The Foreign Service Journal, June 2018

Technology and Diplomacy From the FSJ Archive involved in foreign affairs. A chief of mission’s success would be judged on how well the interlocking teamworked. Technically, more will be possible in the future. The unresolved issue is how the real world of managing national security policy can be adapted to deal with the cyber revolution, and how to prevent the traditional hierarchy from being transformed into a computerized kind of anarchy that would badly serve the nation and its embassy personnel. —From “Chugging Up the Onramp of the Info Interstate,” by Jim Anderson, in the March 1995 Foreign Service Journal. Bringing Foreign Affairs to the Home PC Internet had helped bring international affairs to Main Street. For the average American with a home computer, foreign affairs is no longer only for academia and Washington bureaucrats. By using PCs to retrieve U.S. foreign policy documents from government agencies and to chat on the hundreds of international affairs bul- letin boards, Net surfers are making foreign policy more a part of daily life for the average American than ever before in U.S. history. —From “In Navigating the Internet, All Roads Lead to D.C.,” by Dan Kubiske, in the March 1995 Foreign Service Journal. National Authority in the Digital Age I do not believe that the digital revolution heralds the end of the nation-state. It will, however, compromise the ability of a state to exert its domestic authority through jurisdiction over its geo- graphic territory. It will also change the state’s role in the interna- tional political economic system: Technology will empower civil society advocacy groups to become significant actors in interna- tional politics. A caveat is important here: The digital age is brand-new. We are witnesses to its birth and understand very little about what is happening, much less what will happen in the future. At this point prediction is difficult, if not impossible. What we can do is to imagine possible futures and think systematically about how they might affect us. The Internet simultaneously provides the potential for both Automation and the Foreign Service The technology of automation will profoundly influence the work of the Foreign Service in the 1970s. The key elements of this change will be: 1) fast, cheap, direct satellite communications; 2) large computer data banks in Washington, and in a few regional posts abroad; 3) simplified and low maintenance computer terminals and classified long-distance Xerox facilities or similar equipment linking the department with most posts. The principal challenge posed by automation in the 1970s is not technical. The real problem is our ability to anticipate and exploit the potential opportunities offered by automation. Inevi- tably, we shall have to examine our personnel needs, our way of doing business, and our customary approaches to problems. The challenge is a worthy one. —From “Automation and the Foreign Service,” by FSOThomas M. Tracy, in the March 1971 Foreign Service Journal. The Computer Generation Since those innocent days of sailing ship communication, the business of diplomacy can be divided into several eras, all defined by technology: the advent of radio, telegraph and telephone, which linked overseas missions to Washington; the invention of the jet engine, which made it easier for leaders and diplomats to conduct face-to-face negotiations; and the simultaneous arrival of communications satellites and computers, binding the entire worldwide diplomatic apparatus into a real-time web that is as accessible as the screen of the nearest personal computer. Of those changes, the last—now in its early bloom—may have the most profound impact on the management of foreign policy and the shape of the Foreign Service. There are already signs that the classic management system of the State Department and embassies has begun to flatten and widen, bringing in more people earlier in the policy-making process. This represents a seismic change in the most tradition- bound of the government services. Under the new thinking, the embassy’s primary purpose would be to create a platform, supporting the work of all the agencies ON CYBER DIPLOMACY FOCUS THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JUNE 2018 35