Media

The tragedy-as-soap-opera starring Paralympian Oscar Pistorius is over. Or, maybe not. Pistorius, a Paralympian gold medalist who also competed in non-disabled events, was a major media celebrity and hero in sports mad South Africa. In 2013, he killed his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, by shooting her through a closed bathroom door. He maintains that he thought she was an intruder. In 2014, in a trial before Thokozile Masipa, a female, black judge, he was found guilty of “culpable homicide” (roughly the equivalent of manslaughter) and sentenced to five years imprisonment. South Africa does not have the jury system. In South Africa, both the defense and the prosecution have the right to appeal to a higher court. The prosecution did so. In 2015, the Supreme Court of Appeals overturned the verdict of culpable homicide and found him guilty of murder. It then sent him back to Judge Masipa for resentencing. On July 6, 2016, she sentenced him to six years imprisonment, one year more than her sentence for culpable homicide. In her public statement, the judge carefully balanced the aggravating and mitigating factors. Her bottom line: there was no purpose to imposing the usual fifteen-year sentence for murder. (South African judges have discretion in sentencing.) Many South Africans, especially those active on women’s issues, found the judge’s arguments unconvincing. In its aftermath, there has been popular outcry that the sentence reflects the enduring privileges of race and celebrity. (Pistorius is  famous, white, and was once wealthy.) The Pistorius case has for many become emblematic of South Africa’s persistent problems: violence against women, the ubiquitous presence of firearms, the frequency of home invasions, and persistent white privilege. As Greg Nicolson, writes in the Daily Maverick, “Much of the response to Wednesday’s sentencing reflected on the socio-economics of race and class: Pistorius is white and can afford a top legal team, so he was viewed favorably and given a lenient sentence, when black, and particularly poor, people would be judged harshly.” The same observation could too often be made about the operation of the criminal justice system in the United States. The new, six-year sentence may be appealed by the defense and the prosecution. Pistorius’ lawyers have said they will not appeal. It is not yet clear what the prosecution might do, especially given the outcry against the leniency of the sentence. However, if the sentence stands, in eighteen months Pistorius could be given credit for the time he has already served under “correctional supervision” and would be eligible for parole in three years.

Rachel Brown is a research associate in Asia Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. China ranks first in many things – population, greenhouse gas emissions, foreign treasury holdings – but openness toward refugees is one arena in which it has not traditionally been considered a leader. It therefore came as surprise when China ranked first in Amnesty International’s recently released “Refugees Welcome Index,” a survey that polled over 27,000 people in twenty-seven nations on their attitudes toward refugees. This put it ahead of nations such as Germany and Canada that have already taken in thousands of Syrian refugees. China also topped the list in citizens’ reported willingness to accept a refugee into their homes, with a whopping 46 percent of respondents willing to do so. (In the next highest nation, the United Kingdom, the share was just 29 percent.) While the Chinese data may not be fully representative as it was collected from just 1,055 respondents in eighteen major cities, the survey nonetheless caught people off guard.  The results fly in the face of multiple aspects of China’s past policies and attitudes toward refugees, namely: The Chinese government provides little financial support for international refugees. In 2015, the Chinese government ranked just fifty-first among both private and national donors to the UN High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR), giving only $941,841, less than one-eighth the amount given by private Chinese donors. (The Chinese government has also provided other humanitarian assistance to Middle Eastern countries resettling refugees and donated ten thousand tons of food for Syrian refugees in February 2016). The government also has not shown particular tolerance toward those fleeing to China’s own borders. China is party to the 1951 Refugee Convention and the Convention against Torture, but as of December 2015, UNHCR reported just 727 displaced "persons of concern" in China. The same month, the UN Committee Against Torture criticized China’s policy of deeming North Korean defectors economic migrants not refugees and forcibly deporting them. This behavior violates China’s international treaty obligations since North Korean defectors may face “persecution, torture, prolonged arbitrary detention and, in some cases, sexual violence” after repatriation. And just two weeks ago, a report indicated that China planned to send home Kokang refugees, an ethnic Chinese population from Myanmar, who had been living in Yunnan province. Officials don’t respect refugee status abroad much either. Last year, multiple Chinese dissidents were returned from Thailand despite receiving arrangements for resettlement as asylees and being granted a UNHCR letter of protection. Chinese citizens may not actually be so enthusiastic about taking in refugees. In a poll by China’s state-run Global Times shortly after the Amnesty report’s release, 90.3 percent of respondents said they didn’t want “to receive refugees in their own homes,” and 79.6 percent opposed having them in their own city or as a neighbor. Popular comments on the survey echoed this less tolerant attitude and called on Western nations to bear full responsibility. One user wrote, “I’m only willing to accept a refugee from a natural disaster, and will absolutely not accept a refugee from a civil war because conflict refugees are of America’s own making and all of the consequences should be assumed by America. We absolutely cannot pay the bill for America’s homicidal maniacs!” Another wrote, “America, the ‘model for global citizens,’ can come do patrols in the South China Sea, why can’t they be a model for housing refugees????” So which survey is more accurate? Most likely neither entirely reflects national sentiments. The Global Times survey was open to anyone online, but the paper is known for its nationalistic readership and controversial positions; meanwhile GlobeScan, who