A New US International Strategy for Cyberspace?

This afternoon the USG dropped its new international strategy for our beloved series of tubes. This morning we joined other Internet and policy watchers for a special advance briefing on the strategy and a chance to ask questions. Suffice to say, until I've had a chance to read the whole thing (and that won't likely be until tonight, given the other demands of the job - like, running programs), this is not a hard analysis, but a stream of conciousness riff on my impressionistic morning notes.

1. The USG is positioning itself as the first nation to provide a comprehensive accounting for its activities and intents in cyberspace. 'Strategy' seems to be a bit of a misnomer, presuming a stategy includes objectives - it seems more like a survey of past actions, recognition of priorities and the establishment of normative values upon which policy will be based. The strategy comes following two years of policy review and attempts to unite the disparate priorities of individual agencies. It's certainly timely, providing the administration with a platform for upcoming international conclaves (ie, G8), while giving diplomats overseas a pair of USG-tinted glasses through which to interpret the often-oppositional demands of security and freedoms online. All else aside, it's a remarkable logistical and policy feat, and kudos to the authors.

2. The strategy trumpets prosperity, security, openness, and senior administration officials emphasized that it 'begins with economic prosperity and ends with internet freedom'. That's an interesting ordering of words, and interpreted as a prioritization, will likely raise eyebrows with the Internet Freedom advocates. That said, the choice of State and Secretary Clinton to present the strategy is encouraging, giving ownership to the most visible arm of adminstration internet policy and situating coordination under one roof - a roof which recently pulled together its own team, under the Office of the Coordinator for Cyber Issues, to handle the competing demands of security and liberty (a tangible outcome of the recent QDDR review).

3. The economic prosperity lead doesn't necessarily bode ill for internet freedom. If the administration is good to its word of advancing this strategy--and its proposed fundamental norms--through agencies, other nations, and the private sector, it could be that those norms sally forth into the world as part of the corporate vanguard. The web is a borderless place, making most Internet companies (and many hardware suppliers and telcos) de facto multinationals. It's simplistic, but equipment manufacturers from the US on board with the whole fundamental freedoms argument may be less likely to backdoor their networks--or (here's wishing) sell their filtering software--for other governments. Finally, Google's been at the front of positioning Internet Freedom as an economic issue first and foremost, arguing that impediments to information flow are tantamount to trade barriers. It's a clever, neatly ordered argument, but one that has thus far seemed to gain any real traction. This is only a potential, best-case scenario outcome--I'm not suggesting this will be the case.

4. Cyber is a scary word. As my colleague Chris Doten points out, cyber is a word we see attached when we're talking about pornography (especially child pornography), network and infrastructure attacks and intrusion (cyberwar), money laundering, terrorist activities, etc. The talk of cyber-security--particularly self-defense--raises interesting questions. There are issues of fundamental mission integrity afoot with regards to network security and DOD and DHS operations--how these principles will jibe with an international collaborative strategy--that outreach and buy-in from the standards bodies, multilaterals, and foreign governments -- will be worth close reading when the document does drop. In a world of cloud computing--and major system outages--this is of paramount importance. Of fascinating significance is the language of 'secure enough' and 'stable enough' - a refreshingly candid understanding of the dynamic nature of the net. Chris will come back tomorrow with more thoughts on this.

5. Whither IP? I missed this in the advance. IP policy--and litigation--continues be a thorn in the side freedom of information advocates - and as one of French president Sarkozy's pet issues, it is sure to take a seat at the table at the French-hosted G8 this year.

Are you watching the speech? Thoughts? Comments? Would love to see them below.