The Peace of Westphalia, a series of treaties signed in German to end the 30 Years' War in the Holy Roman Empire and the 80 Years' War between the Dutch and the Spanish . Painting is The Ratification of the Treaty of Munster, by Gerard ter Borch, 1648.
The meeting at Carnegie Endowment on "Digital Diplomacy: A New Era of Advancing Policy" #DigiDiplomacy was packed with more than a hundred people. You sense that Twitter is starting to now reach even the most reluctant and I hear in some government offices staff are being mandated to Twitter, whether they like it or not. Of course, there's a "gov 2.0" movement that has been going on for years in the Obama Administration, most symbolized by Alec Ross, senior adviser for innovation in the office of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, "the best title in government," as admirers say.
A regional official for Fleishman-Hillard International Communications made the introductions to the meeting in one of those symbiotic relationships between business and think-tank land that are so seemless as to be invisible to insiders and are perplexing to outsiders.
It was the day before Facebook's big historic IPO, and we were instructed solemnly not to ask any questions of the speaker from FB, Sarah Wynn-Williams, manager of public policy, by the moderator, Tom Carver, a former BBC journalist and later "strategic communications consultant" now VP for communications and strategy at Carnegie. Have you noticed how much communications (it used to be called PR, or public relations) is always combined with this really important-sounding term "strategy" now?
The meeting featured two Latin American ambassadors -- Latin America rarely has a face in public policy meetings but increasingly it is being seen. Maybe this is the growing realization that if only 50 percent of Americans are white and from European stock, that the fast-growing Hispanic population from Latin America that makes up a good portion of the other 50 percent (which is Hispanics, blacks, Asians, Native Americans, and others) increasingly needs to be heard.
Amb. Arturo Sarukhan Casamitjana previously held the dangerous job of head of counternarcotics at the Embassy of Mexico and is now the envoy to the US. Amb. Harold Forsyth is envoy from Peru.
The moderator gave Alec Ross the floor under the dubious distinction that he had the most Twitter followers -- over 370,000 -- whereas the Mexican ambassador has only 70,000. (Full disclosure: I only have 1200). He might better have given Wynn-Williams the floor -- her company has 850 million members. Yes, America the state can still get its "innovation" guy lots of followers based on over 200 years of mindshare, but Mexico not only gives him a run for his money (after the meeting, his follower count probably went up!), there's the harsh reality that the platforms of social media are like the new transnational wired states now, and trump national entities. Or so it seems.
There's lots to say about this meeting, but it is already hashtagged, tweeted, and nearly forgotten, so before the week's end, I just want to mention two highlights, before I come back and add some more:
o Alec Ross spoke of the breakdown of the state and diploma under the pressure of social media connections, the "post-Westphalian" aspect of modern life, i.e. the erosion of modern sovereignty, a concept established at the Treaty of Westphalia with its recognition of "non-interference in internal affairs" -- a notion, BTW, which only Helsinki insiders seem to know, began to be challenged with the 1975 Helsinki Final Act which did validate borders and acknowledge sovereignty, but which affirmed human rights as a topic that states could ask each other about, because they were all bound by universal human rights obligations in UN treaties.
Ross rhapsodized about the new "direct democracy" of people directly speaking to officials and making proposals and getting real-time answers. He cited as a success story the recent defeat of SOPA-PIPA which in fact he had a HUGE part in making happen (as did Google, which leveraged its platform to get 7 million signatures on a petition, and as did Silicon Valley's Mitch Kapor, and his anti-copyright organizations, which whipped up sentiment. As the SOPA issue heated up, Ross held a "hangout" on G+ which he talked up on FB (as G+ only fits 16 people at a time, you have to amplify it with FB wall posts) in which he took a question from one of the seasoned cadres of the anti-copyright movement posing as a mere curious citizen about why Obama hadn't condemned SOPA.