conducted Amnesty’s survey, held phone interviews with members of urban, adult populations, who may be more tolerant of refugees. Linguistic confusion could also have skewed Amnesty’s results. A Quartz article noted that the word used for refugee in the survey, nanmin (难民), can refer either to someone fleeing across international borders or to someone internally displaced due to a natural disaster or other cause. In China, the authors observe, people might be more willing to host the latter. Indeed, China placed highly on questions including just the term nanmin but ranked nineteenth on a question that specifically referenced being “able to take refuge in other countries to escape war or persecution.” (Interestingly, the Global Times poll also only used nanmin, but did reference the Amnesty survey). Despite the Amnesty survey’s potential flaws, reasons for optimism remain. In the study, Chinese respondents placed first in one last category: the belief that their government should be doing “more to help refugees fleeing war or persecution.” 86 percent of respondents supported this statement. China has successfully integrated refugees before and could do so again. Most of the approximately three hundred thousand refugees resettled during the Vietnam War now enjoy full rights. If anywhere close to 86 percent of Chinese citizens truly believe their government should do more, it’s time for them to start advocating for policy changes, including potential resettlement.

Nick Ashton-Hart was the senior permanent representative of the Internet sector to the United Nations and its agencies and member states in Geneva until 2015 and remains active in international Internet policy. Connect with him on LinkedIn or Twitter @nashtonhart. Europe is confronting its greatest political crisis since the Cold War. The mass migration of Syrians, Afghans, Iraqis, Pakistanis, and others will define the continent’s relationship to the Muslim world. Will Western Europe successfully integrate the more than a million desperate people who have already arrived or will it alienate them and create an underclass of the desperate and disenfranchised? Technology might be the answer to successful integration. Saying that the migrants and refugees are reliant on technology is an understatement. I’ve seen it personally whilst volunteering on the West Balkans route this past holiday season: the moment a WiFi signal is available anywhere migrants’ mobiles beep and they immediately connect with friends, family and fixers through Viber, WhatsApp, Facebook, and other digital communication tools. The Internet is a migrant’s lifeline to the outside world. Migrants will need to rely on communities to successfully settle and integrate into their new surroundings. People, not governments, create communities. Governments provide services to communities. Asking the latter to do the former is a recipe for failure, yet that’s exactly what’s happening now. Local authorities don’t have enough housing for the volumes of migrants they have to settle. They don’t have enough doctors, language teachers, social workers. They don’t have enough staff to interact with so many new residents and in some cases can’t communicate with them due to language barriers. The result? Everyone frustrated and angry. The technology community’s response is promising. There are efforts to help refugees learn coding skills in Germany, NetHope and Cisco’s TacOps provide connectivity to migrant communities especially in temporary camps, and innovative apps for smartphones have popped up in many places. However, what’s lacking is an effort to leverage the tools that migrants overwhelmingly use Europe-wide to help them integrate from the ground up. Below are a few examples of what could be done. There have been a number of news reports of people across Europe willing to provide housing for migrants. Imagine if local authorities could provide migrants with a digital voucher for AirBnB rentals. This would make it easy for those willing to provide a home for migrants to do so, ensure that officials know where migrants are living, and allow for feedback on problems to make it back to local authorities. It would also give migrants access to a local connection and support network to help them integrate. Many Syrians entering Europe are well-educated professionals—doctors, lawyers, and architects—and a meaningful number speak English. Meanwhile, there are already many Arabic and Farsi speakers living in Europe. Facebook and LinkedIn could leverage existing features that facilitate meeting people with common interests living close to each other. By making it easy for locals in a town to find the migrants settling near them doctors could meet doctors, architects could meet architects, and people with language skills in common find one another. What about LinkedIn tools to match migrants’ skills with those who need them? What about allowing local authorities responsible for job training and working programmes to help match employers with workers from migrant communities? Many Europeans are worried that their societies will not be able to integrate migrants because their socioeconomic contexts are so different. The best way to reduce these fears is to make it easy for migrants and the communities they settle in find to common interests and interact. It is easy to fear groups of people you don’t know and haven’t met, but these fears quickly subside when people who have common interests meet. Social media platforms are designed to do this and are heavily used by Europeans and migrants alike. EUROPOL, Europe’s police force, estimates 10,000 children who arrived as unaccompanied refugees are missing, with real fears for their safety amid concerns people and sex traffickers are preying upon them. There are ways that tech can help solve this problem. National authorities take pictures of migrant children when they enter a country and when they leave. These pictures can be compared to pictures of children in Google’s Person Finder and Facebook’s Safety Check to help identify missing children. Once identified, those pictures can be cross referenced with video feeds from CCTV cameras using facial recognition technology which is a major strength of these services. When there’s a match, an Amber alert notification could be pushed out to local authorities. Such a system would need to involve the collaboration of EUROPOL, international organisations and NGOs working in migration camps and centers and local authorities to ensure that they have the ability to respond when a child may have been located. All of these