In 1997, when the Internet was young and many fields were still an unbroken green, the United States Institute of Peace convened a conference on virtual diplomacy. In my writeup for the Telegraph, I saw that organizer Bob Schmitt had convened two communities – computer and diplomacy – who were both wondering how they could get the other to collaborate but had no common ground.
On balance, the computer folks, who saw a potential market as well as a chance to do some good, were probably more eager than the diplomats, who favored caution and understood that in their discipline speed was often a bad idea. They were also less attracted than one might think to the notion of virtual meetings despite the travel it would save. Sometimes, one told me, it’s the random conversations around the water cooler that make plain what’s really happening. Why is Brazil mad? In a virtual meeting, it may be harder to find out that it’s not the negotiations but the fact that their soccer team lost last night.
I thought at the time that the conference would be the first of many to tackle these issues. But as it’s turned out, I’ve never been at an event anything like it…until now, nearly 30 years later. This week, a group of diplomats and human rights advocates met, similarly, to consider how the cyber world is changing diplomacy and international relations.
The timing is unexpectedly fortuitous. This week’s revelation that someone added Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg to a Signal chat in which US cabinet officials discussed plans for an imminent military operation in Yemen shows the kinds of problems you get when you rely too much on computer mediation. In the usual setting, a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF), you can see exactly who’s there, and communications to anyone outside that room are entirely blocked. As a security clearance-carrying friend of mine said, if he’d made such a blunder he’d be in prison.
The Signal blunder was raised by almost every speaker. It highlights something diplomats think about a lot: who is or is not in the room. Today, as in 1997, behavioral cues are important; one diplomat estimated that meeting virtually costs you 50% to 60% of the communication you have when meeting face-to-face. There are benefits, too, of course, such as opening side channels to remote others who can advise on specific questions, or the ability to assemble a virtual team a small country could never afford to send in person.
These concerns have not changed since 1997. But it’s clear that today’s diplomats feel they have less choice about what new technology gets deployed and how than they did then, when the Internet’s most significant predecessor new technology was the global omnipresence of news network CNN, founded in 1980. Now, much of what control they had then is disappearing, both because human behavior overrides their careful, rulebound, friction-filled diplomatic channels and processes via shadow IT, but also because the biggest technology companies own so much of what we call “public” infrastructure.
Another key difference: many people don’t see the need for education to learn facts; it’s a particular problem for diplomats, who rely on historical data to show the world they aspire to build. And another: today a vastly wider array of actors, from private companies to individuals and groups of individuals, can create world events. And finally: in 1997 multinational companies were already challenging the hegemony of governments, but they were not yet richer and more powerful than countries.
Cue for a horror thought: what if Big Tech, which is increasingly interested in military markets, and whose products are increasingly embedded at the hearts of governments decide that peace is bad for business? Already they are allying with politicians to resist human rights principles, most notably privacy.
Which cues another 1997 memory: Nicholas Negroponte absurdly saying that the Internet would bring world peace by breaking down national borders. In 20 years, he said (that would be eight years ago) children would not know what nationalism is. Instead, on top of all today’s wars and internal conflicts, we’re getting virtual infrastructure attacks more powerful than bullets, and proactive agents fueled by large language models. And all fueled by the performative-outrage style of social media, which is becoming just how people speak, publicly and privately.
All this is more salient when you listen to diplomats and human rights activists as they are the ones who see up close the human lives lost. Meta’s name comes up most often, as in Myanmar and Ethiopia.
The mood was especially touchy because a couple of weeks ago a New Zealand diplomat was recalled after
“You say the wrong thing on the wrong platform at the wrong time, and your career is gone,” one observed. Their people perimeter is gone, as it has been for so many of us for a decade or more. But more than most people, diplomats who don’t have trust have nothing. And so: “We’re in a time when a single message can up-end relationships.”
No surprise, then, that the last words reflected 1997’s conclusion: “Diplomacy is still a contact sport.”
Illustrations: Internet meme rewriting Wikipedia’s Alice and Bob page explaining man-in-the-middle attacks with the names Hegseth, Waltz, and Goldberg, referencing the Signal snafu.
Wendy M. Grossman is the 2013 winner of the Enigma Award. Her Web site has an extensive archive of her books, articles, and music, and an archive of earlier columns in this series. She is a contributing editor for the Plutopia News Network podcast. Follow on Mastodon or Bluesky.
