1AC

Cyber terror
Attacks are likely multiple groups and superior tech
Stackpole 8/13/15 (Beth veteran business and technology reporter, Beth
Stackpole has spent the last 25+ years writing for a variety of leading publications
and websites, including TechTarget, Computerworld, CIO, eWeek, Managing
Automation, Design News,http://theartofthehack.com/cyber-terrorism-closer-thanyou-think/ CYBER TERRORISM: CLOSER THAN YOU THINK)
A group of terrorists knocking out a city power grid or taking down the air traffic
control system is the kind of high-stakes drama that makes for a blockbuster action
flick. Yet recent moves by state-sponsored hackers and other terrorist groups are
sounding alarms that cyber terrorism isnt just the stuff of Hollywood movies , but
rather a real and growing threat to U.S. government and business. The U.S.
Intelligence Communitys 2015 Worldwide Threat Assessment report names Russia,
China, Iran and North Korea as increasingly sophisticated actors in the new era of
cyber warfare. HP Security Research has tracked a rising number of cyber attacks
emanating from Iran, including an operation that targeted the U.S. financial sector.
The U.S. government said North Korea was to blame for the high-profile hack on Sony Pictures in late 2014. Terrorist

hackers claiming affiliation with

the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) released a video with hooded figures
vowing to wage an electronic war against the United States and Europe. While the terrorists
groups are also making noise about cyber attacks. Earlier this summer,

never made good on this particular threat, the incident was the latest in a string of cyber events involving terror
groups and state-sponsored hackers. In February, a group of hackers calling themselves the Cyber Caliphate and
claiming affiliation with ISIS tapped into the Twitter and YouTube accounts of the U.S. Central Command (Centcom)
and spewed ISIS propaganda for approximately 30 minutes. Last April, an ISIS sympathizer was linked to massive
cyber attack on a global French language TV network, which lost 11 channels, parts of its website and its social
media outlets for several hours. There was also the well-published data breach at the Office of Personnel
Management revealed in June, which comprised data on 22.1 million people and which many top officials attribute

director of National
Intelligence James R. Clapper told a Senate Armed Services Committee
that cyber attacks were the biggest threat to the U.S. economy and
national security, and he called out politically motivated attacks as a
primary concern. At the Aspen Security Forum held in July, FBI Director James
Comey reiterated those fears, saying that the agency had picked up intelligence
that terrorist groups were increasingly interested in such attack vectors , although he
to the Chinese government despite their repeated denials. Just last February, the

stressed that plotting was in early stages.

A cyber-attack would trigger military retaliation and escalate

to nuclear war
Robert Tilford 12, Graduate US Army Airborne School, Ft. Benning, Georgia,
Cyber attackers could shut down the electric grid for the entire east coast 2012,
http://www.examiner.com/article/cyber-attackers-could-easily-shut-down-theelectric-grid-for-the-entire-east-coa ***we dont agree with the ableist language
*power grids- no backup generators

*radar systems go blank

*no communication
*launch nuclear weapons because we dont know what the fuck is going on
a cyber attack that can take out a civilian power grid, for example
could also cripple (destroy) the U.S. military. The senator notes that is that the same power
grids that supply cities and towns, stores and gas stations, cell towers and heart monitors also
power every military base in our country. Although bases would be prepared to
weather a short power outage with backup diesel generators, within hours, not days, fuel supplies
would run out, he said. Which means military command and control centers could go
dark. Radar systems that detect air threats to our country would shut Down completely.
Communication between commanders and their troops would also go silent. And many
weapons systems would be left without either fuel or electric power, said Senator
Grassley. So in a few short hours or days, the mightiest military in the world would
be left scrambling to maintain base functions, he said. We contacted the Pentagon
and officials confirmed the threat of a cyber attack is something very real. Top
national security officialsincluding the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the Director of the National Security Agency,
the Secretary of Defense, and the CIA Director have said, preventing a cyber attack and improving the
nations electric grids is among the most urgent priorities of our country (source: Congressional Record). So how
serious is the Pentagon taking all this? Enough to start, or end a war over it, for sure. A cyber attack today against
the US could very well be seen as an Act of War and could be met with a full
scale US military response. That could include the use of nuclear weapons, if
To make matters worse

authorized by the President.

The NSAs electronic backdoors undermine overall

cybersecurity also shuts out the US from establishing cybernorms
Sasso, technology correspondent for National Journal, 14
Brendan, "The NSA Isn't Just Spying on Us, It's Also Undermining Internet
Security", April 29 2014, Natio nal Journal, www.nationaljournal.com/daily/the-nsaisn-t-just-spying-on-us-it-s-also-undermining-internet-security-20140429
*NSA backdoors infrastructure to make hacking easy
*This encryption is available to anyone that finds it = hacking
*Necessary for international norm- modelling- people wont follow til USA does
their shit
Bolstering the nations defenses against hackers has been one of the Obama
administrations top goals. Officials have warned for years that a sophisticated
cyberattack could cripple (destroy) critical infrastructure or allow thieves to make
off with the financial information of millions of Americans. President Obama pushed
Congress to enact cybersecurity legislation, and when it didnt, he issued his own executive order in 2013. The

cyber threat to our nation is one of the most serious economic and national
security challenges we face, Obama wrote in a 2012 op-ed in The Wall Street Journal. But critics
argue that the National Security Agency has actually undermined
cybersecurity and made the United States more vulnerable to hackers. At its
core, the problem is the NSAs dual mission. On one hand, the agency is tasked with
securing U.S. networks and information. On the other hand, the agency must
gather intelligence on foreign threats to national security. Collecting intelligence
often means hacking encrypted communications. Thats nothing new for the NSA; the agency
traces its roots back to code-breakers deciphering Nazi messages during World War II. So in many ways,
strong Internet security actually makes the NSAs job harder . This is an administration
that is a vigorous defender of surveillance, said Christopher Soghoian, the head technologist for the American

Surveillance at the scale they want requires insecurity. The

leaks from Edward Snowden have revealed a variety of efforts by the NSA to weaken
cybersecurity and hack into networks. Critics say those programs, while helping NSA
spying, have made U.S. networks less secure. According to the leaked documents,
the NSA inserted a so-called back door into at least one encryption
standard that was developed by the National Institute of Standards and
Technology. The NSA could use that back door to spy on suspected terrorists, but
the vulnerability was also available to any other hacker who discovered it.
NIST, a Commerce Department agency, sets scientific and technical standards
that are widely used by both the government and the private sector. The
Civil Liberties Union.

agency has said it would never deliberately weaken a cryptographic standard, but it remains unclear whether
the agency was aware of the back door or whether the NSA tricked NIST into adopting the compromised

The
revelation that NSA somehow got NIST to build a back door into an encryption
standard has seriously damaged NISTs reputation with security experts. NIST is
operating with a trust deficit right now, Soghoian said. Anything that NIST has
touched is now tainted. Its a particularly bad time for NIST to have lost the
support of the cybersecurity community. In his executive order, Obama tasked
NIST with drafting the cybersecurity guidelines for critical infrastructure such
as power plants and phone companies. Because its an executive order instead of a law, the
standard. NIST is required by law to consult with the NSA for its technical expertise on cybersecurity.

cybersecurity standards are entirely voluntary, and the U.S. government will have to convince the private sector to

The Snowden leaks werent the first to indicate that the NSA is involved in
exploiting commercial security. According to a 2012 New York Times report, the
NSA developed a worm, dubbed Stuxnet, to cripple Iranian nuclear centrifuges.
But the worm, which exploited four previously unknown flaws in Microsoft
Windows, escaped the Iranian nuclear plant and quickly began damaging
computers around the world. The NSA and Israeli officials have also been tied to Flame, a virus that
comply.

impersonated a Microsoft update to spy on Iranian computers. Vanee Vines, an NSA spokeswoman, said the U.S.
government is as concerned as the public is with the security of these products. The United States pursues its
intelligence mission with care to ensure that innocent users of those same technologies are not affected, she said.

the NSA relies on the same encryption standards it recommends to

the public to protect its own classified networks. We do not make recommendations that we
According to Vines,

cannot stand behind for protecting national security systems and data, she said. The activity of NSA in setting
standards has made the Internet a far safer place to communicate and do business .