proposals are win-wins. The social media platforms and sharing economy services have an unparalleled opportunity to demonstrate to Europe that they offer more than convenience and are not just engines for advertising and personal data collection. There’s an upside to data collection if everyone works together and uses it for socially beneficial purposes with proper safeguards. A collaboration with local communities and these services could transform the debate about social media and the disruptive innovation that new services have brought. Local authorities and tech companies need to step up and take the lead, not await orders from national capitals or Brussels. Perhaps a first step might be for the Council of European Municipalities and Regions (CEMR) to organise a meeting with social media platforms to see what can be done. Time is not our friend. When efforts at integration fail, the result is disenfranchised populations like those we see in the suburbs of Paris and Brussels. The good news is that getting integration right has a constellation of benefits for Europe’s aging populations and economies. Tech doesn’t need to be the silver bullet. It just needs to be a part of the solution.

Military campaigns in Iraq and Syria have re-taken territory from the Islamic State and damaged it in other ways, including its ability to finance military operations. As counter-attacks continue in the Middle East, the Islamic State’s activities in Africa, especially North Africa, are increasing. These activities include a defining characteristic of the Islamic State—its use of the Internet and social media to strengthen its control of territory and advance its extremist agenda. This aspect of the group’s efforts in Africa has garnered less interest than the number of its fighters in North Africa or its territorial foothold in Libya. However, the Islamic State is applying its online strategy in Africa, which raises questions about how to respond to this development. The Islamic State’s use of the Internet and social media to spread propaganda, radicalize individuals, and recruit adherents and fighters has produced a dangerous form of cyber-facilitated extremism. The Islamic State developed online strategies to augment its control of territory in Iraq and Syria—the central manifestation of its material power and an ideological cornerstone for its caliphate. The group exploited opportunities and vulnerabilities in cyberspace even in the Middle East, which is less integrated in global economic affairs and has lower Internet access and usage rates than other parts of the world. Policy efforts, including counter-messaging and counter-content strategies, have struggled against the Islamic State’s online offensive, struggles that informed the U.S. decision to launch military cyberattacks against the group’s online capabilities. The factors that explain the Islamic State’s cyber-facilitated extremism are appearing in Africa. The Islamic State seeks to control territory in Libya, an objective consistent with the increasing number of its fighters in North Africa. Following its online playbook, the Islamic State is trying to harness social media to strengthen its power and position in Libya. Other groups, particularly Al Shabab in Somalia and Boko Haram in Nigeria, are copying the Islamic State’s social media strategies. Such cyber-facilitated extremism is unfolding as African cyberspace undergoes rapid changes, including efforts to expand Internet access and increase use of social media. The 2016 Posture Statement from U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) underscores that factors associated with the Islamic State’s brand of cyber-facilitated extremism are emerging in Africa. AFRICOM’s commander, General David M. Rodriguez, identified the Islamic State’s expansion in Libya and its support for terrorist groups in Africa as a threat, highlighting that the Islamic State and African terrorist groups are investing in Internet and social media capabilities to spread their ideology and recruit supporters across Africa. General Rodriguez also described patterns that will affect how African cyberspace develops, including economic growth, urbanization, and a youth bulge (which will accelerate Internet access and use of social media) and entrenched political and economic problems that produce conditions across Africa ripe for violent extremism (which will increase extremist exploitation of cyberspace). For various reasons, the online aspects of violent extremism within Africa have not gained sustained policy attention. Some efforts, such as AFRICOM’s support for a counter-messaging campaign called Operation Objective Voice, lacked prominence and faced questions about its effectiveness. With the Islamic State bringing its cyber-facilitated extremism to the continent, the time has come to formulate better responses. In the 2016 AFRICOM Posture Statement, General Rodriguez argued that countering violent extremism in Africa requires “a comprehensive approach employing diplomacy, defense, and development” strategies. This comprehensive approach should also address the online activities of extremist groups in Africa. As a combatant command that integrates military and civilian capabilities, AFRICOM is well placed to focus on the threat of cyber-facilitated extremism in Africa. It can oversee military involvement in countering this transnational threat, support diplomatic efforts with and among African countries to address extremist exploitation of the Internet and social media, and identify how extremists might take advantage of trends and vulnerabilities that emerge as African cyberspace evolves, including through implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Countering cyber-facilitated extremism in Africa will differ from what has been attempted against the online activities the Islamic State has undertaken to bolster its position in the Middle East. The territorial losses it has sustained in Iraq and Syria damage the group’s message, and, despite problems, government and private-sector efforts are challenging and disrupting the cyber means the group has used to spread its message. Whatever happens in the Middle East, the Islamic State has blazed the online trail violent extremists in the digital age will seek to emulate around the world. With the Islamic State bringing its cyber-facilitated extremism to Africa and with African terrorist groups adopting the Islamic State’s online playbook, the need for a comprehensive approach to the cyber components of violent extremism in Africa is becoming a more pressing policy issue.

