The Foreign Service Journal, June 2021

22 JUNE 2021 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL critical infrastructure demonstrates our vulnerabilities and holds us at-risk for potential future coercive actions. Penetrating defense networks distracts and impairs U.S. governmental and military operations, requiring time and resources to respond and recover. The competition is not just about power, however; it is also about values. Cyberspace has emerged as a major arena of conflict between liberal and illiberal forces across the globe. The internet arose in America under mixed public-private gover- nance and grew alongside an ideology of personal freedom. For this very reason, autocratic regimes feared that digital-age capabilities would empower civil society and undermine their hold on power. The Arab Spring confirmed these fears and dem- onstrated the existential threat posed by information freedom. Those regimes responded by proliferating tools, ideas and tech- nologies to undermine the values and rules-based international order that democratic countries have sought to establish. Regimes in China and Russia oppose an open internet and protections against state interference with individual liberties. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton warned a decade ago that they are creating censored networks that erode civil society and imposing authoritarian rules of information exchange and exploitation. Beijing is determined to bring technology ecosys- tems in line with the Chinese Communist Party’s authoritarian values, shaping mandates and agendas in standards bodies and international organizations; employing economic tactics that undermine competitors to their technology companies; and redefining cybersecurity as protection from unwelcome news and views. Meanwhile, both Russia and China exploit open networks and platforms to erode democratic institutions in the West. These challenges will only grow as emerging digital tech- nologies—sensors, information and communication technolo- gies, artificial intelligence tools and quantum tools—become new focal points for strategic competition. That competition pits against each other two models of world order (democracy and authoritarianism) and two competing visions of the digital space (information freedom and information control). Com- petition to shape the strategic environment and gain relative advantage is continuous, persistent and dynamic. It is cali- brated to remain below the level of armed conflict. U.S. cyber diplomacy needs the organizational structure, resources and mindset to ensure the diplomatic tools of national power are fully leveraged for strategic cyber competi- tion. Proactive Approach Needed There has been much discussion about the State Depart- ment’s organizational and resource gaps in addressing cyber issues. Congress recently reintroduced the Cyber Diplomacy Act, originally passed in 2019, calling on the State Department to establish a cyber bureau led by an ambassador with the rank and status of an assistant secretary of State. A similar recom- mendation was made last year by the bipartisan Cyberspace Solarium Commission. The global interconnected domain of cyberspace, according to the commission’s final report, requires an integrated, whole-of-nation approach, assisted by the State Department’s focusing on cyber issues in a single bureau. Cyber issues will continue to pervade the interests of every State Department bureau, of course; but the distinctive tech- nological, economic, legal and military features of cyberspace demand dedicated expertise and resources over and above the efforts currently underway in State offices. A strongly integrated organization can serve as a focal point for cyber issues at the department and a resource for all the bureaus as particular mat- ters arise. New form without new substance is not enough, however. What stands out most in recent legislation (as well as in the commission’s recommendations) is an emphasis on approaches that have not garnered success. Indeed, we should be con- cerned about a dearth of new thinking on critical issues that the new cyber bureau will address. For example, the State Department has long led U.S. out- reach to promote an open, interoperable, secure and reliable information and communications infrastructure. State has worked in international fora for decades to build consensus around a framework of responsible state behavior in cyber- space, principally through the voluntary, nonbinding norms recommended by the United Nations Group of Governmental Experts (GGE). Over the past decade, adversaries have been bypassing territorial boundaries by operating in and through cyberspace to gain strategic advantage.