The Weaponized Web: The National Security Implications of Data
Open societies have encouraged and promoted rapid technological advancement and market innovation —but both have outpaced democratic governance. Authoritarian powers have noticed the underlying opportunity to exploit the open standards of the democratically regulated digital information environment and undermine democratic values and institutions while shoring up their own regimes.
A new report from the German Marshall Fund’s Alliance for Securing Democracy says that this poses a novel challenge for democracies, which must adapt to compete in this conflict over the data, architecture, and governance framework of the information space without compromising their democratic principles. “Effectively competing with autocrats in this environment—and ensuring a democratic future for the online information space—will require policymakers to analyze technology and internet policy through the lens of national security,” the report notes.
The report analyzes policy options to mitigate national security concerns related to the collection, retention, and processing of data. The report authors note that the report is narrowly scoped in order to provide sufficient space to debate the relative merits of regulatory proposals. The authors say that although they make specific recommendations, “the purpose of the report is to foster deeper debate about potential policy options; as such, we present arguments for and against each regulatory option, with an emphasis on highlighting potential negative externalities. While intended for a global audience, the recommendations are decidedly U.S.-centric, due simply to the authors’ deeper understanding of the U.S. regulatory landscape.”
They add:
It is worth noting that this paper does not address the full spectrum of consumer-centric and privacy arguments for regulating the data industry. We also recognize that government regulation is not the only—and often not the best—tool to solve many issues in the digital domain. Our goal, therefore, is not to solve the myriad issues with how we produce, distribute, and consume information—it is to assist regulators and concerned stakeholders in thinking through legislative options to mitigate the national security concerns associated with malign foreign activity, interference, and alternative modes of governance in the technology domain. This focus means that our recommendations are more narrowly scoped to the national security challenge than those advanced by others— including the Digital Innovation and Democracy Initiative also housed at the German Marshall Fund.