Lincoln Davidson is a research associate for Asia Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. Ever since Facebook was banned in China following riots in Xinjiang Province, China, in summer 2009, there has been speculation that the company is trying to regain access to the market, fueled by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s attempts to build connections with the Chinese government and business community. Most recently, Zuckerberg made a highly-publicized visit to China last month, meeting with Alibaba founder Jack Ma and Chinese Communist Party propaganda chief Liu Yunshan. But despite Zuckerberg’s efforts, Facebook isn’t likely to be successful in the Chinese market, even if the government unblocks it. It’s not clear that Chinese consumers even want the product Facebook has to offer, and U.S. tech firms have had a particularly difficult time making it in the Chinese market. For a deeper dig into the challenges Facebook is likely to face, check out my blog post on Net Politics.

Lincoln Davidson is a research associate for Asia Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. Last month, Chinese propaganda officials rushed to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s defense, ordering media to crack down on criticism of the tech entrepreneur. Interesting company for a man who has celebrated the power of the Internet to enable free speech. Zuckerberg was in China for meetings with Alibaba founder Jack Ma and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) censorship and propaganda chief Liu Yunshan. According to state media, Zuckerberg “spoke highly of the progress China has made in internet field [sic], saying he would work with Chinese peers to create a better world in cyberspace.” It would seem that this “better world” is one where Facebook isn’t blocked by the Chinese government, as Zuckerberg found ways to skirt the Great Firewall and post a picture on the social network of his jog past Tiananmen Square. Facebook has been blocked in China since 2009, over concerns that it could be used to organize anti-government protests. Zuckerberg has gone to great lengths to make friends among the country’s business and government elite, presumably in hopes that the ban might be lifted. He’s begun to learn Chinese, delivered Chinese New Year well-wishes in the language, and gave his daughter a Chinese name. He serves on the advisory board of the School of Economics and Management at Tsinghua University, one of China’s top schools. He’s given Lu Wei, director of the Cyberspace Administration of China, a tour of Facebook’s offices, telling Lu at the time that he’d bought copies of CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping’s book The Governance of China for some of his employees. It’s understandable that Zuckerberg wants Facebook to enter China: the country’s 660 million Internet users are an attractive market. But it’s not going to work. The evidence suggests that the Chinese market is not interested in the product Facebook has to offer. Despite the controls the government places on freedom of expression, China has a vibrant ecosystem of online communities. And yet, the social networks that are most popular among Chinese people are ones that look very different from Facebook. Microblogs, known as weibo in Chinese, function more similarly to Twitter than Facebook, and have about 200 million monthly active users. WeChat, by far the most popular social media platform in China, has 650 million monthly active users, most of whom are assumed to live in China. From the core service it started out as—a messaging app similar to WhatsApp—WeChat has grown into a whole digital ecosystem in a single app. It has integrated mobile payments that are utilized by a fifth of the app’s users. Companies and government agencies use official accounts to connect with consumers and citizens. WeChat’s “Moments” allow users to post pictures that can be viewed by their connections. Businesses have come to rely on WeChat groups for communication among team members, and the app’s maker is now looking into developing an enterprise version akin to Slack. Startups are even using WeChat as a platform for launching their own services. The app has become so ubiquitous that the average Chinese phone user sends just over one text message per day. The Chinese social network most similar to Facebook in both layout and the way in which users interact with each other, RenRen, has been losing users for years and seen the value of its stock decline by 80 percent since it listed on the NYSE in 2011. And while the decline of weibo in the face of WeChat’s meteoric rise suggests that Chinese users can be fickle when it comes to choosing a preferred social network, this shift occurred just as the government was clamping down on weibo. It might even be the case that adoption of WeChat was a pragmatic choice by netizens who understand the limits of censorship and seek to maximize their room for expression within the strictures set by the government. If this is the case, Facebook will have difficulty winning them over, as it would surely be the target of heightened government attention were it to ever be unblocked, given its foreign status and history of use by anti-regime protestors in the Middle East. But even if Chinese people do want the product Facebook has to offer, the fact that it’s not local is still a major barrier. The Chinese market is notoriously tricky for foreign companies to crack—particularly tech