September 1, 2022 Impartiality in Content Moderation (!) Post-2016 hysteria about “information warfare” - which should be labeled foreign influence operations (IO) - created serious concerns that U.S.-based social media platforms would collaborate with the U.S. government to censor foreign information sources that contradicted our state’s foreign policy narratives. Because...
August 15, 2022 How Not to “Compete with China” In the United States, “competing with China” has become the go-to way to frame domestic policy agendas. The problem is that nearly all of these policies are bad ones (see, for example, the CHIPS Act), that imitate Chinese state capitalism instead...
What do you do when the chips are down? Samsung warned that chip demand will weaken if the global economy downturns. Intel also reported disastrous quarterly results this week highlighting operational challenges and managerial missteps. Undeterred, among a wave of governments seeking to build domestic manufacturing capacity, the US Congress...
June 30, 2022 IGP’s Annual Conference We’ve extended the deadline for submitting proposals to our annual workshop: From Internet Governance to Digital Political Economy. The event will be held in The Hague, October 17-18 and will feature presentations on redefining the field, the political economy of data, export controls on...
In 2018, violent clashes broke out between upper caste Hindu and Dalit groups at Bhima Koregaon village in India during an annual celebratory gathering to commemorate the historic battle between the castes which took place in 1818. In the aftermath of the clashes, the police investigation centered on the role...
June 1, 2022 Trust in Aadhar deteriorates India’s long-running experiment with digital identity is still controversial. On May 27, the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) issued a notification asking people to not share photocopies of their Aadhaar card as it could be “misused”. Yes, 13 years after Aadhaar was...
Unpacking the digital political economy As the summer begins, with long awaited in-person conferences and intensive research activity, we are busily developing the Call For Papers for our annual IGP conference for fall 2022, which will focus on the global digital political economy. What scholars and policy makers used to...
March 28, 2022 The EC Digital Markets Act’s Misguided Moves The European Union’s Digital Markets Act is repeating all the mistakes made by telecom regulators 30-40 years ago in their attempt to promote competition by mandating interconnection and interoperability. They have decided to require certain forms of technical compatibility with...
February 22, 2022 EARN IT Act moves forward The Senate Judiciary Committee has approved a new version of the highly controversial Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies Act (EARN IT Act). First introduced in March 2020, EARN IT Act pares back the immunity protections under Section 230 of...
The Metaverse will be territorialized Metaverses are being promoted as a virtual reality universe where users can interact and feel present “no matter how far apart…” Well, some users, anyway. The technology in VR headsets seems to be so advanced that it’s use is restricted by those on various USG...
“In characteristically rigorous fashion, Mueller’s outstanding book punctures the alarmist myth of Internet fragmentation and helps us to understand what is really at stake as nations and other groups vie for power over the Internet.”
