Meeting Cyber Age Needs for Governance in a Changing Global Order

Abstract

The advent of the cyber age has created a world in which digital systems, operating on their own and interacting with more conventional material or physical systems, have become an increasingly prominent feature of the landscape of human affairs. This development, affecting every aspect of human life, has generated a class of increasingly critical needs for governance that are difficult to address effectively within the confines of the current global order in which sovereign states compete to maximize their influence in the absence of any overarching public authority. These needs include concerns associated with the management of powerful digital technologies (e.g., artificial intelligence, robotics, machine learning, blockchain technology, the internet of things, and big data) as well as problems relating to the use of these technologies by many actors to exercise influence from the level of the individual (e.g., identity theft) to the level of international society (e.g., foreign interventions in national electoral systems). The challenge of meeting these needs prompts an analysis of processes leading to change in the prevailing global order, energized at least in part by the growing role of the digital systems of the cyber age. Our analysis includes both Western perspectives highlighting changes in the identity and behavior of key actors and Chinese perspectives emphasizing the spread of social narratives embedded in the concepts of tianxia and gongsheng. While it is premature to make explicit predictions, we conclude with some observations about the most important trends to watch regarding efforts to meet cyber age needs for governance, and we note the connections between these developments and the overarching challenge of fulfilling the suite of goals commonly associated with the idea of sustainable development.