Government secrets. Why is the secrecy of the Russian Federation and China to lose

Focus has translated the new text of Garrett Berntsen and Ryan Fedasyuk, dedicated to the confrontation of concepts of democracy and autocracy in information wars. Democratic countries have a significant advantage, using transparency within their limits to cover the activities of autocractions that violate international norms or harm the local economy and the population.

The latest strategic disclosure by Baiden administration of secret information for the public is only one of many tools in the arsenal of such transparency. Other tools take into account the publication and dissemination of US government data, data collection by non -governmental organizations with the financial support of the federal budget, as well as a cultural shift towards ensuring transparency in partnership with non -governmental organizations.

Each of these tools has unique opportunities and problems, but they can be used to improve America's position in the global information space. Various agencies are already spending considerable resources to modernize their information management systems within the country to start using analytical tools of the 21st century to solve foreign policy problems. As a result of these efforts, non -secret information will become even more accessible to the public.

How is this different from the overall idea of ​​using information as weapons? The fact that the scale and approaches are adapted to the technical realities of the 21st century. The urgency and complexity of the problem will require the democratic countries of a transparent increase in the scale of production and the production of non -creative data on their autocratic opponents.

Baiden's decision to quickly declassify and disseminate information about President Vladimir Putin's intentions, strategies and operations helped the United States outstrip the actions of Russia and unite the incredibly diverse coalition to protect Ukraine.

Deciding to use transparency as weapons, Biden administration probably decided that the benefit of preventive disclosure of Russian plans outweighs the potential risk for sources of intelligence or the chance of Russia's rapid adaptation to a new situation. As in many autocrats, the Russian national security apparatus has long been a tight culture of secrecy - largely due to the historical role of military and intelligence services in the management of internal policy.

Modern Russia conceals its nuclear modernization programs. Her oligarchs hide their wealth. Putin hid the true goals of his "special military operation" from the first soldiers he sent to Ukraine - and all this despite the fact that "without fail" of security officials hid the truth about their readiness for war from Putin himself. Such devotion of secrecy is not only characteristic of Russia.

The People's Republic of China has long hidden its attempts to undermine and, ultimately, change the international order based on the rules established by the United States and their allies. Back in 1989, the then Chinese leader Dan Xiaopin called on China's foreign policy "to hide his strength and wait" - all subsequent Chinese leaders followed this strategy to Xi Jinping.

Such secrecy takes into account the concealment of its military expenses, masking of global influence operations under the auspices of "Unified Front", threats and intimidation of representatives of the Chinese diaspora. Inside the country, China hides its untidy trade practices and forced economic diplomacy, forcing foreign firms to share their secrets in exchange for access to the Chinese market. Abroad China hides its external assistance programs.

And this is not to mention the attempts of the Chinese government to extinguish their global ambitions or about its Orwell efforts to control internal information aimed at concealing genocide, management abuse and blocking access to information. Each of China's secrets is both a moral and ethical failure and a potentially strategic opportunity that the United States can use in their mission to support liberal international order.

Since technologies contribute to even greater transparency, national security agencies must adjust their policies and processes to stimulate the collection, dissemination and increase of public information about the harmful activities of China, corrupt business practice, human rights violations, increased militarization and neglect.

It is not enough to rely on public diplomacy through social networks and standard news publications, especially as the information ecosystem is becoming more blurred and independent. In order to ride a global wave of digital content producers and information brokers, democratic institutes must be more persistent and consistent with their own transparent data on national security. Any efforts to increase the transparency of the government should be transparent.

Attempts to manipulate facts and form global narratives through the publication of lime data ended catastrophically - for example, on the eve of the war in Iraq. But careful study and documentation of information, as well as its large -scale disclosure, not even fully appropriate to the priorities of the executive, will help to strengthen confidence and wider interests of the United States. As they say, sunlight is the best disinfectant.

Democratic governments can take three steps to effectively use transparency: first, democratic governments should simplify access to their own uniform data. The United States has a long but imperfect history of data collection and exchange and analytical materials with the public, which reaches the consolidation of census in the Constitution. In the modern era, it is best to provide this information in the form of large -scale computer data.

While the volume and scale of the data collected by the US government has increased, the ability to structure, clean up, store and easily share non -creative data with the public does not have time for progress. This is lost, as most of the data collected and analyzed by national security agencies - according to some estimates, up to 80% is non -creating.

However, in 2022, the main way of sharing data and analysis of the US government is massive PDF files scattered on hundreds of websites of individual agencies. Such an outdated approach clutter the industry ecosystem, analytical centers, foreign allies, international public non -profit organizations that use data for their own needs, research and goals. Secondly, democratic countries can turn to civil society to expand the network of public data collectors.

Academic research centers as AIDDATA, a national consortium for the study of terrorism and measures in response to the terrorism of the University of Maryland and the Center for Security and New Technologies of Georgtown have made a huge contribution to the work of state, private and government researchers. With relatively minimal state funding, these and other non -centralized research centers can produce high quality data that can be bought once and unlimited.

This academic model also provides additional advantages by strengthening US research institutes and training future national security professionals in industries that are technical and political priorities. In addition, the state -funded academic projects can avoid many property -related problems that prevent the joint use of data sector settings.

Academicians may independently confirm and reproduce information that has already been known to the intelligence community, without the imposition of a secret of secrecy on it, which is a valuable service. Increasing funding for such programs should not be in doubt about Congress, as it directly brings funds to US institutions (and districts of congress members) while increasing national security.

Finally, a strategy based on the use of transparency as weapons will require support from intelligence services, the Ministry of Defense and the State Department. The critics of this new openness paradigm will deny, referring to additional risks for data sources related to wide information and public information. This risk cannot be underestimated, but it can be reduced by clear political framework and classification instructions.

Excessive classification is a serious problem of national security for decades, while in the question of what and why it is impossible to give general access, quite common sense. This impedes both the government's internal operations and any opportunity for rapid exchange of data with external non-governmental organizations.

The Chinese "Big Wall" blocks the access of the Chinese to external information, and the large -scale censorship unit allows the state to manipulate public discourse and completely block information on contradictory topics. Therefore, it is unlikely that the desire of the West for strategic transparency will affect the domestic policy or discourse of China. However, some other countries have such tight control over the information space.

In many countries of the world, expanding access to corruption, persecution and political manipulations of China can significantly change internal political discourse and undermine public support for cooperation with the Chinese government and its proxy. Someone will deny that radical transparency only informs opponents that know the United States and allows them to adapt. It is a feature, not a lack of use of transparency as weapons. It should help to change the behavior of autocratic regimes.

In any gathering of information, the dynamics of the game in "Cats-Mishka" are inevitably present, but in the modern era, hyper-communications will be advisable on the side of the openness. For example, the vast majority of information about China's activities is still coming from news, websites, public applications and social networks.

If agreed efforts to collect, systematize, verify and exchange this information will lead to even more blurred, autocratic leaders will pay for this additional efforts on their part and reducing the availability of information to the whole world. Defense, intelligence and diplomatic actions will always require some secrecy, but forces that stimulate the growth of global transparency will not go anywhere.

Fortunately, the United States and their allies have to hide much less than their autocratic opponents. In order to maximize this democratic advantage, national security agencies should pay attention to the strategic value of production, financing and public data exchange on national security as a means of achieving their goal.