A DoubleEdged Sword

1
A Double-Edged Sword?

• The Implications of Cyberspace on
• U.S. World Hegemony

2
Cyberspace as Contested Territory

• Hong Kong Blondes
• Hacker break-ins to the Pentagon over 20,000
  last year
• Direct attacks against corporations have cost
  billions of dollars in sales and theft
• Attacks during warfare
• Palestinians on Israelis
• Serbs on NATO

3
U.S. National Security

• November 2000 President Clinton gave order for
  the military to initiate a cyberwarfare strategy
  plan and a chain of command
• Head of the National Security Agency (NSA), Air
  Force Lt. Gen. Michael Hayden
• Information is now a place. It is a place where
  we must ensure American security as surely as
  sea, air, and space.
• Information has taken on a dimension within
  which we will conduct operations to ensure
  American security. (CNN.com, 10/17/2000)

4
Questions from the Chaos

• Why are states particularly the U.S. primary
  targets?
• Is there any significance to why attacks are
  happening now?
• Is political activity in cyberspace effective?
• What does this mean for state security?
• And what are the implications for continued U.S.
  power?

5
Statement of Problem

• To what extent does the Internet secure the
  United States continued role as hegemonic power,
  and to what extent does the Internet undermine
  that rule?
• Broader Question
• Is cyberspace ushering in a new metageography,
  and if so, what politics will this new
  metageography entail?

6
What is Cyberspace?

• Nodal Network
• Virtual world defined as a space with an infinite
  amount of interconnected nodes,
• Interconnected within cyberspace but also to
  points in the real world
• Borders do not exist in the virtual world, and
• Borders in the real world are easily circumvented
  by connections within the virtual world

7
Approach

• World-Systems Theory (WST) because
• It is able to integrate economic, social, and
  political processes while looking at a number of
  geographic scales. It also provides the ability
  to look at events in a temporal and spatial
  context.

8
A Brief Overview of WST

• Neo-Marxist Theory ceaseless accumulation of
  capital drives the world-economy,
• The Three Elements of the World-Economy
• One Economy capitalist (social system)
• Many States institutional products of the
  capitalist mode of production (political systems)
• Three Tier Hierarchy core, semi-periphery, and
  periphery (economic division of labour)
• Occasionally change in hierarchical position but
  only rarely
• This hierarchy exists in all institutions of the
  world-economy (i.e., states, classes, peoples,
  and households)

9
WST Adaptation to Political Geography

• Peter Taylor, Political Geographer
• Saw Wallersteins hierarchical structure as a
  horizontal division by area
• Introduced a vertical division by processes at
  different scales
• Scale of Reality / World-economy / Capital
  Accumulation
• Scale of Ideology / Nation-state / Filter
• Scale of Experience / Locality / Where we
  experience economics

10
Hegemonies

• Hegemony a state that possesses a majority of
  economic, political, and social power in the
  world-system
• There have been three hegemonies
• United Dutch Provinces 1600s
• Great Britain 1800s
• The United States of America 1900s
• A hegemony always promotes free movement (i.e.,
  free trade), in order to extend its dominance
  over other sovereign states

11
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12
Hegemonic Process

• After a hegemony achieves superior economic
  position in production, trade, and finance,
• It needs to exert its influence over the world
  economy. This requires extending its power over
  other countries sovereignties, often through the
  establishment of various institutions (e.g., the
  IMF, United Nations, NATO, etc.)
• Due to their economic position, hegemonies stand
  to accumulate the most capital by an open market
• But how do they expand their sovereignty, often
  without armed conflict, so easily?

13
Modernity

• Modernity is the embedded and taken for granted
  belief that we are modern. Peter Taylor
• Modernity lies at the heart of Hegemonic power
• A hegemony possesses the Prime Modernity,
• Which initiates change in what is considered
  modern sets the standard
• Modernity is exported to the world, often through
  the arts, and sets up an image of how modern
  people should live
• Its not just an economic way of life but social
  system (e.g., gender roles, suburbia, et cetera)
• Other societies consume the hegemonic social,
  political, and economic ideals in hopes of
  becoming like the hegemony
• Through institutions, like the IMF, the United
  States accumulates capital off of other states
  desire to be modern

14
Modernity continued

• Modernities change, of course, as can be seen in
  the arts Bewitched lifestyle versus The
  Simpsons
• Hegemonies possess the perfect discipline system
  No need to use a stick to bring states in line,
  just set up an image of how it is to be modern
  and how other states can achieve modernity

15
Metageographies

• Metageography describes the geographical
  structures through which people order their world
  (Lewis and Wiggen)
• Traditional role of the state to protect the
  national economy and ceaselessly accumulate
  capital
• Two aspects of sovereignty
• Political control over a territory, and
• Economic control within a territory
• The nodal network of cyberspace circumvents the
  economic sovereignty of states in the capitalist
  world-economy.

16
Change in Metageography

• John Agnew and Peter Taylor suggest that we may
  be on the verge of a new metageography
• World cities are replacing certain roles that
  once belonged to states (i.e., accumulating
  production, trade, and financial elements)
• World cities are centers of new information and
  knowledge production capabilities
• The virtual world is reshaping the way humans
  view and organize the real world, from a mosaic
  of polygons (states) to a series of
  interconnected nodes (cities)

17
Last of the Hegemons

• Some argue that the U.S. will be the last world
  hegemony.
• Geohistorical analysis argues
• A hegemony will always promote the expansion of
  free trade because it benefits its quest for
  capital accumulation
• The expansion of free trade will undermine a
  hegemony, because other states, in pursuit of the
  prime modernity, become more efficient at
  production, trade, and finance.
• Trade has undermined national-economies (there
  are no American businesses anymore) to the
  point of possibly undermining the rise of any new
  hegemonies.

18
The Double-Edged Sword

• Hegemonic Advantages from the Internet
• U.S. companies provide a vast majority of all
  online sales
• U.S. has an edge in Internet accessibility and
  infrastructure for communications
• Internet and computer company headquarters are
  primarily located in the U.S.

• Hegemonic Headaches
• Unparalleled virtual access to the United States
  from around the world
• People are mad about U.S. cultural and political
  imperialism
• Internet is beyond state control nonterritorial

19
Expected Outcomes of Analysis

• United States dominance of e-commerce is the
  process of expanding free trade a geohistorical
  process
• State sovereignty is changing as bordered,
  national economies become less relevant in the
  world-economy
• World cities are beginning to take over the role
  of capital accumulation due to a new, nodal
  metageography, ushered in by cyberspace
• The change in metageography and economic
  sovereignty is ushering in new forms of politics
  not territorially bounded, more ephemeral and
  dynamic than before
• Many of these new politics are directed against
  United States hegemony, a backlash against its
  extraterritorial dominance and/or modernity

20
Methods

• Case Study of anti-United States Haktivist Group
• Study of a particular haktivist group through web
  site, interviews, and public record
• Benefits insight into beginning formations of
  new political group, virtual functionality, real
  world territorial diaspora, and methods of
  political activity
• Interviews with government officials, as well as
  international and domestic hackers
• Will use Internet chat rooms and email to
  communicate with hackers
• Interview government officials at the NSA and FBI
  about state government activities to establish
  order in cyberspace
• Archival research of past hegemonic rise and
  decline

21
Significance of Study

• Question political and economic changes that
  continued United States hegemony entails?
• The emergence of a new metageography is it
  reality or perception. Is cyberspace really
  helping to usher in political change for a new
  world political map?