Siân Evans, Dorothy Howard, Richard Knipel, Jacqueline Mabey, Michael Mandiberg, Laurel Ptak and won an award from Foreign Policy Magazine. Their award ceremony was Monday 17 November and co-hosted by the US Department of State. Richard was unable to attend due to his participating in a board meeting of the Wiki Ed Foundation. I attended because I had been a supporter of the original event.
The event’s host was David Rothkopf, the editor of the magazine. He moderated most of the panels throughout the day as well and all-around was a gracious host who had ensured that all attendees met staff from the magazine.
I will summarize what struck me in the discussions from that day.
In the “Shifting Alliance and New Players” panel, Sheba Crocker said that countries are increasingly supporting international human rights resolutions to address social issues which they could not address only locally, such as the issue of recognizing LGBT rights. Luis Almagro said that Latin American countries will have a more prominent place in international politics as they begin to collaborate more with each other on the basis of their geographical proximity, shared language, and shared culture. Kurt M. Campbell said that China and the United States are in a precarious position of both being world powers that are dependent on each other, but which are both aversive to cultural exchange or conversation between their populations. Kurt said that in Hong Kong, there was unprecedented social differentiation between the patient and peaceful young people who currently were protesting their government, and the older people who could only view the protests as a “shrill and selfish disruption of the social order to no good end”. He said that both sides of the protests imagined the Western world and the United States in particular as supporting the protests in spirit and being willing to support protests more deeply in other ways. Barry Lowenkron said that Asian countries will mostly ally with other Asian countries in a way that is analogous to how NATO countries have partnered with each other.
John Kerry was the keynote speaker for the day. He was of course a master orator, and I was fortunate to have been right in front of the center stage and to hear him from only a few feet away. He spoke about expanding war with ISIS. My demographic is generally opposed to war, mostly on the basis of the expense of war at the opportunity cost of developing other infrastructure and the lack of evidence or reporting that investment in war brings benefits back to community stakeholders. After hearing Kerry speak, though, I hardly understood what he was saying but was emotionally moved to support whatever he was saying about starting new wars.
Kerry said that the United States should have focused oversight in every part of the globe. He said that in particular, the United States should invest in expanding its influence in the Middle East and North Africa. He said “We have to be deeply engaged in the Middle East” and “We are proudly and unapologetically allied with Israel and other Middle Eastern countries.” He said that the Middle East expansion strategy was to promote center politics, and he described how currently countries including Syria are pressured into extremist politics when they see their best option for defending against groups like ISIS as supporting right-wing dictatorships who promise protection.
In the “The Disuptors: Emerging Threats and Effective Responses”, James Dobbins critiqued Kerry by saying that even if the ISIS problem were resolved, the other problems in the Middle East are currently so disruptive that international partnerships with Middle Eastern countries would still be require more investment and oversight than they are worth. Shibley Telhami said that no one expected ISIS to gain so much control over the Iraqi state, and that it is unprecedented for a non-state actor to have power in the government’s domain to the extent that ISIS has achieved. Puneet Talwar commented that she expected the United States to be engaged in war with ISIS for the long term. Jennifer Lewis said that she expected 3D printing technology to be increasing discussed in all conflicts, as it is a radically disruptive technology which grants access to many other previously inaccessible technologies and will bring unanticipated advancements to both good and bad actors in conflict. Jane Holl Lute said that as someone who rarely speaks in political spaces, she felt that both she and Jennifer were speaking to an audience which rarely seeks perspectives from technology and engineering sectors, but that political leaders should recognize that ISIS is part of a “global cyber awakening”. Jane commented that there are five social organizations which claim more than a billion members – India, China, Christianity, Islam, and Facebook. She said that the role of government is to provide minimum thresholds of security, well-being, and justice, and when government does not grant those things to individuals, those people will increasingly seek what they need from other online organizations and communities. James said that the Middle East is unusual because 100 years ago it was all one country, Arabia, with a shared language, religion, and ethnicity. Right now, most international media presents conflicts in the Middle East as civil wars and regional conflicts, when he would characterize the aggression as a civilization in conflict with itself. Shibley said that typical people in the Middle East respect politicians who promote Islam and oppose the United States, whereas the United States only supports politicians who are religiously moderate and who can ally with the United States. Jane said that a perennial problem for the future is designing software and social infrastructure which promotes social contentment, and that it is difficult to architect trusted systems from untrusted components. Jane said that to qualify the vulnerability of any system to cyberattack, one should ask the following questions: What hardware is connected to the system?, what software is running on the system?, who has admin rights?, and what alert processes are in place to notify the admins if the system is accessed or changed? She described the “Christopher Columbus” rule in assessing the ability of managers to judge their oversight of software, by saying that they must be able to distinguish what is new versus what is merely new to them in their limited knowledge.
