THESES SIS/LIBRARY TELEPHONE: +61 2 6125 4631 R.G. MENZIES LIBRARY BUILDING NO:2 FACSIMILE: +61 2 6125 4063 THE AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY EMAIL: [email protected] CANBERRA ACT 0200 AUSTRALIA USE OF THESES This copy is supplied for purposes of private study and research only. Passages from the thesis may not be copied or closely paraphrased without the written consent of the author. The Irony of the Information Age: US Power and the Internet in International Relations Madeline Carr May, 2011 A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of The Australian National University Acknowledgements What a journey! It feels amazing to be writing this page. This has been an exercise in patience, perseverance and personal growth and I'm extremely grateful for the lessons I have learned throughout the past few years. Writing a doctoral thesis is challenging on many levels but I also considered it to be an extraordinary privilege. It is a time of reading, thinking and writing which I realize I was very fortunate to be able to indulge in and I have tried to remain very aware of that privilege. I began my PhD candidature with four others - Lacy Davey, Jason Hall, Jae·Jeok Park and Tomohiko Satake. The five of us spent many, many hours together reading one another's work, challenging one another's ideas and supporting one another through the ups and downs of life as a PhD candidate. We established a bond which will last our lifetimes and I count them dearly amongst the wonderful outcomes of this experience. My supervisory panel has been extraordinary - generous with their time, knowledge and experience but also personally supportive and encouraging. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Dr. Katherine Morton who believed in this project from the beginning, long before it had form or direction and without whose support, it would not have proceeded. She has been an inspiration in her determination to think beyond the parameters of her discipline and the confines of academia. Dr. Mark Matthews introduced me to the Philosophy of Technology which not only has been instrumental in this project but will shape and influence any future research I undertake. His knowledge of technology policy and the debates which surround it helped me to bridge the gap between International Relations literature and technology in an iii IP a g 0 academic framework. Professor Lorraine Elliott has provided the most extraordinary feedback on my work. She has both pushed me and supported me in exactly the right balance to help me achieve all I could with this project. She's been a generous mentor to me and a very good friend. I owe a very big debt of gratitude to her for making this degree the experience it has been and for shaping me as a scholar. My parents, Joan and Reg Carr have always supported and encouraged me in my studies. It would have been impossible to do what I have without their help. They have helped me in so many practical ways but it has been their belief in me which has been most important. They have always made it clear that they want what is best for me - even when that has meant relinquishing that which they hold dear. They have been excellent role models for me and continue to inspire me. My dear, dear husband Craig who first said to me "I think you would enjoy university" had no idea what he was setting in motion. He has never asked me to hurry or to justify what I'm doing. He has supported our family, moved his business, waited patiently and been a better partner in life and love than I could ever have hoped for. My beautiful children who have only known a mother who studies have sustained me in such important ways. People often comment on the challenges of studying with small children. In fact, mine have always been the light at the end of the day, a reminder of what matters in life and of the insignificance of the troubles I leave at my desk. As Linus once pointed out to me, "doing a PhD is a lot like lying in a banana lounge at Dickson Pool". Linus and Camille make everything right and teach me much more than university ever could. In fact, one day several years ago over a bowl of noodles, my daughter Camille taught me that life only happens once. It is to her and her wisdom that I dedicate this thesis. iv IP age Abstract Despite the pervasiveness of the Internet and its importance to a wide range of state functions, we still have little understanding of the implications of this technology for power in the context of International Relations. The Internet has led to a power paradox which forms the central 'puzzle' of this research project. President Obama has described as "the great irony of our Information Age" the fact that those states which have most successfully adopted and exploited the opportunities afforded by the Internet are also most vulnerable to the threats which accompany it. Power enhancing outcomes such as economic growth, and public diplomacy have to be balanced against the theft of intellectual property and attacks on critical infrastructure. No previous technology has been regarded concurrently as a source of power and vulnerability in quite the way that the Internet has. Existing International Relations theories of power, developed in the context of industrial technology, have struggled to incorporate the complexities of the Internet. For much of the 20th century, scholars of International Relations have regarded technology as a constitutive and material element of state power. An understanding of technology as an exogenous factor which impacts upon power and produces universal effects regardless of political context is a conception which misses as much as it reveals in the analysis of power in the information age. This thesis combines the Philosophy of Technology with theories about power from International Relations in order to build a conceptual framework for the study of state power in the information age. It utilises this framework for the study of how conceptions of US power have shaped and influenced three aspects of Internet technology; cyber security, Internet governance and network neutrality. In doing so, the study produces a set of findings which contribute some forward momentum to the stalled debates in International Relations about whether the Internet enhances state power more than it undermines it. The thesis clearly demonstrates that political decisions about technology have directly and profoundly influenced the way the Internet has developed that they have ongoing implications for how the power to control information is distributed. In addition, it was found that US politicians engage with multiple conceptions of power when they debate Internet technology. These conceptions of power can lead to contradictory policy implications and when they do, the decisions that politicians make about whether to privilege material power or social power lead to insights about how they expect US power to function in the information age. Finally, authority and legitimacy were found to be important factors in the exercise of power in this context but significantly, a sense of political authority was often absent in debates about Internet technology policy. These findings underscore the arguments running through this thesis. First, that the implications of the Internet for state power cannot be understood without deeply engaging in the political context in which they are situated and second, that the relationship between power and information technology differs qualitatively from the relationship between power and industrial technology. Acronyms ARPA Advanced Research Projects Agency ccTLD country code Top Level Domain CIA Central Intelligence Agency CIP Critical Infrastructure Protection CllP Critical Information Infrastructure Protection DDoS Distributed Denial of Service DNS Domain Name System DoC Department of Commerce DoD Department of Defense FBI Federal Bureau of Investigations FCC Federal Communications Commission FEMA Federal Emergency Management Agency gTLD generic Top Level Domain HTML HyperText Markup Language HTTP HyperText Transfer Protocols IANA Internet Assigned Numbers Authority !CANN Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers IP Internet Protocol IPV4 Internet Protocol Version 4 IPV6 Internet Protocol Version 6 viilPage ISP Internet Service Provider ITU International Telecommunications Union NSS National Security Strategy NTIA National Telecommunications and Information Administration P2P Peer to Peer QoS Quality of Service RFC Request for Comments SCADA Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition SCo T Social Construction of Technology TCP/IP Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol URL Uniform Resource Locator VoIP Voice over Internet Protocol viii I P a g e Table of Contents Ad<nowledgements ............................................................................................................................................................... m Abstract ..................................................................................................................................................................................... v Acrony1TIS .................................. ,.................. ., ......................................................- ....................... - ........... ._ .......................... vii Chapter One: Introduction ............................................................................................. 11 Definitions .............................................................................................................................................................................