“Panopticons and Chokepoints,” an interview with Richard Byrne

A new view of international relations puts global networks – and how they can be weaponized – at its center. What’s the future of regulation in this new landscape?

“The debate we see at the moment is never going to be about trade and open markets in the same kind of way anymore,” says Farrell. “Once the door has been opened to thinking about these things in terms of their consequences for security, different actors will enter into the scene and begin to gobble up this policy area that you think is defined in these terms, and start redefining in it in very different ways indeed…. We’re not going back to where we were – and once you’ve opened up the door to these kinds of concerns, they are going to metastasize through the entire system.

Access the full interview at the Wilson Quarterly

Other Writing:

Essay

Our Hackable Political Future The New York Times with Rick Perlstein

Imagine it is the spring of 2019. A bottom-feeding website, perhaps tied to Russia, “surfaces” video of a sex scene starring an 18-year-old Kirsten Gillibrand. It is soon debunked as a fake, the product of a user-friendly video application that employs generative adversarial network technology to convincingly swap out one face for another. It is ...
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Chapter in an Edited Volume

The Invisible Transformation of the Co-decision Procedure: Problems of Democratic Legitimacy, Institutional Challenges in Post-Constitutional Europe: Governing Change eds. Catherine Moury and Luis de Sousa – with Adrienne Hèritier

The relationship between Council and Parliament within the codecision procedure involves a plethora of informal and semi-formal meetings in which many of the real decisions about legislation are taken, with little scope for public oversight. In the light of the current debate on the future of European Union, the report will address the question what ...
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