POV: Why it’s time for digital borders

It was easy for Western elites to dream that borders would matter less over time after the end of the Cold War and the emergence of the EU. However, this dream led to poor policy decisions. Perhaps the most disastrous was engaging in unrestricted trade with autocratic regimes—most notably China—in the hope that unlimited trade would produce wealth, with the resulting being a Chinese pivot toward Western, liberal values. Time has proven the folly of those policies.   

The rise of big data

When Clive Humby referred to data as the new oil in 2006, it was in the context of the early days of big-data analytics. But giant datasets are far more important today. Now, they are being used to train large language models—the cutting edge of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). To train this model, a huge amount of human language is needed. In fact, the corpus of material that is being used to train the world’s most advanced language engines is the entire internet.   

Technologists also dreamed the digital world would be borderless. However, organizations with the best hardware, smartest people, and access to the biggest datasets will win the race to build the world’s best AI. Government-sponsored researchers in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) certainly have the first two. There is no reason to give them unfettered access to the third. 

What are the stakes?

The liberal-democratic regimes of the world have a serious problem with digital border controls. Instead of a single global internet, it has begun to fragment. This is driven by the PRC and the Russian Federation, which have deployed comprehensive regimes of network monitoring. 

The internet is a physical thing, though the infrastructure is largely invisible. Data are carried over physical fiber-optic cables or through point-to-point wireless connections. So, when a state decides to control internet access, this is a technical challenge, but not an enormous one. The PRC has figured out how to do this very effectively with the “Great Firewall.” Nothing goes on without government approval and monitoring. PRC subjects who believe they are obtaining significant security by using a VPN (virtual private network) are dangerously mistaken. 

In China, data are collected for use in constructing predictive tools and suppressing potential unrest. This creates a situation where the internet can be weaponized to the advantage of autocratic regimes, in four crucial ways: 

1. These regimes can control access to the internet, exercising tight and invisible censorship on what people can and cannot see from the outside world. Facts, statements, and articles in the free Western press that don’t fit the regime’s authorized narrative are simply invisible, while those that reinforce the regime’s propaganda are prominently displayed. This allows the regime to attach external credibility and validation to internal propaganda.  
2. Western networks are exposed to routine and devastating legion attacks by the agents of autocratic regimes. This capability is weaponized for IP theft, intelligence, intimidation, financial crime, and gray zone warfare.   
3. The citizens and companies of Western regimes are subjected to targeted, direct appeals through advertising and more subtle means by state-directed entities from our authoritarian adversaries. Autocratic regimes have, for instance, attempted to delegitimize electoral outcomes by interfering in electoral processes through the dissemination of propaganda. 
4. Perhaps most importantly, unfettered access to the entire internet allows the unfettered collection of data. While autocratic regimes have targeted an application database to secure personal and sensitive information, an even more significant development is the broader collection of raw human-generated text that is needed to train AI language models. 

The stakes could not be higher in training artificial general intelligence systems. AI is the first tool that convincingly replicates the unique capabilities of the human mind. It has the ability to create a unique, targeted user experience for every single citizen. This can potentially be the ultimate propaganda tool, a weapon of deception and persuasion the likes of which has not existed in history.   

What can be done?

It’s crucial that Western liberal-democratic states secure our digital borders and reframe this confrontation into one that offers them a differentiated advantage. Three interrelated policies should be adopted: 

Digital relationships must be symmetric between states: For states that allow their citizens unlimited access to U.S. and allied digital content, we should continue to allow unfettered access. For states that comprehensively throttle content and attempt to control what their citizens can access, we should comprehensively shut down their access to U.S.-based digital data.  

The U.S. must recognize that companies from the PRC and Russia are arms of the state: Such companies must not be allowed to operate in the U.S. or with our allies. This is especially true where an asymmetry is being imposed. For instance, Visa does not operate unfettered in China, so Alipay—and their parent, Alibaba—should not be allowed to operate in the U.S. A large part of the value the PRC extracts from these U.S. companies’ operations is the extraction of large datasets used for training AI, which can then be weaponized against American citizens. 

The U.S. must sponsor the development and deployment of inexpensive, highly capable satellite internet endpoints directly to the citizens of authoritarian regimes. These endpoints should be concealable, fast enough to download video, and they need to provide unrestricted access to the full breadth of the Western internet. Elon Musk’s deployment of Starlink in support of our allies in Ukraine is the tip of the spear in terms of the potential of new satellite networks for spreading Western values and undermining the institutions of our adversaries.  

When Western states fail to control the movement of digital data across borders, adversaries take advantage of that openness. The beautiful anarchy of the early internet has been turned into a tool for subversion and repression. Western powers must thwart this dynamic by shaping the internet once again into a tool for spreading our values and supporting our interests. The U.S. cannot control what goes into and out of China, but we can, and should, enforce a symmetric flow of digital information through the world’s Great Firewall, while building channels for direct communications with the subjects of autocratic regimes. 

Michael Hochberg is president of Luminous Computing. 

General Robert Spalding is a national security expert, having served in senior positions of strategy and diplomacy within the Defense and State Departments for more than 26 years. 

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