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.
Allan Friedman is the Director of Cybersecurity Initiatives at the National Telecommunications and Information Administration in the US Department of Commerce. He coordinates NTIA’s multi-stakeholder processes on cybersecurity, convening cross-sector working groups with a focus on resilience in a vulnerable ecosystem. Friedman leads NTIA's effort to establish a shared vision and best practices on software bill of materials (SBOM) across the digital ecosystem. Prior to joining the Federal government, Friedman spent over a decade as a noted cybersecurity and tech policy scholar at Harvard’s Computer Science Department, the Brookings Institution and George Washington University’s Engineering School. He is the co-author of the popular text Cybersecurity and Cyberwar: What Everyone Needs to Know, has a degree in computer science from Swarthmore College and a PhD in public policy from Harvard University.