[governance] Regime change on the internet - meeting notes.

[Ralf Bendrath]

Milton Mueller wrote:
[on transcript of US State Department Richard Beaird's comments]
> We also think the reasoning was quite... interesting.

Indeed, especially the last para:

[Beaird]
> But the other point is this: as we know from UN exchanges on these
> subjects, you get very close to issues of models that may come from the
> arms control world. And that is a position we do not wish to encourage
> * we do not believe that information should be "weaponized" in the
> sense that we do not enter into an international treaty that obligates
> us to matters of information in the security area. That is not a road
> we wish to go down.

Some background on this:
It strongly reminds me of the negotiations on the security paragraph in
the Geneva Declaration. Russia over the last years repeatedly has tried to
start "arms control" discussions around information warfare, among other
reasons because they are
a) afraid of US efforts to establish a "computer network attack"
capability in the Pentagon (related documents are, among others, US Joint
Doctrine 3-13 "Information Operations"),
b) afraid of too much influence of foreign media (or in general: critical
media) in the Russian public.
The US has constantly been objecting to this, because
a) they don't want to limit their attack arsenal and (nowadays) dislike
arms control in general,
b) they dislike media censorship, especially in Russia.

In the Geneva declaration, the "military" aspect got dropped out of the
final text. The US accepted to agree to the fuzzy (and in our view
dangerous) term "information security" if Russia gives up on insisting on
"military".

There have also been meetings in the UN context (General Assembly, Arms
Control expters) in the last two years, but without any progress from what
I've heard.

But in the end, I am totally unsure if the US (Beaird) is using this line
of reasoning as a distraction OR if they really mean it. My gut feeling is
that they are looking for all kinds of arguments against a treaty or
framework convention they can find that are not too directly linked to "we
want to keep unilateral root control". In the end, the root issue is not
really related to what Russia is concerned about in the info-war field.

My 5 cents.

Ralf

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