“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

Promoting Norms for Cyberspace

The United States defined its preferred cyberspace norms—Internet openness, security, liberty, free speech, and with minimal government oversight and surveillance—in its 2011 International Strategy for Cyberspace. Although the United States has had little success so far in establishing norms against commercial espionage in cyberspace, it has had some early gains with the recognition that international ...
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Essay

What If These Economic Weapons Fall into Trump’s Hands? – with Abraham Newman

The Biden administration has built an unprecedented machine for economic and technological coercion. When Russia invaded Ukraine, the United States and its allies cut off Russia’s access to its own central bank reserves held outside Russia. The administration revamped export controls to strangle China’s access to the powerful and specialized semiconductors needed to train A.I., ...
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