Illustration composite by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty
Evidence is all around us that we face a new menace to our national security—one that is as grave and pernicious as any we have seen in the past. But it may be that this one will be much more difficult to contain.
Manifold threats are emerging across the information landscape on which we live, where we work and where we make fundamental political choices about who we are and what we stand for. These are threats made more challenging because so few fully understand them, because the government and the electorate are both so ill-equipped to address them, and because containing them will require us to make choices with profound philosophical consequences about the future of the social contract.
Everywhere you look in the past few weeks, the growing risks we face have been made ever clearer. CIA Director Bill Burns has warned of the potential for TikTok’s Chinese owners to use the app to access data that they could use to threaten our national security. The scandals shaking cryptocurrencies reveal that the world of digital finance presents unique opportunities for scam artists to debunk a gullible and ignorant public. Tech moguls have emerged as the robber barons of our age, wielding unprecedented power, controlling without constraint vast swaths of the marketplace and the means by which we connect and function as a society.