Foreign Policy: Silicon Valley’s Final Frontier

Last week, in an apparent fit of inspiration brought on by the government shutdown, Balaji Srinivasan gave a speech on what it would be like if Silicon Valley were to secede from the United States government. Srinivasan,  a tech entrepreneur, praised Silicon Valley and the broader high-tech industry it represents for not being responsible for securitized mortgages, government bailouts and starting wars. He proposed a system that could allow citizens to peacefully “opt-out” of the U.S. government and “opt-in” to a “society, outside the US, run by technology.”  Reddit, he suggested, was an example of opting out of the establishment media. Other technologies like Bitcoin and 3-D Printing, Srinivisan predicted, may have the potential to replace existing manufacturing and financial industries and ultimately the whole economic system as we know it. The final outcome of these developments would mean that citizens, especially those located at the geographic heart of technological innovation, would find it in their best interest to join some kind of techno-utopia outside the draconian regulations and unending gridlock of the U.S. government.

Srinivasan’s zealotry provoked reasonable skepticism among industry outsiders and even elicited ridicule from observers like Kevin Roose of the New York Magazine. Roose’s article points out many flaws inherent in the technotopian vision, but hypothesizing about alternative systems of government is not always a useless exercise.

Let us suspend for a moment the inevitable questions about geography and internal politics and accept that Silicon Valley can actually opt to secede from the Union. Despite the voluntary nature of the opt-in technocracy, its role in the global community of nations cannot be analogously opted out of. Even hermit kingdoms like North Korea have to contend with outside pressures from countries like the U.S. The relevant question for a forward-looking foreign policy blog is then what would Silicon Valley’s foreign policy look like? This question makes for an excellent opportunity to examine the industry’s record thus far. One only needs to look at the last ten years to see that Silicon Valley, even as a subordinate part of the United States, has already made its presence felt in international affairs.

No doubt Srinivasan’s vision of a techno-utopia is informed by the many very well-publicized successes of Silicon Valley. Facebook and Twitter, for instance, were publicly lauded their part in enabling the Arab Spring and spreading democracy. The World Bank linked broadband access to GDP growth in low to middle income countries in 2009. The U.S. State Department has even made internet freedom a political priority in foreign policy and in the past included Silicon Valley executives in their delegations to spread the message of positive cyber-fueled change. Tech-based efforts like the Khan Academy took on U.N. Millennium Goals, such as inequality and education, by making top tier education available to hundreds of millions of users around the world via YouTube. Other well intentioned endeavors like the One Laptop per Child have met significant obstacles and criticism, but they continue to struggle towards their goals.

But there is also a much darker side to Silicon Valley’s optimism than just misspent energy. Just this year, Google and Facebook were still quietly handing over petabytes of data about foreigners and U.S. citizens to the NSA in the name of national security. Before that, Google was operating in China, in full compliance with the government’s censorship policies until 2010, when it pulled out of the market, ostensibly because of Chinese internet abuses. The oft-praised Bitcoin has been the principle facilitator of global online narcotics trade via the Silk Road and other online black markets for several years now. Domestic commercial 3-D printers have already printed lethal weapons. YouTube and Facebook, meanwhile, have become frighteningly effective tools in recruiting young people to violent jihadist movements.

Internet scholar Evgeny Morozov has made compelling arguments about how cyberspace has in some cases even inhibited further reform and given authoritarian regimes more power. Although Twitter is a fantastic source of information, but it can also be a fantastic source of misinformation. The anonymity of cyber space allows nefarious agents to spread misinformation to discredit righteous activists. It gives the government power to confuse and impede protesters. Moreover, authoritarian governments can essentially clone communication and search platforms like Google, creating something like Baidu, the Chinese version of Google. By subsequently blocking websites like Google, these governments can force their populations to rely on homemade platforms that are completely open to government surveillance. Imagine if cyberspace had existed sixty five years ago in the Soviet Union. Would dissidents have overthrown Stalin’s regime or would the Soviet Union merely have pioneered it as yet another propaganda medium just as Sergei Eisenstein so masterfully pioneered the art of propaganda cinema?

Perhaps it is unfair to blame Silicon Valley for the misuse of its creations, but then it may also be careless to give it credit for its positive contributions to international affairs. It does not appear, at least in practice, that Silicon Valley has distinguished for itself a particular foreign policy philosophy. This is to say that although Silicon Valley has in some cases radically altered the very context in which we discuss foreign affairs, its contribution has, in most cases, been open-ended. It enables the good and the bad. A belief in the guiding power of technology, especially in the context of foreign policy, lacks substance. Consider the almost ominous meaninglessness in the phrase, “a society run by technology.” Who or what is responsible for its actions and their effects on the rest of the world? A society that would value technological progress over all else and believes, almost like a faith, that its positive consequences will overcome the negative consequence could not conceivably make a responsible foreign policy.

Silicon Valley’s objectively unique quality is its sheer concentration of high-tech startups. From this fact a well-constructed, but very subjective, argument could be made about a unique culture that prizes creative entrepreneurship, that is willing to take risks, and that is simultaneously rooted in pragmatism born of a competitive marketplace. It is likely that this ideal fuels Srinivasan’s optimism, but it holds little value for the realm of politics and international relations. Foreign policy is as much about restraint as it is about actively coming up with solutions.