Global Internet Services as a US Foreign Policy Tool

Nowadays the problem of informational security has become crucial. The development of informational communications and the World Wide Web constantly creates new global challenges. The environment of Internet openness and freedom reveals not only technological threats, but also those related to content. Russia made an attempt to the draw attention of the international community to this issue by announcing the draft UN convention on international information security in 2012. However, this proposal disclosed deep contradictions between the Western and Russian approaches to the regulation of the informational space. The tradeoff between freedom of information and protection from destructive information that could negatively affect states and societies appeared to be the primary stumbling block in the dialog between the two sides. While Western countries are trying to avoid Internet censorship, Russia, along with several SCO states, points out the potential risks of an uncontrolled informational space, emphasizing the factor of foreign informational interference and its influence on the social and political situation in different states. These worries are quite reasonable and require a joint resolution.

This issue is closely related with the informational policy of states. Taking as an example the U.S.’ informational policy in Internet services, the author comes up with two aspects of the potential benefit that America receives from the proliferation of global Internet services. The technologies themselves and the full spectrum observance of social media activity are thought of as allowing the U.S. to gain wide control over its target audiences. However, what is more important is the U.S.’ domination in producing content for global information exchanges. By intensively filling the informational space with favorable content, it creates an unbalanced environment that could turn Internet services into a tool of information influence. Without fill this gap in the production of information resources applicable to the Web 2.0 context between the U.S. and other states, it is difficult to expect progress in negotiating a new architecture of information regulation.

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