To compete and thrive in the 21st century, democracies, and the United States in particular, must develop new national security and economic strategies that address the geopolitics of information. In the 20th century, market capitalist democracies geared infrastructure, energy, trade, and even social policy to protect and advance that era’s key source of power—manufacturing. In this century, democracies must better account for information geopolitics across all dimensions of domestic policy and national strategy.
South Korea attempted to acquire nuclear reprocessing facilities from France in the mid-1970s. U.S. and Canadian pressure led South Korea and France to abandon the negotiations. In this Project on Managing the Atom Seminar, ISP/MTA Research Fellow SeYoung Jang will discuss how the failure to acquire reprocessing technology was later a significant element in South Korea’s decision to suspend its nuclear weapons program in 1976.