The new Project on Technology, the Economy, & National Security aims to bring together disparate fields to produce a body of scholarship and community of engaged students researchers to tackle these complex challenges. The Project, a part of MIT’s Internet Policy Research Initiative, will be led by former technology advisor to President Obama, Dr. R. David Edelman.
In just the last year we have witnessed current and former superpowers threaten to disrupt elections; infiltrate nuclear command and control; black out media sites; and expose the most closely guarded secrets of intelligence operations. These actions are not isolated incidents, and suggest fundamental reconfigurations of power and stability in the international system. There are few forces in foreign policy moving as quickly as those at the intersection of the Internet, cybersecurity, and artificial intelligence; yet they remain among the least understood to practitioners and the general public alike. This unfamiliarity is compounded by policy discussions’ lack of “ground truth” on the current and future contours of the underlying science and engineering. These new digital phenomena create an urgent need to contextualize this state behavior in international relations; apply deep technical understanding to identify what is truly novel; and harness an interdisciplinary approach to build consensus around norms of state behavior.
The stakes are similarly high outside of interstate conflict — especially in the day-to-day economic and political interactions that mark most statecraft, so many of which are now digitally mediated. Revelations and misunderstandings about cybersecurity and privacy have threatened to chill relations among governments and their leaders, derail hundreds of billions of dollars in international trade, and fell longstanding incumbents in the global technology business. At the same time, absent a clear understanding of the technology, it is impossible for those same governments to understand which risks are minor and which are market-moving, or whether major innovations like artificial intelligence really threaten the fabric of the modern economy. It is little wonder then that international consensus has yet to emerge on shared principles to ensure technology remains a uniting rather than destabilizing force in domestic and international economic affairs.
As a bridge between engineering, economics, and public policy, MIT intends play a unique role shaping understanding in this fast-moving space.