GLA2010H: Geopolitics of Cyberspace
Program: Masters in Global Affairs
New information and communication technologies, such as the Internet, are widely believed to be transforming world politics. While these transformations have brought about important challenges to state power and authority, they have not eliminated power politics and the quest for security and competitive advantage among actors on the world stage. Today, states and non-state actors alike are seeking ways to exploit information and information systems to pursue political objectives. The control of information has long been widely seen as a source of political power, and is manifest today in competition over both the media and the messages of the global communications environment. The Snowden revelations have laid bare the way the United States NSA has exploited information networks to accomplish almost total planetary surveillance. From the filtering and interception of Internet traffic, to the circulation of home-made videos by militant Islamists, a new geopolitics of information and communication technologies is underway.
The Geopolitics of Cyberspace course is an intensive examination of the ways in which states and non-state actors are contesting the newly evolving terrain of global digital-electronic-telecommunications. The course is organized as a series of intensive modules around cutting edge topics in cyber security.