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In 2009 it became obvious – for American diplomats anyway – that Washington was in a unique position to exploit the fact that so many of Silicon Valley companies were uncontested leaders in so many markets and that so many civic and political activism was emerging in those digital spaces. In 2010 American diplomats squandered such opportunities by unnecessarily politicizing this space, alerting their very opponents of the political uses to which the Internet can be put (e.g. making contact with Twitter during the protests in Iran – which I take to be the worst possible intervention into digital matters by the US government ever). In 2011, we’ll be seeing all sorts of pushback against the very Silicon Valley companies that were previously thought to be largely unpolitical market leaders. Everyone was fine with Google being the most popular search engine in their country until Washington began acting as if Google’s market leadership may also be politically expedient (which, of course, it’s not – but claiming otherwise makes for great newspaper copy).

Hence all the recent fuss over “information sovereignty”; whatever the actual circumstances, cyberspace is perceived to be strategically important as long as Washington treats it as such. Of course, as far as Washington is concerned, this entire “21st century statecraft” business may be just a rhetorical trick – but the problem is that from the perspective of foreign governments, especially if they are hostile to America, such tricks would almost always demand strict countermeasures. And those countermeasures would inevitable backfire on those who have signed up to use such services. None of this looks very pleasant, does it?

Iran to search for WMDs on its own, thank you | Net Effect