Get ready for Democracy 3.0

Just as the Greek originators of democracy would have puzzled at its 18th-century American and French variants, so too are we ill-prepared for what lies ahead. The Athenians prized direct engagement by their limited citizenry, but they accepted a highly inegalitarian society writ large. In turn, expansive nation states ushered in the Burkean representation that we see in modern parliamentary and presidential systems, and Enlightenment values brought progress toward universal suffrage and enumerated civil liberties vis-a-vis the state apparatus. In each historical period, the practicalities of geography, security and technology required the balancing of ideals. I offer that we now stand on the cusp of a third era of transformative change for liberal democracy — replete with both new possibilities and new challenges.  Democracy in the digital age will soon pit some of our most dearly held tenets against one another in hitherto unforeseen ways.

The recent presidential elections in the United States and France are a mere harbinger of things to come. Security experts now acknowledge that cyber threats cannot be eliminated; they must be managed like other risks. Moreover, attacks on the integrity of information (data manipulation, strategic influence campaigns, etc.) are increasingly prevalent and particularly hard to detect or prevent in real time.  We must consider what the future of democracy looks like and strive to safeguard its essential elements.   

{mosads}As CIA Director Mike Pompeo pointed out last week to an audience in Washington, D.C. and former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt noted at a conference in India earlier this month, there is nothing new about Russia interfering in foreign politics.  What has changed is the scale, scope and effectiveness with which it can be done. That quantitative efficiency carries a qualitative impact, which rendered Russia’s influence campaigns so objectionable. While criminalized under domestic penal codes, espionage is not explicitly proscribed under international law; rather, it is accepted as a reality of international relations. Our aversion to a foreign actor stealing and then revealing accurate information, albeit confidential, shows the inherent tension between the rule of law and the desire for truth in a democratic society. A second example of competing values is how to preclude foreign and/or automated interventions without authenticating the provenance of all social media communications in such a way as to stymie the free and anonymous political speech protected by the Constitution.  

In a presentation at DEF CON 25 this July, I queried the assembled hackers and cyber aficionados on a number of hard topics. First, how do you personally know if your vote is ever recorded correctly? Second — assuming that you do not believe the official tabulation of any multimillion-person election is ever perfectly accurate down to the ones column — what percentage (or fraction thereof) of uncertainty is acceptable without undermining the legitimacy of an electoral outcome? Third, how do we institutionally ensure that any anomalies are randomly distributed and do not disadvantage any subset of the electorate more than any other? Fourth, should the amount of freedom of political expression on social media be limited the way it is for broadcast media or campaign donations in many modern democracies? In other words, how do we balance liberty and equality within the electoral process?

We are at an exciting juncture where technology can help resolve some of those quandaries — but not without salient trade-offs. For the first time in two millennia, it is feasible to propose direct democracy again. In fact, an organization advocating “liquid democracy” has proposed exactly that … continuous online referenda to compare representatives’ voting records to their constituents’ will. Many of the DEF CON attendees that I polled would happily forgo a secret ballot in order to have the option of verifying their own votes in the public record. Although, they were often quick to propose solutions (like blockchain technology) in the attempt to have their cake and eat it too, usually with the implicit requirement of accepting a nongovernmental authority somewhere in the private verification process. So the conversation inevitably reverted to the classic political science or game theory question of “who guards the guardians?”   

It is difficult to forecast exactly what democracy 3.0 will look like in any particular country, but I am fairly certain of several factors: there can be no absolutes in the insecure and offense-dominated cyberspace of present; the trilemma of personal privacy, perfect accuracy and cost efficiency is probably untenable; and most significant, the balance between liberty and equality will remain in flux. While one person may have only one vote, they may continue to have more than one voice in broadcast or social media. Therefore, the integrity of democracy will likely hinge on the ability to know whose voice is speaking when. Perhaps confirmation of identity in the virtual agora will bring us closer to our Hellenic roots.  

Kanuck is the director for future conflict and cybersecurity at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. He served as the first National Intelligence Officer for Cyber Issues from 2011 to 2016.