The Foreign Service Journal, June 2018

30 JUNE 2018 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL the choices we make now and over the next few years will deter- mine whether we can all benefit from this amazing technology, or whether growing policy and technical threats will undermine its incredible potential. Achieving the future we want will require continued high-level attention and a significant, sustained effort. Diplomacy has and must continue to play a pivotal role— shaping the environment, building cooperation and working to build coalitions to respond to shared threats—and we must continue to lead the international community. Much needs to be done to advance stability and norms, bolster deterrence, respond to threats, build partnerships, uphold human rights online and advance fair economic access. Much more needs to be done, as well, to deal with existing and future hybrid threats— including combined cyber-enabled threats that attempt to undermine our democracy. Achieving progress on these issues requires a recommit- ment by the State Department that cyber issues are a foreign policy priority for the Secretary of State. Creating a new bureau is a good first step, but that bureau needs to report through a high-level, neutral reporting chain—not one that only has a narrow perspective on the cross-cutting issues involved. Indeed, pigeonholing these issues in one functional chain—as the cur- rent department proposal suggests doing through the economic under secretary—would not give full voice to the important national security and human rights aspects of the portfolio. If anything, it would hamper efforts to mainstream these issues across the entire department. A commitment to these issues must also be backed up with adequate funding and resources. For example, capacity building funds have been zeroed out despite the dividends that even small expenditures have paid in bolstering our own security. Cyber diplomacy is the quintessential 21st-century issue of our foreign policy, encompassing cutting-edge issues of human rights, security and economic policy. The United States virtually created this new field, and an ever-increasing number of countries have followed our lead. We should not stop now; instead we need to redouble our efforts. Too much time has already been lost. n The United States virtually created this new field of cyber diplomacy, and an ever-increasing number of countries have followed our lead.