First the arms race... now the knowledge race. America's military-industrial complex is discovering the information revolution, and the results would give Dr Strangelove a wry smile.
If knowledge really is power, the generals are wondering, then how can it be wielded most effectively as a weapon? Once you start asking the question that way, then it's easy to start to believe, almost despite yourself, that world domination belongs to the country which can amass the largest knowledge arsenal, and deliver the greatest throw-weight of knowledge to target with the greatest speed and accuracy.
To see just how easy, and how wrong, read "America's Information Edge" in the March/ April issue of Foreign Affairs.
Foreign Affairs is written by and for the people who run the world. It is a small, blue magazine, printed in a font larger than that used by any other magazine - which, its publishers might explain, is entirely in line with its influence. "America's Information Edge" begins over an illustration of an American eagle proudly holding a banner reading "Per Internet Unum". The first author, Joseph Nye, is a former chair of America's National Intelligence Council, and is now the Dean of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard; the second, Admiral William Owens, was until recently number two at the Pentagon and is now a bigwig at SAIC (Science Applications International Corporation), the company that perhaps comes closest to embodying the soul of America's military industrial complex. These are both smart, capable guys. They're trying hard to reconcile the realities of the information age with the traditional workings of military and diplomatic power. And they're failing - in ways that anybody who wants to understand the real challenges created by the information revolution should pay close attention to.
Nye and Owens begin their article with Francis Bacon's dictum: "knowledge is power". By any standard, that makes America the most powerful nation in the world. America does lead the world in the production of advanced computer systems, which store and manipulate knowledge. It dominates the media which disseminate it. And America's armed forces have a spectacular "system of systems" for gathering and distributing intelligence. When the cruise missiles begin to fly, America's military knows where to direct them. And that is power indeed.
So far, American policy makers have reckoned that the best way to protect that power is to keep America's knowledge for America. Nye and Owen, by contrast, argue that knowledge is more effective when shared. America should replace the Cold War nuclear umbrella with an "information umbrella". By doling out carefully measured doses of its knowledge, America can both change the balance of power between friend and foe and, more important, increase the chances that the rest of the world will, quite literally, see things America's way.
It's a nice idea. It even works sometimes. When Britain wanted to know how the Argentinians were deploying their troops in the Falklands, that nice Mr Weinberger (now Sir Cap) helped with the satellite imagery. Same deal if the Croats want to know what the Serbs are up to, or the Taiwanese want to check out their brothers on the mainland, or vice versa. But over the longer run there is no policy surer to poison the well from which America's influence springs than to attempt to use knowledge to bribe, to coerce and to manipulate.
Bacon's axiom has an interesting way of undercutting itself. Knowledge is only power as long as it is not seen to be power; once its nature as power becomes obvious, it loses its trustworthy status as knowledge. America, or any other nation, can indeed use its knowledge to manipulate its allies and influence the world - but only to the extent that people don't cotton on. Once they do, the trust on which the power of knowledge rests gets weakened. Information becomes propaganda.
That is the basic flaw in Nye and Owen's argument. They quite rightly point out that tragedies like the slaughter in Rwanda might have been avoided if the local people had had a clearer picture of the consequences of their actions. But Nye and Owen's naive solution - knock-out extremist Hutu radio stations and start beaming in the Voice of America - just won't work. On the contrary, it's hard to imagine a strategy more calculated to create the atmosphere of suspicion and mistrust in which terror can flourish.
Owen and Nye argue that by cleverly marshalling its knowledge arsenal, America can create a second American century. Perhaps. But if so it will not look anything like the first American century. America cannot control the world by controlling knowledge; knowledge is not a province of government. The Voice of America cannot reshape the world. But Amer- ican voices can, either over the Internet, or the radio, or any medium that can let a billion conversations bloom. Information technology is not building an American century. Americans are building an information century.
Oliver Morton is editor, and John Browning is executive editor, of Wired (edit@wired.co.uk).