But due to concern

over the NSA damaging Internet security, the presidents review group on
surveillance issues recommended that the U.S. government promise not to in any
way subvert, undermine, weaken, or make vulnerable generally available
commercial encryption. Encryption is an essential basis for trust on the Internet ;

without such trust, valuable communications would not be possible, the group wrote in
its report, which was released in December. For the entire system to work, encryption
software itself must be trustworthy. The White Houses cybersecurity coordinator said that
disclosing security flaws "usually makes sense." In response to the report, the administration adopted a new policy
on whether the NSA can exploit zero-daysvulnerabilities that havent been discovered by anyone else yet.
According to the White House, there is a bias toward publicly disclosing flaws in security unless there is a clear

Michael Daniel, the White

Houses cybersecurity coordinator, said that disclosing security flaws usually
makes sense. Building up a huge stockpile of undisclosed vulnerabilities while leaving the Internet
vulnerable and the American people unprotected would not be in our national security interest, he said. But
Daniel added that, in some cases, disclosing a vulnerability means that the U.S.
would forego an opportunity to collect crucial intelligence that could thwart a
terrorist attack, stop the theft of our nations intellectual property, or even discover
more dangerous vulnerabilities. He said that the government weighs a variety of factors, such as the
national security or law enforcement need. In a blog post Monday,

risk of leaving the vulnerability un-patched, the likelihood that anyone else would discover it, and how important

But privacy advocates and many business groups are

still uncomfortable with the U.S. keeping security flaws secret. And many
dont trust that the NSA will only exploit the vulnerabilities with the most
potential for intelligence and least opportunity for other hackers. The surveillance
bureaucracy really doesnt have a lot of self-imposed limits. They want to get
everything, said Ed Black, the CEO of the Computer & Communications Industry
Association, which represents companies including Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and
Sprint. Now I think people dealing with that bureaucracy have to understand they cant take anything for
granted. Most computer networks are run by private companies, and the
government must work closely with the private sector to improve
cybersecurity. But companies have become reluctant to share security
information with the U.S. government, fearing the NSA could use any
information to hack into their systems. When you want to go into partnership
with somebody and work on serious issuessuch as cybersecurityyou want to
know youre being told the truth, Black said. Google and one other cybersecurity firm
discovered Heartbleeda critical flaw in a widely used Internet encryption tool
in March. The companies notified a few other private-sector groups about the
problem, but no one told the U.S. government until April. Information you share
with the NSA might be used to hurt you as a company, warned Ashkan Soltani, a technical
the potential intelligence is.

consultant who has worked with tech companies and helped The Washington Post with its coverage of the

company officials have historically discussed

cybersecurity issues with the NSA, but that he wouldnt be surprised if those
relationships are now strained. He pointed to news that the NSA posed as
Facebook to infect computers with malware. That does a lot of harm to
companies brands, Soltani said. The NSAs actions have also made it difficult for
the U.S. to set international norms for cyberconflict. For several years, the
U.S. has tried to pressure China to scale back its cyberspying operations, which
allegedly steal trade secrets from U.S. businesses. Jason Healey, the director of the
Cyber Statecraft Initiative at the Atlantic Council, said the U.S. has militarized
cyber policy. The United States has been saying that the world needs to
operate according to certain norms, he said. It is difficult to get the norms
that we want because it appears to the rest of the world that we only want
to follow the norms that we think are important. Vines, the NSA spokeswoman,
Snowden documents. He said that

emphasized that the NSA would never hack into foreign networks to give domestic companies a competitive edge
(as China is accused of doing). We do not use foreign intelligence capabilities to steal the trade secrets of foreign
companies on behalf ofor give intelligence we collect toU.S. companies to enhance their international
competitiveness or increase their bottom line, she said. Jim Lewis, a senior fellow with the Center for Strategic
and International Studies, agreed that NSA spying to stop terrorist attacks is fundamentally different from China
stealing business secrets to boost its own economy. He also said there is widespread misunderstanding of how the

there is a trust problemjustified or not. He

predicted that rebuilding trust with the tech community will be one of the top
challenges for Mike Rogers, who was sworn in as the new NSA director earlier this
month. All the tech companies are in varying degrees unhappy and not eager to
have a close relationship with NSA, Lewis said.
NSA works, but he acknowledged that

Thats key to cybersecurity

1. Backdoors make cyberterrorism a ticking time bomb
Seneque 14 Gareth, ICT professional with a particular focus on UNIX
Architecture & Design, holds a degree in Philosophy/Politics from the University of
Sydney, Alex Comninos, an independent researcher focusing on information and
communications technology and politics, a Doctoral Candidate at Justus-Liebig
University in Giessen, Germany at the Department of Geography, where he is
conducting doctoral research on the challenges and constraints of the use of usergenerated geographic information systems in Egypt, Libya, and North and Sudan
in 2010 to 2011, "Cyber security, civil society and vulnerability in an age of
communications surveillance", 2014, Justus-Liebig University Giessen and Geist
Consulting, giswatch.org/en/communications-surveillance/cyber-security-civilsociety-and-vulnerability-age-communications-sur

The relevance of Snowdens disclosures to cyber security The scope and reach of
the NSAs surveillance is important. The NSAs surveillance posture is as has been
repeated by General Keith Alexander, and is reflected in the NSA slide in Figure 1 to "collect it all":32
from undersea cable taps, to Yahoo video chats, to in-flight Wi-Fi, to virtual worlds
and online multiplayer games like Second Life and World of Warcraft. The NSA has at least three different
programmes to get Yahoo and Google user data. This shows that they try to get the same data from multiple
mechanisms.33 With the GCHQ under the MUSCULAR programme it hacked into the internal data links of Google

In addition to
highlighting the NSAs massive institutional overreach and global privacy invasion,
Snowdens disclosures also highlight the many points at which our data is
insecure, and the vast numbers of vulnerabilities to surveillance that exist
throughout our digital world. However, while the NSA is the largest threat in the
surveillance game, it is not the only threat. Governments all around the world are
using the internet to surveil their citizens. Considering the rate of
technological change, it is not unforeseeable that the methods, tools and
vulnerabilities used by the NSA will be the tools of states, cyber criminals
and low-skilled hackers of the future. Regardless of who the perceived attacker
or surveillance operative may be, and whether it is the NSA or not, large-scale,
mass surveillance is a growing cyber security threat. It has also been disclosed that
the NSA and GCHQ have actively worked to make internet and technology users around
and Yahoo34 for information that it could mostly have gotten through the PRISM programme.

