IT Blog

In the months prior to the outbreak of civil war in Syria, I led a State Department delegation on a controversial trip to Syria that included a sit-down with Bashar al-Assad. Our intention was to muscle the Syrian dictator on a series of security issues in the field of technology. The weaponization of widely available consumer technology was making it easier to surveil, spread disinformation, and both develop and destroy political movements. Our delegation was there to apply political and economic pressure to try to get Assad moving in the right direction.

The thing that made this delegation walking into Assad’s office different from any other was that it was not composed of diplomats or government officials from the Pentagon or CIA. It was comprised of senior executives from American companies including Cisco Systems, Verisign, Microsoft, and others. Our view was that the companies held the power to be more persuasive under the circumstances and given the topic, the executives…