We once thought that social media would be a force strengthening indigenous democratic movements. Certainly these indigenous democratic movements use social media to strengthen their communications capability, their ability to get information out and their ability to network with each other. What we did not expect, and I think this is the surprise, was the way autocratic governments would master the Internet and use it to try to penetrate into societies, to disrupt democracy and democratic procedures and to encourage distrust. This has become very, very dangerous.
I want to really emphasize the need to maintain an open Internet. These issues are being negotiated every day. We don't want to see autocratic governments controlling the Internet. We have to fight for the independence of the Internet, but we also then have to defend ourselves against abuse from autocratic governments. We have to realize that this is the new frontier. This is the new front line of struggle for democracy in the field of information, and we have to master ways in which that can be done.
The NED published a report in December 2017 that really coined the term “sharp power” to distinguish it from soft power. Soft powers are our universities, our culture and the way it organically spreads around the world. Sharp power is the use of information and information tools by governments to penetrate and manipulate other societies. We have to understand that and we have to be able to defend ourselves against that.