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- 050.12 Opening Doors in the Global Village
- by Dr. Ross Alan Stapleton *
-
- The enactment of the High Performance Computing and Communications
- Initiative (HPCCI) brings us closer to the realization of a National
- Research and Education Network (NREN); for all its endorsement as a means
- to enhance national technological competitiveness the NREN will be just a
- part of a "technology without boundaries," as one of the most important
- stretches of a global information superhighway. This global network will
- raise numerous policy questions--easy access to information and computing
- resources despite national boundaries will turn previous export control
- conventions on their heads. But we're likely to gain far more than we'll
- lose should we pursue an aggressive policy of networking with the world's
- scientific communities, and use the information highways as policy tools.
-
- It is in the US national interest to keep a finger on the pulse of
- global science, and the technologies advancing in a hundred countries
- worldwide. Forty years ago the US was comparatively isolated; we sat on
- our side of the Atlantic with our experts and invented the hydrogen bomb
- and the intercontinental ballistic missile, while the Soviets sat on
- their side and did the same. We spied on each other, and much of the
- information that flowed between our technological communities came through
- the diplomatic "networks" of embassies and consulates. Today the balance
- has tipped dramatically toward the empowerment of nongovernmental
- organizations and individuals, and the government is more dependent on the
- private sector than ever before--to judge by recent events in the Persian
- Gulf, CNN is arguably one of the US government's most important current
- information sources. Empowered individuals in the former USSR, meanwhile,
- have, with simple message-passing protocols, PCs and the switched telephone
- system, built a sprawling and fast-growing network--RELCOM--that now links
- hundreds of computers and thousands of computers from the Baltics to the
- Caucasus to Eastern Siberia.
-
- The considered, in-depth assessments the government will require to
- ensure the national security will require something more than CNN;
- the government should maintain its human network of attaches and
- counselors with their direct access to foreign science and technology.
- Each diplomatic position the US staffs abroad is expensive, however: to
- keep a single science attache in Moscow costs on the order of a hundred
- thousand dollars per year above and beyond his or her salary, and much more
- in places like Tokyo. A leased communications line to bridge between the
- extensive US domestic networks and the RELCOM network radiating out from
- Moscow is no more expensive than that solitary individual, and could
- instantly pull two whole communities substantially closer.
-
- The networks may also be the cheapest means of enabling the sort of
- citizen diplomacy called for by President Bush in May of 1990; the context
- was the opportunity to move into the vacuum left in Eastern Europe by the
- retreat of the USSR, and the opportunities today, with the collapse of the
- Soviet Union itself, are even greater. The cynic might interpret the call
- for citizen diplomacy as a desire to pass the buck on foreign aid, but one
- can also discern the reality that private individuals and groups are being
- empowered as never before, by the information technologies. We could take
- up such a challenge, in collaboration with government, for our mutual
- benefit.
-
- We ought to step back and define a modern information technology foreign
- policy in light of the new political and technological realities--to weigh
- in with any consideration of the consequences of exporting networking
- technologies the very real gains that might be made through strengthening
- the bonds between the electronic communities, and affording ourselves
- better access to the rest of the world.
-
- *The author is with the Central Intelligence Agency. This material has been
- reviewed by the CIA to assist the author in eliminating classified information,
- if any; however, that review neither constitutes CIA authentication of material
- nor implies CIA endorsement of the author's views.
-