedom and U.S. Foreign Policy: A History
• 2 The Information-Industrial Complex
• 3 Google, Information, and Power
• 4 The Economics of Internet Connectivity
• 5 The Myth of Multistakeholder Governance
• 6 Toward Information Sovereignty
• 7 Internet Freedom in a Surveillance Society
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Index