The Internet Versus Democracy

Jan 20, 2021 Stephen S. Roach

In an era of mounting social and political instability in the United States, internet-enabled connectivity is powerfully amplifying an increasingly polarized national discourse. The resulting vulnerability was brought into painfully sharp focus on January 6.

NEW HAVEN – Plenty has been said, and rightfully so, about the violent insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6. Politicians are grappling with issues of legal and moral accountability. But the horrific events also touch on a critical contradiction of modern societies: the internet’s role as an instrument of democracy’s destruction.

It was not supposed to be this way. The internet’s open architecture has long been extolled by cyber-libertarian futurists as a powerful new democratizing force. Information is free and available instantaneously – and anyone can now vote with a mere click.

The rapid expansion of the public square is offered as exhibit A. Internet penetration went from 1% to 87% of the US population from 1990 to 2018, far outstripping the surge in the world as a whole from zero to 51% over the same period. The United States, the world’s oldest democracy, led the charge in embracing new technologies of empowerment.

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Stephen S. Roach

Writing for PS since 2011
142 Commentaries

Stephen S. Roach, a faculty member at Yale University and former chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia, is the author of Unbalanced: The Codependency of America and China (Yale University Press, 2014) and the forthcoming Accidental Conflict: America, China, and the Clash of False Narratives (Yale University Press, November 2022).

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Marc Tristant Feb 20, 2021

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j. von Hettlingen Feb 2, 2021

Stephen S. Roach, a China apologist, believes libertarianism and “internet-enabled connectivity” were responsible “for amplifying an increasingly polarized national discourse,” which had in recent years contributed to the “mounting social and political instability” in the US. Even amid a raging pandemic, many Americans still adhere to a political philosophy and movement that upholds liberty as a core principle. Libertarians seek to maximise autonomy and political freedom, emphasizing free association, freedom of choice, individualism and voluntary association.
At the same time, the violent insurrection at the Capitol on January 6 raised the awareness of “a critical contradiction of modern societies: the internet’s role as an instrument of democracy’s destruction.”
It is true that the internet is an amazing tool. Its “open architecture has long been extolled by cyber-libertarian futurists as a powerful new democratizing force. Information is free and available instantaneously – and anyone can now vote with a mere click.” However, as a double-edged sword, it has also its “dark side,” which has become “impossible to ignore,” especially in our “Western model of open-ended connectivity.”
It is widely known that the US, the world’s oldest democracy, had “led the charge in embracing new technologies of empowerment.” As a result, the internet “has given rise to platforms for trade in illicit drugs, pornography, and pedophilia. It has also fueled political extremism, social polarization, and now attempted insurrection. The virtues of cyber-libertarianism have become inseparable from its vices.” It is very sad indeed, and it does not have to be this way.
The author says, “the problem, of course, lies in internet governance – namely, the absence of rules. Even as we extol the virtues” of the digital world, its “vices” had come back to haunt us. He is full of praise for the “Chinese model, which provides a stark contrast,” because it seeks to promote an alternative cyber governance regime. Beijing is determined to become a cyber superpower, eager to write norms and standards that would shape the global internet.
According to Adam Segal of CFR, Chinese leaders want to maintain a tight grip over the flow of information to ensure domestic stability, regime legitimacy, and the continued rule of the Communist Party. They want to reduce security vulnerabilities in critical networks and defend the country against a range of cyber operations, including espionage as well as disruptive and destructive attacks. They want to ensure technological autonomy, diminish reliance on foreign suppliers, and help Chinese companies dominate markets in emerging technologies. Finally, China seeks to expand its influence over cyberspace and limit the room for maneuver for the US and its allies.
It explains why China’s “censorship-intensive approach to internet governance is anathema to free societies. The state (or the Communist Party) not only restricts public discourse but favors surveillance over privacy. For China, governance is all about social, economic, and, ultimately, political stability.” No wonder the US, “as a self-proclaimed bastion of democracy….. obviously doesn’t see it that way. Censorship of any sort is viewed with abject scorn.”
The author says Americans now see the power of “internet-enabled social and political mobilization - first evident in Iran’s 2009 Green Movement and then in the Arab Spring of 2011.” The only difference is that protesters in authoritarian Iran and Arab countries “were on the outside looking in, yearning for democracy. In the US, the attack on the citadel of democracy came from within, sparked by the president himself. This raises important questions about America’s own stability imperatives – and the failures of internet governance in revealing them.”
The author seems to be convinced that amid the ongoing global pandemic, the “Chinese-style surveillance” seems to prove more efficient than “cyber-libertarianism.” He urges the West to learn from China’s success: “There have been only minor outbreaks following the initial surge in Wuhan” a year ago.
He says libertarianism is to blame for "the potential breakdown of order in a free society. It’s not that China has it right. It’s that we may have it wrong. Unfortunately, today’s hyper-polarization makes it exceedingly difficult to find a middle ground."
Yet there are countries that have managed the Covid-19 pandemic well, without being governed by an authoritarian regime. The US had failed to contain the virus under Trump. He had encouraged people to defy health safety measure. This has little to do with libertarianism but stupidity.
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Rajiv Chopra Jan 25, 2021