the world less secure. The NSA has placed backdoors in routers running vital
internet infrastructures.35 The GCHQ has impersonated social networking websites like LinkedIn in
order to target system administrators of internet service providers.36 The NSA has been working with
the GCHQ to hack into Google and Yahoo data centres.37 The NSA also works to
undermine encryption technologies, by covertly influencing the use of weak
algorithms and random number generators in encryption products and
standards.38 The NSA in its own words is working under the BULLRUN programme
to "insert vulnerabilities into commercial encryption systems, IT systems,
networks, and endpoint communications devices used by targets" and to influence
policies, standards and specifications for commercial [encryption] technologies. 39
The NSA is also believed to hoard knowledge about vulnerabilities rather
than sharing them with developers, vendors and the general public,40 as
well as even maintaining a catalogue of these vulnerabilities for use in
surveillance and cyber attacks.41 None of these activities serve to make the
internet more secure. In fact, they do the very opposite. As US Congresswoman
Zoe Lofgren commented: When any industry or organisation builds a backdoor to
assist with electronic surveillance into their product, they put all of our data
security at risk. If a backdoor is created for law enforcement purposes, its
only a matter of time before a hacker exploits it, in fact we have already seen
it happen."42

2. NormsCurtailing surveillance is key to effective normsbuildingthat prevents cyber-warfare

Farrell 2015, Henry Farrell, PhD in Government from Georgetown University,
Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs, April 2015,
Promoting Norms for Cyberspace, Council on Foreign Relations,
http://www.cfr.org/cybersecurity/promoting-norms-cyberspace/p36358?cid=nlcpress_release-press_note--link220150406&sp_mid=48385113&sp_rid=YWtpbWVyeUBoc3RvZGF5LnVzS0
*build norms- soft power is necessary- SPURS COOPERATION
*no one is listening to us rn
*AT: Treaties- no one listens to them
the United States and others need to build norms to mitigate
cybersecurity problems. Admiral Michael S. Rogers, head of the National Security Agency (NSA) and
U.S. policymakers argue that

Cyber Command, has argued that shared norms are a basic building block for cybersecurity. He has called on
actors in academia and civil society to help design them and to assist in their spread. It may seem strange that

soft tools rather than hard military options, but there are four
are the best option available. First, the United States is
vulnerable to cyberattacks and this weakness is difficult to address using
conventional tools of military statecraft. Second, it is difficult to ensure that complex
information systems are fully defended, since they may have subtle technical
weaknesses. Third, classical deterrence is not easy in a world where it is often
challenging to identify sophisticated attackers, or even to know when an attack has taken place.
Lastly, treaties are hard to enforce because it is so difficult to verify compliance
particularly in cyberspace, where weapons are software, not missiles. Although norms are hazier than
Pentagon officials are arguing for
good reasons why norms

treaty rules, they may still have important consequences. Norms against the use of nuclear weapons have taken

Robust
cybersecurity norms might, over time, rule out some kinds of attacks as
normatively inappropriate. They might encourage other states to see norm breaches
as attacks on their security, too, spurring cooperation to prevent or stop attacks. Finally,
norms can provide shared understandings between states that allow them to work
together where they have shared interests and manage relations where their interests clash. Challenges to
Norm Promotion It is hard to spread norms, even in the best circumstances. Unfortunately,
these are far from the best circumstances for the United States . U.S. policymakers face
hold since the 1950s, making their use nearly unthinkable in ordinary circumstances.

three major problems. First, it is easiest to promote norms when one can invoke common values to support them,
yet the world's cyber powers have differentand radically incompatiblevalues over how to protect cyberspace.
The clashing interests between democratic and authoritarian regimes on the value of an open Internet and

adopters of norms
are likely to be more receptive if they do not think the proponent of the norms is
acting in bad faith. To be sure, many states were happy to use the Snowden
revelations as a cover for opposition to any rules of behavior Washington might
offer. But for others, efforts at persuasion have been damaged by the exposed
gap between U.S. rhetoric and actions. At the very least, other states must be persuaded that
definitions of security make effective global treaties impossible. Second, the potential

following a norm is in their national interest. The disclosures, however, reinforced the view of many states that the
United States disproportionately benefits from an open, global, and secure Internet, and is only committed to

In light of the
Snowden disclosures, the United States is poorly placed to persuade other actors
of its good faith or its commitment to shared interests and values. The extent of the
damage to the U.S. reputation was revealed when the United States accused North
Korea of hacking into Sony's servers and announced its intention to retaliate against North Korea
these values to the extent that they further U.S. economic, political, and military objectives.

through low-level sanctions. Building on previous indictments of Chinese soldiers for hacking into U.S. firms, U.S.
officials followed an approach of "naming and shaming" cyberattackers while pursuing sanctions and possible
criminal charges. These actions are highly unlikely to result in successful prosecutions, but potentially serve a
normative purpose by signaling to the world that some actions are unacceptable. Although a few states criticized

many did not buy U.S. claims that Pyongyang was responsible. Members
of the business and technology communities also expressed polite skepticism over the
North Korea,

evidence supplied by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

3. TrustThe SSRA would rebuild trust between the

government and the private sectorthats key to cybersecurity
Zezima, reporter @ The Washington Post, 15
Katie, "Obama signs executive order on sharing cybersecurity threat information",
Feb 12 2015, www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2015/02/12/obamato-sign-executive-order-on-cybersecurity-threats/
*government and industry arent working together
*AT: XO- that just makes communication easier doesnt mandate it
*encryption sets up problems with private and public sectors
Obama signed an executive order Friday that urges
companies to share cybersecurity-threat information with one another and the
federal government. Obama signed the order, which is advisory in nature, at the first White House summit
PALO ALTO, Calif. President

on Cybersecurity and Consumer Protection at Stanford University here. The summit, which focused on publicprivate partnerships and consumer protection, is part of a recent White House push to focus on cybersecurity.
Obama said the prospect of cyberattacks are one of the nation's most pressing national security, economic and

safety issues. The specter of a cyberattack crippling the nation's air traffic control system or a city with a blackout
is real, and hacks such as the one on Sony Pictures last year are "hurting America's companies and costing
American jobs." He also said they are a threat to the security and well-being of children who are online. "Its one
of the great paradoxes of our time that the very technologies that empower us to do great good can also be used
to undermine us and inflict great harm," Obama said before a cheering, friendly audience here at Stanford's

The order the president signed here encourages the development

of central clearinghouses for companies and the government to share data and
creation of centers where data can be shared across specific geographic regions.
Obama pushed for collaboration between the public and private sectors. "Theres
only one way to defend America from these cyber threats, and that is
through government and industry working together, sharing appropriate
information as true partners," he said. MasterCard chief executive Ajay Banga
praised Obamas executive action but said that eventually we need a real
legislative solution. An executive action can only take you this far. Rather than fight
this in individualized groups, theres some merit in joining hands and doing it together, Banga said. Obama's
order is part of a broader White House effort to beef up the nation's cybersecurity
infrastructure, something the administration wants to push on Capitol Hill. Last
Memorial Auditorium.