companies. There are a confluence of reasons that contribute to this difficulty. Opposition from regulators is a big one; the government’s stated objective of developing national champions creates incentives for officials to make life difficult for foreign entrants. Localizing is also not as straightforward as slapping a Chinese slogan on your product. The list of U.S. firms that have failed at this reads like a Menlo Park phonebook. Yahoo pulled out of China fully last March, unable to make headway. Microsoft’s Bing search engine managed to attract barely one percent of online searches in the country, and then just gave up completely, making competitor Baidu (which is used for 92 percent of searches in China) the default search engine on the company’s Edge Internet browser. Amazon’s China adventure played out similarly. Faced with entrenched competitors like Alibaba and JD (and, less frequently noted, e-book publishers like Yuewen Group), by the end of 2014, Amazon had a market share of just 1.3 percent. Even Uber, which garnered praise for hiring local managers when it entered the Chinese market, has had trouble in China. Uber has had to fight state regulators, who have repeatedly raided the company’s offices, and faces a losing battle against its main competitor, Didi Chuxing (formerly known as Didi Kuaidi) that has the backing of both Alibaba and Tencent, giants of the Chinese Internet. Didi completes about seven million rides each day, compared to Uber’s one million rides per day in China. While those numbers are likely inflated, there’s no question that Didi dominates the Chinese market. Uber CEO Travis Kalanick may be willing to bleed $1 billion per year (you read that right) fighting; how long his backers will accept that drain is a separate matter. Even if Facebook were to make it in the Chinese market, at what cost would it come, not only in cash but in reputation? Yahoo, Microsoft, Apple have all suffered from this. Any time there’s been even the slightest suggestion that American companies are involved in Chinese censorship efforts, they’ve been widely derided in the press. And companies that stand up to the CCP, as Google did when it decided to withdraw from China in 2010, have been praised. Is a market of 660 million Internet users worth the trouble? Mark Zuckerberg seems to think so. This history of Silicon Valley’s inroads into China suggests otherwise.

Reading selections for the weekend of February 26, 2016.

Xi Jinping is the gift that keeps on giving. Scarcely a week goes by in which he does not announce a new policy initiative or adopt some measure that reverberates around the world. I often find myself skimming the news anxiously to see “What has Xi Jinping done today?” Yet, increasingly, I find myself asking, not “what” but rather “why” he is doing what he is doing. This past week, the government released two policies (or re-released depending on your perspective): first, no foreign entity can independently publish anything online in China, and second, all the work of the Party’s media must protect and act on behalf of the Party. These, of course, are only the latest in a series of moves by the Xi leadership to restrict the range of information the Chinese people (and the outside world) can access and the range of independent thinking they can voice. What is behind Xi’s moves? Some outside observers have argued that a degree of political repression is necessary to push forward on economic reform. If you don’t think too deeply about this argument, it almost makes sense: too many disparate voices can muddy the message and delay implementation.  However, the development of a market economy relies on transparency and access to information—not to mention the rule of law—in order to function efficiently and develop the necessary trust among economic actors. In addition, as my friend Minxin Pei has written, the current leadership is prosecuting the anti-corruption campaign without transparency and the rule of law, leaving a trail of paranoia and paralysis in its wake and inculcating a culture of fear. Business deals are hampered, and reform efforts stall. Xi’s political objectives also appear ill-served by the crackdown. Placing your best and brightest in ever smaller boxes and limiting the ease with which they engage with the outside world will do little to enhance their creativity and ability to innovate. Advancing China’s soft power—another Xi priority—is also at risk. Political repression makes living and working in (not to mention emulating) China less likely and has already alienated citizens of Hong Kong and Taiwan. As one Chinese scholar recently noted in discussing Taiwan at a conference, China dominates Taiwan militarily and economically, but it is not winning the hearts and minds of the Taiwanese people. In fact, he noted, it is not winning the hearts and minds of people anywhere. What, then, does Xi want? Xi wants to construct his own political reality. Perhaps it is as David Bandurski put it: Xi wants a mirror that only reflects back what he wants to see, not reality. Alternatively, perhaps Xi sees reality but he is worried that if others see it, there will be growing doubt about the leadership’s capabilities, even more capital flight, and greater social unrest. He might be right. But if this leadership has learned anything from its recent engagement with the Chinese people on air pollution, it should be that no matter the official claims, the Chinese people recognize when the sky is blue and when it isn’t.

