Open Versus Closed Systems
“The principal characteristic of twenty-first-century international relations is turning out to be nonpolarity: a world dominated not by one or two or even several states but rather by dozens of actors possessing and exercising various kinds of power. This represents a tectonic shift from the past.”
“Today’s world differs in a fundamental way from one of classic multipolarity: there are many more power centers, and quite a few of these poles are not nation-states. Indeed, one of the cardinal features of the contemporary international system is that nation-states have lost their monopoly on power and in some domains their preeminence as well.”
-Richard Hass, Head of the Council on Foreign Relations and former head of Policy Planning at the U.S. Department of State, writing in 2008.
Google’s rise over the past ten years has coincided with and arguably assisted in the creation of extra-state entities, which can project enormous power globally. The equation can be simplistically stated: in an information economy, control of information equates to raw power. The Industrial Revolution fueled the British Empire, control of markets fueled the American Empire, control of information is fueling the Google empire. In the space of ten years, the Internet has gone from supporting pets.com to being the pre-eminent vehicle for projecting power. However, the continuation of the open Eco-system of information, innovation and development, which has provided the platform for this success is not assured (as has been highlighted by a variety of Internet scholars and strategic thinkers). Open systems are messy, and therefore, closed wall Internet systems may grow in popularity as consumers seek protection from some of the anarchy that reigns online. This scenario is not new. The United States is the original messy open political system and by managing to control this method of organizing society it became a super-power. China offers an alternative: a closed wall system to protect its citizens from the anarchy of open society. Google has been the champion of the open Internet. Just as American exceptionalism has driven the United States to intervene globally to uphold Jeffersonian values, Google intervenes in FCC auctions to ensure the open access to information. Of course the commercial imperative cannot be denied – the United States has financially benefited from promoting the market state, and Google financially benefits wherever there is an open (uncensored) Internet. It has been unclear whether Google would ever seek alliances with nation-states given its extra-territorial virtual nature, but that time appears to have arrived.
Google V China
A clear power realignment is emerging – it is messy and complex, and places some companies, individuals and organizations on a par with nation-states in terms of conducting foreign policy and projecting power. The two opposing factions developing from this realignment look to be those that prefer open standards politically with regard to information, against those who tend toward closed systems. The United States and Google are natural allies in this re-alignment, while China fits more easily with companies such as Comcast, AT&T and other proponents of walled-systems. The diplomatic mystery is Microsoft. While clearly a proponent of and beneficiary of closed systems in business, it has thrived in a open political system. Microsoft seems almost to lean towards China rather than the United States, but at the same time cannot be blind to the dangers of this approach and not realize its natural long-term limitations. For now Microsoft is expertly balanced. While Google Versus China is the first major tremor in this re-alignment, more will follow.
Google’s decision to re-examine its China policy and confront the Chinese government should illuminate the nature of the current Chinese system to any business observer: the total use of state power to pursue Chinese aims, including the persistent and ruthless use of all facets of the state intelligence machinery to gain an advantage over their business, political and military rivals. China has reportedly spent heavily on cyber-warfare and espionage capabilities. This investment is being well used. Western governments have long been aware of the nature of the Chinese threat, but it has taken the actions of Google to illuminate this same threat to western businesses with any kind of intellectual property to protect, which is surely all of them.
Samuel Huntington wrote about a post-Cold War “Clash of Civilizations.” What we are now seeing could be more accurately described as a “clash of systems”, which will define the real diplomatic, security, and political challenge of our age. If periodic terrorist plots are still the main security challenge for the United States President in twenty years, the world will be fortunate. It would also likely mean that the United States and its allies prevailed in its greater strategic fight.
Although the power of the United States is fading, its legacy as the sole super-power has left it with certain advantages which should be rapidly exploited by both its explicit traditional allies or its implicit emerging allies from extra-state groups. The United States continues to possess unrivalled military power, befitting its great power status. This shouldn’t be confused with the insurgency wars it has become embroiled in; great power warfare is a different platform. As a result of its recent history, the United States controls the world’s neutral spaces: air, sea and space. From these platforms its extra-state allies, such as Google, could aim their primary weapon – information – at the opposition. Access to a free and open Internet is the key unit of power projection in the coming battle. A fact clearly recognized by Secretary of State Clinton during her recent remarks on Internet Freedom. Broadcasting free and open Internet service into China or Iran from these neutral spaces controlled by the US military is the correct response from the open-systems alliance. A company with reputedly the world’s best engineers and the country with the most advanced space program should be able to surmount the technical challenges involved. There are numerous precedents when free movement of information [data] have helped crash closed political and information systems: Radio Free Europe feeding news to Soviet dissidents during the Cold-War or more recently, P2P file-sharing networks upending the music industry. As well as broadcasting the free-Internet into hostile space, western Internet companies should help break-down the Great Firewall of China by supporting open-source efforts to hack it, circumvent it, re-wire it and otherwise make it as redundant as the Maginot Line. As the west continues to wring its hands about its opponents, it should look to its most powerful weapon, one which has served it well since the dawn of the enlightenment: information.
In order to realize this objective, the open-systems alliance needs to recognize it is already in a battle. Western governments, led by the US, has been under few illusions about the Chinese government’s military and intelligence apparatus, and the danger it presents for at least ten years. Google is now clearly aware of the persistent danger it faces from Chinese state power, but this message needs to be understood more widely. This is not a benign situation. Furthermore, in a multi-polar world, extra-state power centers such as Google need to embrace their changed ‘great power’ status and organize accordingly. They must develop political and diplomatic alliances, but more crucially understand that if you seek to control, store, analyze, create, or network information you should not be surprised to find yourself in the cross-hairs of the traditional practitioners of this craft: spies and their masters.