month Obama proposed legislation that would shield companies from lawsuits for sharing threat data with the
government. Last month he proposed legislation that would shield companies from lawsuits for sharing threat
data with the government. Obama said shortly after he took office he realized that cybersecurity is "one of the
most serious economic national security challenges that we face as a nation" and made confronting them a
priority. Obama has signed other executive orders, including one that calls for the creation of voluntary standards
to bolster the security of computer networks in critical industries and a framework for cybersecurity and another
last year to protect consumers from identity theft. So far nothing has been able to stem the tide of attacks such as

privacy groups and Silicon

Valley companies have said they would oppose the legislation Obama proposed last
month unless reforms are first made to the NSA's surveillance program . In an
interview with Re/Code, Obama acknowledged tensions with Silicon Valley after the NSA disclosures. "The
Snowden disclosures ... were really harmful in terms of the trust between
the government and many of these companies, in part because it had an
impact on their bottom lines," Obama said. The president also said that there should be a "public
the one against Sony or others against retailers including Home Depot. Both

conversation" about encryption and said he likely leans more toward strong data encryption than law

U.S.
government surveillance activities have been seen as a potential liability for tech
companies that operate globally. Seventy to 80 percent of the user bases for a lot of these companies
enforcement, but is sympathetic to them because of the pressure they are under to keep people safe.

are the foreigners who get very little protection under our system, explained Julian Sanchez, a senior fellow
focused on technology and civil liberties at the Cato Institute. If they dont display some push back, they know

In December of 2013, major tech companies

including Apple, Google, Twitter, Facebook, Microsoft and Yahoo joined together in
the Reform Government Surveillance coalition, urging the President and Congress
to impose restrictions and oversight measures on U.S. spying programs. The
President agreed in principle to some limits on spying programs , including the bulk
collection of domestic phone records, during a speech last year. But progress on reforms has
been too slow for some privacy advocates, as the administration urged for
legislative action that has yet to succeed. Tech companies, meanwhile, have taken
some measures into their own hands by strengthening and expanding their
deployment of encryption to secure users' online activities setting up a
conflict between the companies and law enforcement who warn that such
actions may make it harder for them to pursue crime and terrorism which
increasingly includes a digital component. I think its fair to say that changes on the technology
they wont do very well with those markets.

front have outpaced governmental and legislative efforts, said Andrew Crocker, a legal fellow at civil liberties
group the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Plan
The United States federal government should substantially curtail its use of
domestic backdoor encryption standards and domestic metadata collection
programs.

Internet
Competitiveness is vital to hegemony and conflict suppression
Hubbard, Open Society Foundations program assistant, 2010
(Jesse, Hegemonic Stability Theory: An Empirical Analysis, 5-28,
http://isrj.wordpress.com/2010/05/28/hegemonic-stability-theory/)
Regression analysis of this data shows that Pearsons r-value is -.836. In the case of
American hegemony, economic strength is a better predictor of violent
conflict than even overall national power, which had an r-value of -.819. The data is also well within
the realm of statistical significance, with a p-value of .0014. While the data for British hegemony was not as striking, the same
overall pattern holds true in both cases. During both periods of hegemony, hegemonic strength was negatively related with violent
conflict, and yet use of force by the hegemon was positively correlated with violent conflict in both cases. Finally, in both cases,
economic power was more closely associated with conflict levels than military power. Statistical analysis created a more
complicated picture of the hegemons role in fostering stability than initially anticipated. VI. Conclusions and Implications for
Theory and Policy To elucidate some answers regarding the complexities my analysis unearthed, I turned first to the existing
theoretical literature on hegemonic stability theory. The existing literature provides some potential frameworks for understanding
these results. Since economic strength proved to be of such crucial importance, reexamining the literature that focuses on
hegemonic stability theorys economic implications was the logical first step. As explained above, the literature on hegemonic
stability theory can be broadly divided into two camps that which focuses on the international economic system, and that which
focuses on armed conflict and instability. This research falls squarely into the second camp, but insights from the first camp are

economic
instability between the First and Second World Wars could be attributed to the lack
of an economic hegemon (Kindleberger 1973). But economic instability obviously has spillover effects into the
still of relevance. Even Kindlebergers early work on this question is of relevance. Kindleberger posited that the

international political arena. Keynes, writing after WWI, warned in his seminal tract The Economic Consequences of the Peace that
Germanys economic humiliation could have a radicalizing effect on the nations political culture (Keynes 1919). Given later
events, his warning seems prescient. In the years since the Second World War, however, the European continent has not relapsed
into armed conflict. What was different after the second global conflagration? Crucially, the United States was in a far more
powerful position than Britain was after WWI. As the tables above show, Britains economic strength after the First World War was
about 13% of the total in strength in the international system. In contrast, the United States possessed about 53% of relative
economic power in the international system in the years immediately following WWII. The U.S. helped rebuild Europes economic
strength with billions of dollars in investment through the Marshall Plan, assistance that was never available to the defeated
powers after the First World War (Kindleberger 1973). The interwar years were also marked by a series of debilitating trade wars
that likely worsened the Great Depression (Ibid.). In contrast, when Britain was more powerful, it was able to facilitate greater
free trade, and after World War II, the United States played a leading role in creating institutions like the GATT that had an
essential role in facilitating global trade (Organski 1958). The possibility that economic stability is an important factor in the

Another
theory that could provide insight into the patterns observed in this research is that
of preponderance of power. Gilpin theorized that when a state has the
preponderance of power in the international system, rivals are more likely
to resolve their disagreements without resorting to armed conflict (Gilpin
1983). The logic behind this claim is simple it makes more sense to challenge a weaker hegemon than a stronger one. This
overall security environment should not be discounted, especially given the results of my statistical analysis.

simple yet powerful theory can help explain the puzzlingly strong positive correlation between military conflicts engaged in by the
hegemon and conflict overall. It is not necessarily that military involvement by the hegemon instigates further conflict in the
international system. Rather, this military involvement could be a function of the hegemons weaker position, which is the true
cause of the higher levels of conflict in the international system.

Additionally, it is important to note that

military power is, in the long run, dependent on economic strength. Thus, it is
possible that as hegemons lose relative economic power, other nations are
tempted to challenge them even if their short-term military capabilities are
still strong. This would help explain some of the variation found between the economic and military data. The results of
this analysis are of clear importance beyond the realm of theory. As the debate rages over the role of the United States in the
world, hegemonic stability theory has some useful insights to bring to the table. What this research makes clear is that a strong
hegemon can exert a positive influence on stability in the international system. However, this should not give policymakers a

If anything,
this research points to the central importance of economic influence in fostering
international stability. To misconstrue these findings to justify anything else would
be a grave error indeed. Hegemons may play a stabilizing role in the international
justification to engage in conflict or escalate military budgets purely for the sake of international stability.

system, but this role is complicated. It is economic strength, not military

dominance that is the true test of hegemony. A weak state with a strong
military is a paper tiger it may appear fearsome, but it is vulnerable to even a
short blast of wind.

