Information is now the world’s most consequential and contested geopolitical resource—data is the “new oil.” Data-driven innovation is not only disrupting economies and societies, it is reshaping relations between nations—with potentially seismic consequences.
In a new Belfer Center paper, Eric Rosenbach and Katherine Mansted explore how key technological advancements have ushered in a new era of information geopolitics. This era is changing how states engage with their citizens and with each other, define their national interest and strategic priorities, and project power onto the world stage. In particular, the belief that the data-driven economy is a winner-takes-all environment is pushing states and their domestic industry much closer together. To compete and thrive in the 21st century, the authors write, democracies, and the United States in particular, must develop new national security and economic strategies that address the geopolitics of information.
Rosenbach and Mansted argue that the United States must adopt a national strategy guided by four principles:
- Security and economic strategy must be data-centric;
- Privacy is a national security priority;
- A whole-of-government strategy for information competitiveness is required;
- Prioritize coordination with the private sector.
This is not an easy path, the authors acknowledge, and it is one strewn with difficult balances. Democracies must build their capacity to produce, refine, and protect information, but avoid the temptations of protectionism and monopolism. They must defend the information environment from subversion and manipulation, but redouble efforts to protect institutions, rights, and democratic values from information authoritarians who are seeking to subvert and undermine them. “The difficulty of the task must not deter us from attempting it,” Rosenbach and Mansted write. “Anything less could strike a serious blow to national security, internal stability, and democracy itself.”
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