Michael Froman said that just recently, the World Trade Organization has reached the biggest trade tariff reduction agreement in 17 years. He said that in the United States from the business perspective to increase economic growth, it mattered less what political party was in power and more that any consensus is reached. He said that the Trans-Pacific Partnership is the first agreement to define and address the advent of state-owned international enterprises and the digital economy. He said that a major impediment to global trade is addressing agricultural subsidies, as these are powerful tools which can give countries a lot of unilateral power to manipulate the global economy. He noted that the United States’ agricultural exports were at an all-time high. He said that trade agreements determine whether groups shape or are shaped by globalization.
In “Power of Bandwidth: New Media, New Networks and New Volatility”, Shubhranshu Choudhary said that democratization of communication is the best way to advance society. He said that 7% of India has Internet access and that India has to invest in complementary communication technologies to only Internet access. He objected to All-India radio being the only legal radio broadcaster in India, and wanted radio bandwidth opened as a way to reach people who have no other access to ideas. Nadia Bilbassy-Charters said that more than 70% of people in the Middle East get most of their national and international news from television, and that in the era of bin Ladin, terrorist messages could only be propagated by a few media carriers. Increasingly, Nadia noted, anyone can share terrorist messages. She said that the immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi only had the impact that it did because of radical changes in communication, as the video of his death could not have been shared without Internet. Doug Frantz described that the US State Department’s old communications practices had layers of bureaucracy which must be cleared in order to share any message, but increasingly, large organizations allow small teams to reach consensus to publish quickly and with less central control. Doug worried about the lack of expert mediators in social media and saw no obvious way to increase the quality control in social media to the standards of traditional communications. Doug said that the role of state-run media departments is uncertain, and noted that while Russia Today is a propaganda outlet, they are effective at what they do and some people argue that the United States’ Voice of America should copy some of their successful practices. He went on to note that the BBC is the gold standard for international objective journalism, but Voice of America is much less relevant to anyone. Hajooj Kuka said that in the past, there could only be single narratives for many international stories, but that with the Internet, more space for individuals to speak without control of an oversight authority allowed for more perspectives. He said that he supported terrorists’ use of social media to spread their ideas, because he felt that in a competitive online marketplace of ideas terrorists would lose debates and lose control over their followers whom they had previously isolated within a radical ideology. Dorothy asked the panel about representation of minorities in contemporary international media, and Shub responded by saying that women in India are unlikely to be able to participate so long as conversations must be had in English rather than in local languages. He said that in India’s media industry, women only hold 3% of the staff jobs. Nadia said that as an introductory goal toward equality, the focus should be on placing women in top-level positions rather than seeking equality at mid- and low-level positions. She gave the anecdote that Twitter in the Arab world is most popular in Saudi Arabia, and that women do participate in discussions there. Doug said that Moscow takes strong stances in its communications and that the United States has a responsibility to challenge them in the media, which currently it does not do well.
In “Flashpoints: Fuel, Food, and Fault Lines”, Gayle Smith said that even among tense or warring communities, public health epidemics have the positive effect of increasing collaboration as they bring people together to address a common concern. Rachel Kleinfeld said that many Western health care efforts are designed in a way that neglects women in developing countries. One example that she gave is presuming more education than women in very poor countries have, including “innumeracy“. She said that some women cannot count, so giving them instructions to take a certain number of pills for a certain number of days is not advice they are able to follow. Zainab Bangura noted that it is extremely difficult to standardize or manage healthcare logistics and that it is unavoidable that for every community, a representative from that community must oversee that community’s care. Hanna Hopko was obviously distracted by the 2014 Russian military intervention in Ukraine. She said that the stability of Ukraine was essential to European and world security, which was a surprising idea to me as media here has not presented the conflict in that way, nor do I know of any Western cultural tradition which says anything at all about Ukraine. She said that Ukraine has a 1000 year history independent of Russia, but that Russian media was suppressing this view. Zainab said that increasingly, terrorist plans include efforts to embed the terrorists into society. She related how in the cases of ISIS, women are captured, married to ISIS fighters, sent on a honeymoon so as to establish a social bond, then returned to their families in a married state. This makes the family and its social circle less likely to reveal the ISIS fighter, as doing so would harm the newly married woman’s life. David Gordon characterized the Al Qaeda conflict as a war over territory, whereas the ISIS conflict is a war over values. He said that the US’s greatest strength is being able to rally coalitions of multicultural participants in addressing problems, and that attribute would lead to any solution found to address ISIS.
Raj Shah talked about ending extreme poverty. He said that the goal of USAID was to end poverty and promote democratic society. He said that extreme poverty could be ended in 15 years. He said that the United States’ response to the 2010 Haiti earthquake was the largest humanitarian response which the US had ever coordinated, and that it showed that large scale complicated humanitarian response can be effective in relieving suffering. He said that USAID intends to reduce global poverty from its current 17% to 3% by 2030. He said that in the past, the strategy for reducing poverty was mobilizing development programs in BRICS, but now that those countries have strong and growing economies, the more significant concern is stabilizing weak states. He emphasized that America should remain and be known as the world’s unquestioned leader in giving foreign aid. He said that to increase the rate of development, having instantaneous reporting of everything possible to organizations which can manage big data is the most efficient and effective way to improve the impact of giving aid.