Offshoring prevents tech from being developed that hurts

hegemony
McCormack, 2014, editor at Manufacturing and Technology News (Richard,
Defense Science Board: Offshoring Of U.S. Manufacturing Has Created National
Security Vulnerabilities, http://www.manufacturingnews.com/news/2014/DSB0331141.html
For the first time perhaps ever, a U.S.-government report has stated that the shift of
American manufacturing overseas is causing a decline in Americans' standard of
living. Most government economic and trade officials have argued that the movement of manufacturing offshore
has allowed low-income Americans to buy cheaper products, saving them thousands of dollars a year and improving
their standard of living. Jason Furman, Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, stated in a paper he authored
shortly before joining the Obama administration that "there is little dispute that Walmart's price reductions have
benefited the 120 million American workers employed outside the retail sector." According to the Pentagon's

the situation of offshore outsourcing of

manufacturing is leading to much greater strategic consequences for the U.S.
economy and its military. "Offshoring of manufacturing capabilities resulted from
capital inducements such as wage structures, tax rates, weaker environmental regulations or
enforcement or available resources," notes the DSB. "These shifts are causing lower
standards of living as a result of the loss of fabrication facilities, and are further
exacerbated by subsequent losses in underlying technology, such as the migration
of supporting design and testing capabilities . Recent financial, political and
economic crises have created significant uncertainty regarding continued
sustainability of the current innovation system that feeds the defense
technology base." The shift of manufacturing from the United States to China and
India is a leading threat to the U.S. military advantage, according to the Defense
Science Board in its "Technology and Innovation Enablers for Superiority in 2030" report recently posted
on the web for public viewing. "Movement of critical manufacturing capability offshore may
pose significant challenges," states the DSB. The shift of manufacturing to foreign
nations "also affects U.S. technology leadership by enabling new players to
learn a technology and then gain the capability to improve on it. An additional threat
to defense capabilities from offshore manufacturing is the potential for
compromise of the supply chain for key weapons systems components." The
Defense Science Board, that assertion is in dispute. And

United States is not guaranteed economic benefit from the increased production of natural gas, notes the DSB.
"Being

resource-rich will certainly contribute to economic vigor in the United States,

but capitalizing on this new resource will depend on the ability to distribute the
goods produced as a result of relative energy price advantages . Selling agricultural,
energy and manufactured products requires ready access to the global common,
and all global distribution mechanisms are ready targets for adversaries of the
United States seeking to gain competitive advantage." The rise of technically and
economically strong foreign adversaies will challenge U.S. superiority in speed,
stealth and the precision of weapons systems. Other countries "arre likely to
develop counters to some or all of the foundation technologies on which the U.S.
has come to rely," states the DSB. "The advantages provided by capabilities such as GPS,

Internet-based network communications, satellite reconnaissance and stealth

aircraft will be diminished and, in many cases, eliminated. To maintain superiority, it will be
necessary for the military to develop new capabilities or tactics, techniques and procedures to continue to be

The
United States can no longer "plan to rely on unquestioned technical leadership in all
fields," states the Defense Science Board. In Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. military has
exposed its capabilities, tactics and vulnerabilities. "Military actions requiring
expensive platforms and equipment with long logistical support tails generate
vulnerabilities ripe for exploitation, as the use of improvised explosive devices in
Iraq and Afghanistan demonstrated, where a technologically unsophisticated
adversary created damage that was disproportionate to the technological and
financial investment. By 2030, the increasing distribution and linkages available for technology
development will likely enable creation of similar destructive asymmetries on a global scale." It will be
essential for the U.S. military to focus on how to protect assets and gain advantage
technologically in order to cope with the rise of sophisticated rivals . "Longstanding
U.S. military advantages are at risk in a world of technological parity," says the DSB.
"There is ample evidence that adversaries do, or will soon, possess technical capabilities
on par with the U.S. in certain important niches . Technological parity does not necessarily mean
effective when capabilities on which it has relied over the past two decades are degraded or denied."

the U.S. cannot compete militarily, but that participation in conflicts may impose significantly higher costs."

Hegemony creates peace by preventing both great power and

regional conflicts
Stephen M. Walt, 2002, American professor of international affairs at Harvard
University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, AMERICAN PRIMACY: Its
Prospects and Pitfalls, http://www.hks.harvard.edu/fs/swalt/files/art1-sp2.pdf
A second consequence of U.S. primacy is a decreased danger of great-power rivalry
and a higher level of overall international tranquility . Ironically, those who argue that
primacy is no longer important, because the danger of war is slight, overlook the
fact that the extent of American primacy is one of the main reasons why the risk of
great-power war is as low as it is. For most of the past four centuries, relations among the major
powers have been intensely competitive, often punctuated by major wars and occasionally by all-out struggles for

In the first half of the twentieth century, for example, great-power wars
killed over eighty million people. Today, however, the dominant position of the
United States places significant limits on the possibility of great-power competition ,
for at least two reasons. One reason is that because the United States is currently so far ahead,
other major powers are not inclined to challenge its dominant position . Not only is
there no possibility of a hegemonic war (because there is no potential hegemon to mount a
challenge), but the risk of war via miscalculation is reduced by the overwhelming gap
between the United States and the other major powers. Miscalculation is more likely to lead to
hegemony.

war when the balance of power is fairly even, because in this situation both sides can convince themselves that

When the balance of power is heavily skewed, however, the

leading state does not need to go to war and weaker states dare not try .8 12 NAVAL
they might be able to win.

WAR COLLEGE REVIEW The second reason is that the continued deployment of roughly two hundred thousand

So long as U.S. troops are

committed abroad, regional powers know that launching a war is likely to lead to a
confrontation with the United States. Thus, states within these regions do not worry
troops in Europe and in Asia provides a further barrier to conflict in each region.

as much about each other, because the U.S. presence effectively prevents regional
conflicts from breaking out. What Joseph Joffe has termed the American pacifier is not the only
barrier to conflict in Europe and Asia, but it is an important one. This tranquilizing effect is not
lost on Americas allies in Europe and Asia. They resent U.S. dominance and dislike
playing host to American troops, but they also do not want Uncle Sam to leave .9
Thus, U.S. primacy is of benefit to the United States, and to other countries as well ,
because it dampens the overall level of international insecurity . World politics might be
more interesting if the United States were weaker and if other states were forced to compete with each other more
actively, but a more exciting world is not necessarily a better one. A comparatively boring era may provide few
opportunities for genuine heroism, but it is probably a good deal more pleasant to live in than interesting decades
like the 1930s or 1940s.
.

Now is key, power gap is declining and leads to transition wars

Zhang and Shi 11 [Yuhan Zhang, researcher at the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace, Lin Shi, Columbia University, independent consultant for the
Eurasia Group and a consultant for the World Bank in DC, Americas decline: A
harbinger of conflict and rivalry,
http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2011/01/22/americas-decline-a-harbinger-of-conflictand-rivalry/, DMintz]
Paul Kennedy was probably right: the US will go the way of all great powers down. The individual dramas of the
past decade the September 2001 terrorist attacks, prolonged wars in the Middle East and the financial crisis

US primacy is in decline. This does not necessarily mean

that the US is in systemic decline, but it encompasses a trend that appears to be negative and perhaps
alarming. Although the US still possesses incomparable military prowess and its
economy remains the worlds largest, the once seemingly indomitable chasm that
separated America from anyone else is narrowing . Thus, the global distribution of
power is shifting, and the inevitable result will be a world that is less peaceful,
liberal and prosperous, burdened by a dearth of effective conflict regulation. Over the past two
decades, no other state has had the ability to seriously challenge the US military .
Under these circumstances, motivated by both opportunity and fear, many actors have bandwagoned
with US hegemony and accepted a subordinate role . Canada, most of Western Europe, India,
Japan, South Korea, Australia, Singapore and the Philippines have all joined the US, creating a status quo
that has tended to mute great power conflicts. However, as the hegemony that drew
these powers together withers, so will the pulling power behind the US allianc e. The
result will be an international order where power is more diffuse, American interests
and influence can be more readily challenged, and conflicts or wars may be harder
to avoid. As history attests, power decline and redistribution result in military
confrontation. For example, in the late 19th century Americas emergence as a regional power saw it launch its
have delivered the world a message:

first overseas war of conquest towards Spain. By the turn of the 20th century, accompanying the increase in US
power and waning of British power, the American Navy had begun to challenge the notion that Britain rules the
waves. Such a notion would eventually see the US attain the status of sole guardians of the Western Hemispheres
security to become the order-creating Leviathan shaping the international system with democracy and rule of law.