Ross treaded water saying the concerns were important, but then, "heeding the Voice of the People," i.e. at least as it appears manpulated and packaged as expert G+ hangouters, he got to Obama, and Obama, in consultation with his in-house geeks who were anti-SOPA like Aneesh Chopra, announced that he would veto SOPA, even before he had done a formal statement of policy with a former process. I found that outrageous. Ross calls it "21st Century Statecraft" -- too bad for you.
It's a hustle, of course, the executive branch and its social media operatives using the power of office and the administrative resources of massive followings on social media to push through things without democratic votes.
So I raised a very valid concern about this, quoting the disturbing article in Tech President recently about Aneesh Chopra, and his notion of his greatest achievement while in office as CTO of America, making whitehouse.gov/petitions. As Nick Judd on Tech Presidented noted, quoting Nancy Scola, formerly of Tech Pres and now at the Atlantic, an activist found this a great "circumvention of Congress".
So I asked during the Q&A about the implications for "circumvention" of Congress and the implications for SOPA never having come to a vote, even if it had some popular sentiment to back it up (sentiment that had a lot of help getting whipped up by the lies of Silicon Valley).
Ross responded with what I view as a really nasty sleight of hand. He reiterated this issue as the same issue he had just heard when meeting Netanyahu recently. That was cunning, because it was sure to set in motion the hate vibes for Israel and Netanyahu by the liberal crowd at Carnegie, and establish concerns about "direct democracy" and its sinister side as merely being a neo-con or conservative concern. It's not. It's the most liberal concern of our age, and serious as a heart attack.
He admitted that there was a "tension" between "direct democracy" and "representative democracy" and that he was "not omniscent and didn't pretend to have all the answers.
I went up afterwards and added: No, Alec it's not about "tension," it's about "direct democracy" not really being direct or democracy, it's about the tyranny of who shows up. The issues are framed and that's the problem, they aren't really democratically deliberated. The cadres -- the coders -- decide everything. There isn't any "direct"ness because the platform owners, the providers of services, the coders, they weld in a lot of worldview into the services. He doesn't really focus on that or concede it, but he conceded direct democracy has its problems. He reiterated that he is "not omniscent," a faux-modest meme that he probably frequently relies on to get himself out of tough conversations, even as somebody challenges him on the outcome of his "disruptive" technology (always disrupting others, never him).
I said I don't need him to be ominscent, I need him to be accountable. Undermine representative democracy? Take the consequences that you have unleashed mob rule and injustices, and don't tell me about how "we need to get money out of politics" or how "Congress is stupid and not technical" and that "Congress is broken". Geeks who want to seize power with their coded platforms are what is broken.
o Now let's come to Ms. Sarah Wynn-Williams who enthused about the power of Facebook to bring tens of thousands of people together around the world in expressing concern about the FARC, the terrorist group in Latin America that has killed many civilians and caused havoc. The page and the group "empowered" people. I've written about the creepy implications of Zuck imagining he has an empire (then of 69 million; now of 850 million!) of users he can whip into political campaigns of this nature, and how stupid they are.
I went up afterwards and said to Sarah, as she bent over her purse looking for business cards, "You didn't stop the FARC."
She said nothing.
"You didn't get rid of the FARC with that page." I gave her my card. She smiled artificially and then exclaimed "The FARC!" as if to imply "How could you possibly expect me, or a page on our platform, get rid of a terrorist movement."
Well, indeed.
The stock is already trading at $42, after opening at $38, as of this writing. You can't even just go and buy it as it has been held close and apportioned only to insiders, such as trading firms like Goldman Sachs and their already preferred customers. But, caveat emptor. It can't stop the FARC; it may be undermining a representative democracy in a country near you, replacing it with who-the-hell-knows-what, about which Ross is not ominiscent nor over which he will accept ownership.
"SOPA never came to a vote," I objected.
"The 17 co-sponsors dropped it after getting deluged with petitions," he objected.
"They were flash-mobbed," I pointed out. "That's not democracy."
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