Making Cyberspace Safe for Democracy
Making Cyberspace Safe for Democracy
The New Landscape of Information Competition
By Laura Rosenberger
May/June 2020
With the 2020 U.S. presidential campaign underway, stories of Russian interference are again in the headlines. In 2016, Russia’s hacking operations and use of social media to manipulate public discourse in the United States caught U.S. policymakers off-guard. Four years later, officials have not yet fully understood that those attacks reflected the changing landscape of geopolitical competition. Viewing Russia’s attempts at interference in 2016 in isolation misses the larger context: rival states compete in the twenty-first century as much over information as any other terrain.
Democratic countries view information as an empowering force in the hands of people: the free and open flow of ideas, news, and opinion fuels deliberative democracy. Authoritarian systems see this model as a threat, viewing information as a danger to their regimes and something the state must control and shape. Using surveillance, censorship, and the manipulation of information, authoritarian regimes shore up their power at home while weakening democratic competitors abroad.
The United States and its democratic allies have not adjusted to this reality. They have been reactive, focusing on what they are trying to defeat; they have not developed a strategy for success. The struggle over information has emerged at a time when democracies are under increasing pressure from within and without and as authoritarianism is gaining ground around the world. The new great-power competition won’t necessarily take place on battlefields or in boardrooms; it will happen on smartphones, computers, and other connected devices and on the digital infrastructure that supports them. The typically hands-off approach that many democratic governments take to information will make it hard for them to compete.
The New Landscape of Information Competition
By Laura Rosenberger
May/June 2020
With the 2020 U.S. presidential campaign underway, stories of Russian interference are again in the headlines. In 2016, Russia’s hacking operations and use of social media to manipulate public discourse in the United States caught U.S. policymakers off-guard. Four years later, officials have not yet fully understood that those attacks reflected the changing landscape of geopolitical competition. Viewing Russia’s attempts at interference in 2016 in isolation misses the larger context: rival states compete in the twenty-first century as much over information as any other terrain.
Democratic countries view information as an empowering force in the hands of people: the free and open flow of ideas, news, and opinion fuels deliberative democracy. Authoritarian systems see this model as a threat, viewing information as a danger to their regimes and something the state must control and shape. Using surveillance, censorship, and the manipulation of information, authoritarian regimes shore up their power at home while weakening democratic competitors abroad.
The United States and its democratic allies have not adjusted to this reality. They have been reactive, focusing on what they are trying to defeat; they have not developed a strategy for success. The struggle over information has emerged at a time when democracies are under increasing pressure from within and without and as authoritarianism is gaining ground around the world. The new great-power competition won’t necessarily take place on battlefields or in boardrooms; it will happen on smartphones, computers, and other connected devices and on the digital infrastructure that supports them. The typically hands-off approach that many democratic governments take to information will make it hard for them to compete.
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