Defining this US-centred system are three key characteristics: enforcement of property
rights, constraints on the actions of powerful individuals and groups and some
degree of equal opportunities for broad segments of society. As a result of such political
stability, free markets, liberal trade and flexible financial mechanisms have
appeared. And, with this, many countries have sought opportunities to enter this system,
proliferating stable and cooperative relations. However, what will happen to these advances as

Given that Americas authority, although sullied at times, has

benefited people across much of Latin America, Central and Eastern Europe, the
Balkans, as well as parts of Africa and, quite extensively, Asia, the answer to this
question could affect global society in a profoundly detrimental way. Public
imagination and academia have anticipated that a post-hegemonic world would
return to the problems of the 1930s: regional blocs, trade conflicts and strategic rivalry .
Furthermore, multilateral institutions such as the IMF, the World Bank or the WTO might
give way to regional organisations. For example, Europe and East Asia would each step
forward to fill the vacuum left by Washingtons withering leadership to pursue their
own visions of regional political and economic orders . Free markets would become
more politicised and, well, less free and major powers would compete for
supremacy. Additionally, such power plays have historically possessed a zero-sum
element. In the late 1960s and 1970s, US economic power declined relative to the rise of the
Japanese and Western European economies, with the US dollar also becoming less attractive. And, as American
power eroded, so did international regimes (such as the Bretton Woods System in 1973). A world
without American hegemony is one where great power wars re-emerge, the liberal
international system is supplanted by an authoritarian one , and trade protectionism
devolves into restrictive, anti-globalisation barriers. This, at least, is one possibility we can
Americas influence declines?

forecast in a future that will inevitably be devoid of unrivalled US primacy.

Economic lows increase the likelihood for global war

Royal 10 (Jedediah, Director of Cooperative Threat Reduction U.S. Department
of Defense, Economic Integration, Economic Signaling and the Problem of
Economic Crises, Economics of War and Peace: Economic, Legal and Political
Perspectives, Ed. Goldsmith and Brauer, p. 213-215)
economic decline may increase the likelihood of external
conflict . Political science literature has contributed a moderate degree of attention to the impact of economic

Less intuitive is how periods of

decline and the security and defence behaviour of interdependent states. Research in this vein has been considered
at systemic, dyadic and national levels. Several notable contributions follow. First, on the systemic level, Pollins

rhythms in the
global economy are associated with the rise and fall of a pre-eminent power and the
often bloody transition from one pre-eminent leader to the next . As such, exogenous shocks
such as economic crises could usher in a redistribution of relative power (see also Gilpin.
1981) that leads to uncertainty about power balances, increasing the risk of miscalculation
(Feaver, 1995). Alternatively, even a relatively certain redistribution of power could lead to a
permissive environment for conflict as a rising power may seek to challenge a declining power
(2008) advances Modelski and Thompson's (1996) work on leadership cycle theory, finding that

(Werner. 1999). Separately, Pollins (1996) also shows that global economic cycles combined with parallel leadership
cycles impact the likelihood of conflict among major, medium and small powers, although he suggests that the
causes and connections between global economic conditions and security conditions remain unknown. Second, on a
dyadic level, Copeland's (1996, 2000) theory of trade expectations suggests that 'future

expectation of
trade' is a significant variable in understanding economic conditions and security
behaviour of states. He argues that interdependent states are likely to gain pacific benefits from trade so
long as they have an optimistic view of future trade relations. However, if the expectations of future
trade decline, particularly for difficult to replace items such as energy resources, the likelihood for
conflict increases, as states will be inclined to use force to gain access to those
resources. Crises could potentially be the trigger for decreased trade expectations either on
its own or because it triggers protectionist moves by interdependent states.4 Third, others have considered
the link between economic decline and external armed conflict at a national level.

Blomberg and Hess (2002) find a strong correlation between internal conflict and
external conflict, particularly during periods of economic downturn. They write: The
linkages between internal and external conflict and prosperity are strong and mutually reinforcing. Economic

presence of a
recession tends to amplify the extent to which international and external conflicts
self-reinforce each other. (Blomberg & Hess, 2002. p. 89) Economic decline has also been
linked with an increase in the likelihood of terrorism (Blomberg, Hess, & Weerapana,
conflict tends to spawn internal conflict, which in turn returns the favour. Moreover, the

2004), which has the capacity to spill across borders and lead to external tensions. Furthermore, crises generally

"Diversionary theory" suggests that, when facing

unpopularity arising from economic decline, sitting governments have increased
incentives to fabricate external military conflicts to create a 'rally around the flag'
effect. Wang (1996), DeRouen (1995). and Blomberg, Hess, and Thacker (2006) find supporting evidence showing
reduce the popularity of a sitting government.

that economic decline and use of force are at least indirectly correlated. Gelpi (1997), Miller (1999), and Kisangani

the tendency towards diversionary tactics are greater for

democratic states than autocratic states, due to the fact that democratic leaders are generally more
and Pickering (2009) suggest that

susceptible to being removed from office due to lack of domestic support. DeRouen (2000) has provided evidence

periods of weak economic performance in the United States, and thus weak
Presidential popularity, are statistically linked to an increase in the use of force . In
showing that

summary, recent economic scholarship positively correlates economic integration with an increase in the frequency

political science scholarship links economic decline with

external conflict at systemic, dyadic and national levels.5 This implied connection between
of economic crises, whereas

integration, crises and armed conflict has not featured prominently in the economic-security debate and deserves
more attention.

