050.12 Opening Doors in the Global Village by Dr. Ross Alan Stapleton * The enactment of the High Performance Computing and Communications Initiative (HPCCI) brings us closer to the realization of a National Research and Education Network (NREN); for all its endorsement as a means to enhance national technological competitiveness the NREN will be just a part of a "technology without boundaries," as one of the most important stretches of a global information superhighway. This global network will raise numerous policy questions--easy access to information and computing resources despite national boundaries will turn previous export control conventions on their heads. But we're likely to gain far more than we'll lose should we pursue an aggressive policy of networking with the world's scientific communities, and use the information highways as policy tools. It is in the US national interest to keep a finger on the pulse of global science, and the technologies advancing in a hundred countries worldwide. Forty years ago the US was comparatively isolated; we sat on our side of the Atlantic with our experts and invented the hydrogen bomb and the intercontinental ballistic missile, while the Soviets sat on their side and did the same. We spied on each other, and much of the information that flowed between our technological communities came through the diplomatic "networks" of embassies and consulates. Today the balance has tipped dramatically toward the empowerment of nongovernmental organizations and individuals, and the government is more dependent on the private sector than ever before--to judge by recent events in the Persian Gulf, CNN is arguably one of the US government's most important current information sources. Empowered individuals in the former USSR, meanwhile, have, with simple message-passing protocols, PCs and the switched telephone system, built a sprawling and fast-growing network--RELCOM--that now links hundreds of computers and thousands of computers from the Baltics to the Caucasus to Eastern Siberia. The considered, in-depth assessments the government will require to ensure the national security will require something more than CNN; the government should maintain its human network of attaches and counselors with their direct access to foreign science and technology. Each diplomatic position the US staffs abroad is expensive, however: to keep a single science attache in Moscow costs on the order of a hundred thousand dollars per year above and beyond his or her salary, and much more in places like Tokyo. A leased communications line to bridge between the extensive US domestic networks and the RELCOM network radiating out from Moscow is no more expensive than that solitary individual, and could instantly pull two whole communities substantially closer. The networks may also be the cheapest means of enabling the sort of citizen diplomacy called for by President Bush in May of 1990; the context was the opportunity to move into the vacuum left in Eastern Europe by the retreat of the USSR, and the opportunities today, with the collapse of the Soviet Union itself, are even greater. The cynic might interpret the call for citizen diplomacy as a desire to pass the buck on foreign aid, but one can also discern the reality that private individuals and groups are being empowered as never before, by the information technologies. We could take up such a challenge, in collaboration with government, for our mutual benefit. We ought to step back and define a modern information technology foreign policy in light of the new political and technological realities--to weigh in with any consideration of the consequences of exporting networking technologies the very real gains that might be made through strengthening the bonds between the electronic communities, and affording ourselves better access to the rest of the world. *The author is with the Central Intelligence Agency. This material has been reviewed by the CIA to assist the author in eliminating classified information, if any; however, that review neither constitutes CIA authentication of material nor implies CIA endorsement of the author's views.