What we need is social, economic, and political stability. The question is - how?
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Genevieve genevieve253@gmail.com Jan 24, 2021

Interesting insights and comparisons, just the read I was looking for to understand the role and requirements of superpower Countries in the world.
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Vladimir Rojankovski Jan 21, 2021

One little remark – this is an annoying widespread mistake: “ The United States, the world’s oldest democracy” One may call the U.S. greatest democracy – but definitely NOT the oldest one. The oldest democracy is Ancient Greeks!
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Michael Public Jan 21, 2021

"...The Western model of open-ended connectivity has given rise to platforms for trade in illicit drugs, pornography, and pedophilia..." Only someone who does not use the internet thinks these things are commonplace - just TRY (in America) to buy illegal drugs or pedophilia on the regular internet - you will find yourself quickly caught by law enforcement. You have to go onto 'the dark web' for that, and that is not part of the internet, even though it uses the same physical cable system for communications. In China, dark webs exist too, they are not easily stopped just like in the prohibition backyard distilling was hard to stop.
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Godfree Roberts Jan 20, 2021

While his observations on international economics are invaluable, politics and governance are not Steve Roach's fortes. Take, for example these two naive statements:

1. "The United States, the world’s oldest democracy”. The US was designed and constituted to NOT be a democracy, as Noam Chomsky says, “The US Constitution was framed to thwart the democratic aspirations of most of the public.. It was a “Framers’ Coup” against the democratic aspirations of most of the public — the title of Michael Klarman’s impressive study of the making of the Constitution, generally regarded as the “gold standard” in the scholarly literature”. Gilens and Page's Princeton Study, 'U.S. No Longer An Actual Democracy' provides the empirical data to buttress Chomsky's point.

2. "The Chinese model provides a stark contrast. Its censorship-intensive approach to internet governance is anathema to free societies. The state (or the Communist Party) not only restricts public discourse but favors surveillance over privacy. For China, governance is all about social, economic, and, ultimately, political stability. As a self-proclaimed bastion of democracy, America obviously doesn’t see it that way".

The Chinese model is 2200 years old and has always prioritized stability (as do all governments in all times). Their Chief Censor has usually been the country's leading public intellectual, as he is today. He is a TV star, former Berkeley Professor of Law, best-selling author, and member of the six-man Steering Committee. He's always responding to questions and criticisms about censorship and his comments are always enlightening.

Though the Chinese bitch and moan about censorship (youngsters call it oppressive; their parents say it’s balanced; their grandparents say it’s way too permissive), the end result of their public censorship is that 80% of them trust their media.

Having allowed public information to be privatized, we conceal our censorship, and even deny it.

The result? Just 6 percent of Americans* say they have a lot of confidence in the media, putting the news industry about equal to Congress and well below the public’s view of other institutions.