The Islamic State’s exploitation of the Internet and social media continues to bedevil U.S. policymakers, legislators, and tech companies. Problems with State Department efforts to counter Islamic State online propaganda have produced another overhaul of U.S. counter-messaging efforts. A legislative proposal in June 2015 to increase company reporting of online terrorist activity was dropped, but it reappeared after the San Bernardino terrorist attacks. Executive branch pressure on companies to do more against terrorist use of social media has increased, most recently in a meeting last month between federal officials and tech company leaders. Attention on the U.S. government’s struggles has overshadowed that terrorist online activities affect many countries. Meetings of the UN Security Council’s Counter-Terrorism Committee (CTC) in mid-December 2015, which I attended, focused on these global dimensions. The CTC Executive Directorate organized a technical meeting involving representatives from governments, civil society, and companies to discuss terrorist use of the Internet and social media. Then, the CTC held a special meeting for UN delegations and representatives from regional and international organizations to consider the technical meeting’s input and share perspectives on confronting this threat. The CTC has long addressed terrorist exploitation of information and communication technologies (ICTs). In Resolution 1624 (2005), for example, the Security Council urged UN member states to combat incitement to commit terrorist acts. In tracking implementation of this resolution, the CTC reported difficulties countries face mitigating online terrorist activities. However, the Islamic State increased this threat in ways the CTC has decided to address more directly. The December meetings were designed to inform “strategies to guide States and the private sector in their efforts to prevent terrorists from exploiting the Internet and social media to recruit terrorists and incite terrorist acts, while respecting human rights and fundamental freedoms.” The meetings were wide-ranging and populated with calls for more international cooperation. However, turning these calls into effective strategies confronts challenges because, beneath the diplomacy, tensions exist, including in the following areas: Strategic considerations Friction between support for government-led strategies, and preferences for multi-stakeholder approaches; Interest in more counterterrorism regulation of cyberspace, amidst warnings from human rights advocates about the dangers of further empowering governments to act under expansive notions of “terrorism;” Identification of the need to build global trust in fighting terrorism in cyberspace, against the backdrop of disagreements among governments--and between the public and private sectors--over Internet governance, cybersecurity, privacy, and freedom of expression; Support for the argument, made a UN official, that “the UN Charter and international human rights law form the basis for effective preventive and counter-terrorism measures,” contrasted with the sense that, so far, these instruments have not produced effective measures; and Interest in addressing online terrorism as a threat on its own terms, versus assertions that attacking the “root causes” of terrorism, which arise in the real world not cyberspace, is the only way to mitigate this problem sustainably. Role of the United States and U.S. companies Recognition of the importance of the United States, complicated by concerns that strict U.S. constitutional protection of freedom of speech, other federal laws, and the global dominance of U.S. social media companies inhibit international cooperation; and Frustration with U.S. social media companies, countered by claims the companies are acting appropriately with all stakeholders. Counter-content and counter-messaging approaches Gaps among governments, and between governments and companies, about what criteria should guide taking down content from online platforms on counterterrorism grounds; and Interest in more effective counter-messaging campaigns, versus skepticism global collaboration in this area can be cohesive, consistent, or achieve the scale and speed needed to have strategic impact against the Islamic State. Law enforcement issues Consensus that mutual legal assistance treaties (MLATs) need reform to support countering online terrorist activities, but without clear direction on how reform moves forward globally; and Statements from law enforcement officials that encryption poses a threat to their efforts against terrorism and crime, versus support for encryption from civil society and companies. These, and other, issues do not mean the CTC’s commitment to address terrorist use of the Internet and social media faces insurmountable obstacles. In concluding the special meeting, the chair stated the CTC would: Monitor terrorist use of the Internet, social media, and other emerging technologies; Identify and share good practices developed around the world; Continue to assess UN member states’ implementation of relevant Security Council resolutions, including those urging measures against incitement to terrorism; and Support governments, the private sector, and civil society in counter-messaging activities. Guided by the Security Council, the CTC will work to turn these commitments into strategies that, as its December meetings demonstrated, have not yet materialized amidst global reactions to the Islamic State’s online onslaught. Whether this onslaught confounds the Security Council and the CTC as it has the United States will now be determined.