Surveillance is hurting cloud computing they are moving to

other countries
Kehl, Policy Analyst at New Americas Open Technology Institute, 14
Daielle, Kevin Bankston, Policy Directorat OTI, Robyn Greene, Policy Counsel at
OTI, Robert Morgus, Research Associate at OTI, "Surveillance Costs: The NSA's
Impact on the Economy, Internet Freedom & Cybersecurity", July 2014, New
America's Open Technology Institute Policy Paper,
https://www.newamerica.org/downloads/Surveilance_Costs_Final.pdf

Costs to the U.S. Cloud Computing Industry and Related Business Trust in
American businesses has taken a significant hit s ince the initial reports on the PRISM
program suggested that the NSA was directly tapping into the servers of nine U.S.
companies to obtain customer data for national security investigations .28 The
Washington Posts original story on the program provoked an uproar in the media and prompted the CEOs of
several major companies to deny knowledge of or participation in the program.29 The exact nature of the requests

the relationship
between American companies and the NSA still created a significant trust
gap, especially in industries where users entrust companies to store sensitive
personal and commercial data. Last years national security leaks have also had a commercial and
financial impact on American technology companies that have provided these records, noted
made through the PRISM program was later clarified,30 but the public attention on

Representative Bob Goodlatte, a prominent Republican leader and Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, in
May 2014. They

have experienced backlash from both American and foreign

consumers and have had their competitive standing in the global marketplace
damaged.31 Given heightened concerns about the NSAs ability to access data
stored by U.S. companies, it is no surprise that American companies offering
cloud computing and webhosting services are among those experiencing
the most acute economic fallout from NSA surveillance. Within just a few weeks of
the first disclosures, reports began to emerge that American cloud computing companies like Dropbox and
Amazon Web Services were starting to lose business to overseas competitors.32 The CEO of Artmotion, one of
Switzerlands largest offshore hosting providers, reported in July 2013 that his company had seen a 45 percent
jump in revenue since the first leaks,33 an early sign that the countrys perceived neutrality and strong data and

Foreign
companies are clearly poised to benefit from growing fears about the security
ramifications of keeping data in the United States. In a survey of 300 British and
Canadian businesses released by PEER 1 in January 2014,36 25 percent of
respondents indicated that they were moving data outside of the U.S. as a result of
the NSA revelations. An overwhelming number of the companies surveyed
indicated that security and data privacy were their top concerns, with 81 percent
stating that they want to know exactly where their data is being hosted. Seventy
percent were even willing to sacrifice performance in order to ensure that their
data was protected.37 It appears that little consideration was given over the past decade to the potential
privacy protections34 could potentially be turned into a serious competitive advantage.35

economic repercussions if the NSAs secret programs were revealed.38 This failure was acutely demonstrated by
the Obama Administrations initial focus on reassuring the public that its programs primarily affect nonAmericans, even though non-Americans are also heavy users of American companies products. Facebook CEO
Mark Zuckerberg put a fine point on the issue, saying that the government blew it in its response to the scandal.
He noted sarcastically: The government response was, Oh dont worry, were not spying on any Americans. Oh,
wonderful: thats really helpful to companies [like Facebook] trying to serve people around the world, and thats
really going to inspire confidence in American internet companies.39 As Zuckerbergs comments reflect,

certain parts of the American technology industry are particularly vulnerable to

international backlash since growth is heavily dependent on foreign markets. For
example, the U.S. cloud computing industry has grown from an estimated $46
billion in 2008 to $150 billion in 2014, with nearly 50 percent of worldwide cloudcomputing revenues coming from the U.S.40 R Street Institutes January 2014
policy study concluded that in the next few years, new products and services that
rely on cloud computing will become increasingly pervasive. Cloud computing is
also the root of development for the emerging generation of Web-based
applicationshome security, outpatient care, mobile payment, distance learning,
efficient energy use and driverless cars, writes R Streets Steven Titch in the
study. And it is a research area where the United States is an undisputed
leader.41 This trajectory may be dramatically altered, however, as a
consequence of the NSAs surveillance programs. Economic forecasts after
the Snowden leaks have predicted significant, ongoing losses for the cloudcomputing industry in the next few years. An August 2013 study by the
Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) estimated that revelations
about the NSAs PRISM program could cost the American cloud computing industry $22
to $35 billion over the next three years.42 On the low end, the ITIF projection suggests that U.S.
cloud computing providers would lose 10 percent of the foreign market share to European or Asian competitors,
totaling in about $21.5 billion in losses; on the high-end, the $35 billion figure represents about 20 percent of the

Because the cloud computing industry is undergoing

rapid growth right nowa 2012 Gartner study predicted global spending on
cloud computing would increase by 100 percent from 2012 to 2016, compared to a
3 percent overall growth rate in the tech industry as a whole43 vendors in this
companies foreign market share.

sector are particularly vulnerable to shifts in the market . Failing to recruit

new customers or losing a competitive advantage due to exploitation by rival
companies in other countries can quickly lead to a dwindling market share . The
ITIF study further notes that the percentage lost to foreign competitors could go
higher if foreign governments enact protectionist trade barriers that effectively cut
out U.S. providers, citing early calls from German data protection authorities to
suspend the U.S.-EU Safe Harbor program (which will be discussed at length in the next
section).44 As the R Street Policy Study highlights, Ironically, the NSA turned the competitive
edge U.S. companies have in cloud computing into a liability , especially in Europe.45 In a
follow up to the ITIF study, Forrester Research analyst James Staten argued that the think
tanks estimates were low, suggesting that the actual figure could be as high as
$180 billion over three years.46 Staten highlighted two additional impacts not
considered in the ITIF study. The first is that U.S. customersnot just foreign companies
would also avoid US cloud providers, especially for international and overseas
business. The ITIF study predicted that American companies would retain their domestic market share, but
Staten argued that the economic blowback from the revelations would be felt at home, too. You dont have
to be a French company, for example, to be worried about the US government
snooping in the data about your French clients, he wrote.47 Moreover, the analysis highlighted
a second and far more costly impact: that foreign cloud providers, too, would lose
as much as 20 percent of overseas and domestic business because of
similar spying programs conducted by other governments . Indeed, the NSA
disclosures have prompted a fundamental re-examination of the role of intelligence services in conducting
coordinated cross-border surveillance, according to a November 2013 report by Privacy International on the
Five Eyes intelligence partnership between the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New

as the surveillance landscape around the world becomes

more clear, it could have a serious negative impact on all hosting and outsourcing
services, resulting in a 25 percent decline in the overall IT services market, or
about $180 billion in losses.49 Recent reports suggest that things are, in fact,
moving in the direction that analysts like Castro and Staten suggested .50 A survey
of 1,000 [Information and Communications Technology (ICT)] decision-makers from France,
Germany, Hong Kong, the UK, and the USA in February and March 2014 found that the
disclosures have had a direct impact on how companies around the world
think about ICT and cloud computing in particular.51 According to the data from NTT
Communications, 88 percent of decision-makers are changing their purchasing
behavior when it comes to the cloud, with the vast majority indicating that the
location of the data is very important. The results do not bode well for recruitment
of new customers, either62 percent of those currently not storing data in the
cloud indicated that the revelations have since prevented them from moving their
ICT systems there. And finally, 82 percent suggested that they agree with
proposals made by German Chancellor Angela Merkel in February 2014 to have separate
data networks for Europe, which will be discussed in further detail in Part III of this report. Providing
direct evidence of this trend, Servint, a Virginia-based webhosting company,
reported in June 2014 that international clients have declined by as much as half,
dropping from approximately 60 percent of its business to 30 percent since the
leaks began.52 With faith in U.S. companies on the decline, foreign
companies are stepping in to take advantage of shifting public perceptions .
Zealand.48 Staten predicts that

As Georg Mascolo and Ben Scott predicted in a joint paper published by the Wilson Center and the New America
Foundation in October 2013, Major commercial actors on both continents are preparing offensive and defensive

For
example, Runbox, a small Norwegian company that offers secure email service,
reported a 34 percent jump in customers since June 201 3.54 Runbox markets itself as a safer
strategies to battle in the market for a competitive advantage drawn from Snowdens revelations.53

email and webhosting provider for both individual and commercial customers, promising that it will never