As to Roach's allegation that the State 'favors surveillance over privacy,' so do 95% of Chinese. 'Privacy' (an illusion in any case and especially so in this digital age) is an obsession of our adolescent society and protection of it is a manifestation of our justifiable distrust of our wretched government–a distrust the Chinese do not share.

*Media Insight Project, a partnership of The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the American Press Institute. The poll of 2,014 adults was conducted Feb. 18-March 21 with funding from the American Press Institute. It used a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 2.9 percentage points. Respondents were first selected randomly using address-based sampling methods, and later interviewed online or by phone).
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Prashant Kotak Jan 20, 2021

The author states, explicitly, that what is missing from cyberspace in the free world is rules. Unstated but implicit in this, is the premise that governance should be possible if some appropriate framework of rules were superimposed. This, I posit, is debatable.

The Chinese have managed to keep a lid on their internal cyberspace, not by creating 'rules', but by operating a high-surveillance dystopia. The distinction is critical. Coercion is always possible, for a period anyway. China's success is based on the fact that the outside cyberworld has been shut out (The Great Firewall) and that anyone logging on to their internal cyberspace is required to identify themselves via facial recognition tech or other means - everyone and everything tracked in effect. Additionally, the CCP has direct hooks into the companies that produce both the software and the hardware that the majority of Chinese are coaxed into using. It is highly likely that the versions of Android that go on devices for internal Chinese consumption are doctored to allow the government to spy on the people operating the devices if required. Ditto the hardware produced in China. All this is not so easy to circumvent for the vast majority of people, although not impossible. But China is playing the percentages - just as it did during the pandemic. There are many things the CCP is very practiced and competent at, and one of them is suppression - be it of it's own people, or of information, or of viruses.

Anyway, a couple of very simple examples below, posing fundamental questions about the governance of tech. I'm asking the direct question: show me you can present a framework of rules and regulations that would present realistic solutions to these examples. As in, regulations that can be policed and enforced, not just laws that will be made by governments but will be ignored and bypassed by millions around the world. If you can't, then there is no basis to claim that *any* governance of tech will ultimately work. Because I can if challenged, present dozens of such scenarios, ever more complex, shining a searchlight on the nature of money and trade, and the unspoken human scale assumptions that have underpinned societies prior to the rise of ubiquitous computation, that have now been blown out of the water by algorithmic technologies - through the unbounded speed and scaling of replication, decision-making, transmission and so on.

(i) Bitcoin. Bitcoin came into being over a decade ago when its creator (or creators) conjured up literally tens of billions out of thin air. Yet, we cannot even *identify* the originators or how much of the original holding they are still sitting on, and in which jurisdiction, much less tax them. And how will you prevent ever more sophisticated, and private counter-currencies from forming that will potentially bypass all taxation and threaten the very notion of modern nationhood?

(ii) Porn. In over two decades of the internet, it has proven impossible to keep online porn out of the reach of minors, even in autocratically governed places like Arabia or (until recently) China. This is not because nations are fond of the idea of allowing access to porn to minors, it is because both prevention and policing are damn near impossible. The UK came close to putting into place regulation of the wild west that is the porn industry by requiring age verification, and then backed off. I think it eventually dawned on someone in government that the chances of actually being able to police porn on a global scale to prevent the UK popuation from accessing whatever it likes is… precisely zero.

And to me this illustrates the near-futility of believing that digital regs like GDPR etc are going to be even remotely effective. Because I don't think they are, no matter how many laws the EU and other governments pass. My point is, show me it is possible to top-shelf online-porn without creating a 24/7 big-brother dystopia, and I will believe cyberspace can be regulated, otherwise there is no basis for such a belief.
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Jian Chyun Shen Jan 20, 2021

With similar cultural and technological developments, US is far advanced than EU countries in sinking into a dysfunctional government. In addition to internet governance, may be population civility education?
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Sven Zagala Jan 20, 2021

Neither the state nor the big tech should own my personal data. It’s my data.
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