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.
Ben Buchanan is a faculty member at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, where he conducts research on the intersection of cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, and statecraft. He is the author of two books, The Hacker and the State (Harvard University Press, 2020) and The Cybersecurity Dilemma (Oxford University Press, 2017). He is also the Senior Faculty Fellow and Director of the CyberAI Project at Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology, a five-year $57 million effort to study AI and international affairs. Ben’s other publications include journal articles and peer-reviewed papers on attributing cyber attacks, deterrence in cyber operations, cryptography, election cybersecurity, and the spread of malicious code between nations and non-state actors, as well as articles in the Washington Post, War on the Rocks, and Lawfare. Ben received his PhD in War Studies from King’s College London, where he was a Marshall Scholar. He earned masters and undergraduate degrees from Georgetown University.