President Obama’s address on the San Bernardino terrorist attack highlighted the challenges the United States faces in countering the Islamic State. With the exception of the U.S. debate about assault weapons, these challenges emerged for European countries after the Paris terrorist attacks. In both cases, the aftermath renewed interest in, and intensified controversies about, cyber policy. In his address, President Obama asserted that, after San Bernardino, his administration “will urge high-tech and law enforcement leaders to make it harder for terrorists to use technology to escape from justice.” Surveillance of Electronic Communications The Paris and San Bernardino attacks produced interest in expanding governmental power to conduct surveillance of electronic communications. This response to terrorist attacks is not new because it has been part of reactions to such attacks since 9/11. However, calls for expanded surveillance after Paris and San Bernardino arrive amidst unresolved debates in the United States and Europe about the effectiveness of enhanced surveillance for counter-terrorism and the damage heightened surveillance can inflict on privacy and the freedoms of opinion, expression, and association. Encryption of Digital Communications Although wrong, statements in the media that the Paris terrorists used encrypted communications agitated contentious discussions on both sides of the Atlantic about the threat encryption poses to law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Similarly, although no evidence has been made public that the perpetrators of the San Bernardino attack used encrypted communications, the attack has been inserted into the encryption policy maelstrom. The French government wants to act against encryption, and some suggest President Obama’s statement about making terrorist use of the Internet more difficult signals a harder line on encryption from the president. Any such move would reverse the administration’s decision not to pursue proposals to allow law enforcement and intelligence agencies access to encrypted communications. Terrorist Use of Social Media The Paris and San Bernardino attacks have again put the spotlight on the Islamic State’s use of social media to spread propaganda, radicalize individuals, recruit fighters for operations in Iraq and Syria, and encourage attacks by adherents in their home countries. Before these attacks, pressure was building for governments and companies to take more action against the Islamic State’s exploitation of social media. However, little consensus had emerged on what governments and corporations should do before the Paris and San Bernardino attacks underscored how serious yet confounding this problem is for democracies. U.S. government efforts to mount counter-narrative campaigns against Islamic State online activities have been criticized from within and outside the government as misguided and ineffective. The Paris and San Bernardino attacks can themselves be seen as evidence that actions by companies, such as more aggressive take down of content and accounts associated with the Islamic State, are not effective, while raising questions about the legitimacy and transparency of these activities. Strategic Frameworks for Addressing Cyber Policy Challenges The surveillance, encryption, and social media controversies demonstrate that cyber issues are embedded in counter-terrorism politics without agreement on how to address the cyber component of counter-terrorism policy. The Paris and San Bernardino attacks highlight the importance of debates about what strategic framework offers the best prospects for handling these cyber challenges. Briefly, there are three ways to frame these challenges strategically: We are at war with the Islamic State, and war requires extraordinary measures at home, abroad, and in cyberspace to defeat the enemy. This government-dominated approach supports expanded surveillance, denying terrorists the benefits of encryption, and heightened demands on social media companies to contribute more effectively to the fight against the Islamic State. We should approach the cyber elements of the conflict with the Islamic State as a counter-insurgency campaign against violent extremism. (I wrote about this idea in March, as did CFR adjunct senior fellow Jared Cohen in the most recent Foreign Affairs.) As Cohen argued, a “digital counterinsurgency” requires “a broad coalition to marginalize the Islamic State online: from governments and companies to nonprofits and international organizations.” We should defeat the Islamic State’s abuse of cyberspace by emphasizing the primary responsibilities of technology companies and their users for countering the online activities of violent extremists. This approach does not involve empowering governments to interfere with the online world or “militarizing” the cyber components of the conflict with the Islamic State. Instead, the onus rests on companies and consumers to work together to mitigate the manipulation of social media for terrorist purposes. The Paris and San Bernardino attacks are still too recent for strategic and policy clarity to have emerged, so debates here and around the world will continue. The Counter-Terrorism Committee established by the UN Security Council after the 9/11 attacks is holding a special meeting on preventing terrorists from exploiting the Internet and social media on December 16-17 as part of this search for effective and legitimate ways to respond to violent extremism’s online offensive. Stay tuned.

