The Snowden Affair, and If the Web Is the Future Battleground of Diplomacy?

With the introduction of the Mandiant report, the Snowden affair and the multiple accusations exchanged between the U.S. and China, the web is beginning to assume a special place on the international scene. What must we understand about this mutation in diplomacy? What are the new stakes? We talk with Stéphane Leroy, a professor specializing in “cyber” issues.

A report published last week reveals that China and Indonesia are leading the pack globally in the ranking of countries, from which cyberattacks originate. A few weeks before that, the Mandiant report had already accused Beijing of cyberespionage.*

Meanwhile, the revelations of Edward Snowden have shown that in term of activities in cyberspace, the U.S. is no exception. Although these cases have permanently tarnished the images of these two world leaders, they confirm the importance of a battle on an equally strategic level: that of cyberinfluence.

Trials in Ir-reproachability

Because of these reports, whether from supposed leaks or direct accusations, China is seen, in spite of itself, as the instigator of most of the cyberattacks in the world. However, the intrinsic opacity of cyberspace should temper any clear-cut assessment of guilt.

The tortuous network in this new strategic domain (between botnets and VPN [virtual private network], to mention only the most famous methods) renders the definitive designation of a guilty party impossible. At the same time, it is still very easy to make blanket accusations or even to deliberately use a country’s bad reputation against it (by pointing to the attacks originating from it, either virtually or physically).

The PRISM affair has reshuffled the cards, making a new victim in this war of images. The U.S. has brutally passed from oppressed to oppressor with the characteristic volatility of the public opinions of our time. The Pavlovian phobias of the old Orwellian myth and popular pressure have given way to sometimes caricature-like political positions, without ever demonstrating the importance of the stakes — except in rare exceptions.

Even though these cyberleaks feed the debate for both the pro- and anti-security sides, they illustrate nonetheless another strategic fact: Cyberspace is not only a military battlefield. It is also and above all the place where opinions are forged.

Cyberspace: Tool of ‘Smart Power’?

“Speak softly and carry a big stick,” said Theodore Roosevelt. This sentence from the 26th president of the United States already articulated the “smart power” so dear to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton; that is to say, a combination of soft power (influence centered on culture, history and principles) and hard power (by nature, military and economic).

If the “hard power” of cyberspace creates less and less debate, we are still behind when it comes to taking the pulse of cyberinfluence. Digital diplomacy remains to this day a fuzzy and little debated notion, seen as the prerogative of a small group of experts.

These questions prove to be essential, insofar as they influence our economic, diplomatic or political choices. In the media, no one challenges the pertinence of reports that accuse China, despite their American origin. On the other side, very few have questioned the troubling relationship between the former Booz Allen Hamilton employee Edward Snowden and the Chinese Gonganbu (the Ministry of Public Security), even though the revelations of the former contractor arrived at exactly the right moment, a few days before a bilateral Sino-American summit on cybersecurity that Beijing was approaching from a position of weakness.

At the present time, the revelations of PRISM have made two victims: the American computer cloud, which is beginning to lose contract opportunities on the one hand, and on the other, the data-sharing agreement between Europe and the United States, which, if placed in jeopardy, could lead to the creation of a European cloud. However, without ignoring the question of Internet freedom, the recent scandals have above all contributed to shaping minds and harming American “soft power” in the long term.

More broadly, the true victim of the Snowden affair is the utopia of a free and open Internet, which has given way to a coarser vision: that of an ideological battleground.

* Editor’s note: The Mandiant report was actually published in February 2013.