A dangerous ideological current is coursing through the intellectual circuit, a political conviction dressed up as an empirical theory. Its proponents argue that public funding of basic scientific research is, at best, a waste of money and, at worst, an actively counterproductive endeavor that crowds out the private sector’s innovative instincts. And the institutions in the crosshairs of these broadsides are U.S. research universities, the country’s most valuable assets in a global economy driven by innovation. A Backward Theory of Innovation Last week, Matt Ridley wrote in The Wall Journal that “the linear dogma so prevalent in the world of science and politics—that science drives innovation, which drives commerce—is mostly wrong. It misunderstands where innovation comes from. Indeed, it generally gets it backward.” He continues, “technological advances are driven by practical men who tinkered until they had better machines; abstract scientific rumination is the last thing they do.” That is, the private sector’s inventions drive research in basic science, not the other way around. Similarly, Lev Grossman’s Time Magazine cover article, an encomium to start-ups commercializing fusion reactors, quotes an entrepreneur disdainful of university research: “Fusion is in the end an application, right? The problem with fusion typically is that it’s driven by science, which means you take the small steps.”  Crystallizing this conception of methodically misguided public research seeking to understand basic science, Grossman asserts, “Understanding is all well and good, in an ideal world, but the real world is getting less ideal all the time. The real world needs clean power and lots of it.” This strain of virulent vitriol against basic scientific inquiry hit home over the weekend when I spoke with a champion of university research, Stanford University President John Hennessy. Mulling his legacy, President Hennessy glowed with pride, noting that Stanford can count more Nobel Laureates over his fifteen-year tenure than any other university. But he warned that uncertainty over future federal research support to universities poses a grave risk to the prolific advances that have helped Stanford fuel the Silicon Valley innovation engine. Indeed, as the figure below illustrates, federal spending on basic university research has declined in real terms since the one-time windfall of President Obama’s 2009 stimulus package. And depending on the outcome of the 2016 election, further cuts could loom large. Source: National Science Foundation Nonlinear ≠ Linear in Reverse! Writing a timely rejoinder to Ridley in The Guardian, Jack Stilgoe concurs that innovation is nonlinear. But he correctly calls out Ridley for making the leap that just because basic science does not linearly advance innovation, the reverse must be true: namely, that private innovation must therefore drive basic science. Reality is considerably more complicated, and Ridley’s fantasy world of basic research following in the wake of private inventions is as simplistic as the linear model he derides. Innovation is, in fact, nonlinear. The path from basic science to commercial product can span decades, traverse disciplinary boundaries, and meander back and forth between academia and industry. Nevertheless, the causal role of university research is indisputable: it provides a theoretical framework and a body of empirical observations that constrain an otherwise intractably vast option space for innovation. Here’s a concrete example. In my field—solar power—hordes of chemists and materials engineers tweak the chemical compositions and production processes of semiconductors, hoping to make a solar material that converts more sunlight into electricity. In Ridley’s universe, privately funded scientists would iterate and see what works, making an evolutionary series of tweaks that make more and more efficient solar panels. Later on, university scientists can tinker away, trying to figure out why what worked actually worked. This is a monumentally foolish idea and, frankly, one of the reasons why so many solar start-ups went bust. I’ve worked in companies under pressure from investors to deliver results, and I’ve witnessed scientists taking shortcuts to improve device performance without understanding the underlying physics—in fact, I was guilty of doing this myself. We would run experiments without a clear theoretical reason, and our new devices wouldn’t behave better or worse but simply, differently. Lost in an unending wilderness of data without the compass of prior scholarship, we would invariably retrace our steps and bemoan the wasted effort.[1] By contrast, university research is obsessed with questions that start with why and only occasionally apply the test of so what? Now, this can be problematic, and I’ve written before that scientific curiosity alone is not sufficient to develop real-world clean energy technologies. For example, most performance  records for emerging solar power technologies—including perovskites, quantum dots, organics, etc.—are held by publicly funded universities and research laboratories. Absent practical product development, at which industry excels, to complement fundamental scientific inquiry, these technologies may languish in laboratories. But eliminating university research will ensure that those solar materials never see the light of day, rejecting a necessary condition for innovation because of its insufficiency. I worry that support for science, and clean energy research in particular, could fall victim to complacent confidence in the autonomous advances of innovation.  Speaking out forcefully in favor of expanded public research and development funding for clean energy, Bill Gates recently pronounced, “We need an energy miracle.” To get there, he advocates tripling government funding for basic energy research to $18 billion per year. Doing the opposite—cutting public funding for university research to give the private sector running room—will make any energy miracle a pipe dream. [1] Academic scholarship from the early 20th century continues to guide innovation in solar technology today. Researchers still design experiments, craft mathematical models, and troubleshoot puzzling results by falling back on the quantum theory of solids, which Bloch, Peierls, and Wilson established by the mid- 1930s in European research universities.