Since the NSA

revelations, the company has touted its privacy-centric design and the fact that its
servers are located in Norway as a competitive advantage. Being firmly located in Norway,
disclose any user data unauthorized, track your usage, or display any advertisements.55

the Runbox email service is governed by strict privacy regulations and is a safe alternative to American email
services as well as cloud-based services that move data across borders and jurisdictions, company
representatives wrote on its blog in early 2014.56 F-Secure, a Finnish cloud storage company, similarly

Presenting
products and services as NSA-proof or safer alternatives to Americanmade goods is an increasingly viable strategy for foreign companies hoping
to chip away at U.S. tech competiveness.58
emphasizes the fact that its roots [are] in Finland, where privacy is a fiercely guarded value.57

Forces companies to spend billions to start at square one

Laura Donohue 15, Professor of Law at Georgetown Law, Director of
Georgetowns Center on National Security and the Law, and Director of the Center
on Privacy and Technology, writes on U.S. Constitutional Law, and national security
and counterterrorist law in the US, A.B., Dartmouth; M.A., University of Ulster,
Northern Ireland; Ph.D., Cambridge University; J.D., Stanford, March 2015, High
Technology, Consumer Privacy, and U.S. National Security,
http://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/facpub/1457/
Billions of dollars are on the line because of worldwide concern that the services
provided by U.S. information technology companies are neither secure nor
private.13 Perhaps nowhere is this more apparent than in cloud computin g.
Previously, approximately 50% of the worldwide cloud computing revenues derived
from the United States.14 The domestic market thrived: between 2008 and 2014, it
more than tripled in value. 15 But within weeks of the Snowden leaks, reports had
emerged that U.S. companies such as Dropbox, Amazon Web Services, and
Microsofts Azure were losing business. 16 By December 2013, ten percent of the
Cloud Security Alliance had cancelled U.S. cloud services projects as a result of the
Snowden information.17 In January 2014 a survey of Canadian and British
businesses found that one quarter of the respondents were moving their data
outside the United States.18 The Information Technology and Innovation
Foundation estimates that declining revenues of corporations that focus on cloud
computing and data storage alone could reach $35 billion over the next three
years.19 Other commentators, such as Forrester Research analyst James Staten,
have put actual losses as high as $180 billion by 2016, unless something is done
to restore confidence in data held by U.S. companies.20 The monetary impact of
the NSA programs extends beyond cloud computing to the high technology
industry. Cisco, Qualcomm, IBM, Microsoft, and HewlettPackard have all reported
declining sales as a direct result of the NSA programs.21 Servint, a webhosting
company based in Virginia, reported in June 2014 that its international clients had
dropped by 50% since the leaks began.22 Also in June, the German government
announced that because of Verizons complicity in the NSA program, it would end
its contract with the company, which had previously provided services to a number
of government departments.23 As a senior analyst at the Information Technology

and Innovation Foundation explained, Its clear to every single tech company that
this is affecting their bottom line.24 The European commissioner for digital affairs,
Neelie Kroes, predicts that the fallout for U.S. businesses in the EU alone will
amount to billions of Euros.25 Not only are U.S. companies losing customers, but
they have been forced to spend billions to add encryption features to their services.
IBM has invested more than a billion dollars to build data centers in London, Hong
Kong, Sydney, and elsewhere, in an effort to reassure consumers outside the United
States that their information is protected from U.S. government surveillance.
26 Salesforce.com made a similar announcement in March 2014.27 Google moved
to encrypt terms entered into its browser. 28 In June 2014 it took the additional
step of releasing the source code for End-to-End, its newly-developed browser
plugin that allows users to encrypt email prior to it being sent across the
Internet.29 The following month Microsoft announced Transport Layer Security for
inbound and outbound email, and Perfect Forward Secrecy encryption for access to
OneDrive.30 Together with the establishment of a Transparency Center, where
foreign governments could review source code to assure themselves of the integrity
of Microsoft software, the company sought to put an end to both NSA back door
surveillance and doubt about the integrity of Microsoft products. 31 Foreign
technology companies, in turn, are seeing revenues increase. Runbox, for instance,
an email service based in Norway and a direct competitor to Gmail and Yahoo,
almost immediately made it publicly clear that it does not comply with foreign court
requests for its customers personal information. 32 Its customer base increased
34% in the aftermath of the Snowden leaks. 33 Mateo Meier, CEO of Artmotion,
Switzerlands biggest offshore data hosting company, reported that within the first
month of the leaks, the company saw a 45% rise in revenue.34 Because
Switzerland is not a member of the EU, the only way to access data in a Swiss data
center is through an official court order demonstrating guilt or liability; there are no
exceptions for the United States.35 In April 2014, Brazil and the EU, which
previously used U.S. firms to supply undersea cables for transoceanic
communications, decided to build their own cables between Brazil and Portugal,
using Spanish and Brazilian companies in the process. 36 OpenText, Canadas
largest software company, now guarantees customers that their data remains
outside the United States. Deutsche Telekom, a cloud computing provider, is
similarly gaining more customers.37 Numerous foreign companies are marketing
their products as NSA proof or safer alternatives to those offered by U.S.
firms, gaining market share in the process.

Surveillance does lasting damage only reforms solve

Kehl, Policy Analyst at New Americas Open Technology
Institute, 14
Daielle, Kevin Bankston, Policy Directorat OTI, Robyn Greene, Policy Counsel at
OTI, Robert Morgus, Research Associate at OTI, "Surveillance Costs: The NSA's
Impact on the Economy, Internet Freedom & Cybersecurity", July 2014, New
America's Open Technology Institute Policy Paper,
https://www.newamerica.org/downloads/Surveilance_Costs_Final.pdf

Costs to Overseas Tech Sales The economic impact of NSA spying does not end
with the American cloud computing industry. According to The New York Times, Even as
Washington grapples with the diplomatic and political fallout of Mr. Snowdens leaks, the
more urgent issue, companies and analysts say, is economic.59 In the past year,
a number of American companies have reported declining sales in overseas
markets like China (where, it must be noted, suspicion of the American government was already high
before the NSA disclosures), loss of customers including foreign governments, and
increased competition from non-U.S. services marketing themselves as
secure alternatives to popular American products. There is already
significant evidence linking NSA surveillance to direct harm to U.S.
economic interests. In November 2013, Cisco became one of the first companies to publicly
discuss the impact of the NSA on its business, reporting that orders from China fell 18 percent
and that its worldwide revenue would decline 8 to 10 percent in the fourth quarter ,
in part because of continued sales weakness in China. 60 New orders in the developing world fell
12 percent in the third quarter, with the Brazilian market dropping roughly 25 percent
of its Cisco sales.61 Although John Chambers, Ciscos CEO, was hesitant to blame
all losses on the NSA, he acknowledged that it was likely a factor in declining Chinese sales62
and later admitted that he had never seen as fast a decline in an emerging market as the drop in China in late
2013.63 These numbers were also released before documents in May 2014 revealed that the NSAs Tailored
Access Operations unit had intercepted network gearincluding Cisco routersbeing shipped to target
organizations in order to covertly install implant firmware on them before they were delivered.64 In response,

these actions
will undermine confidence in our industry and in the ability of technology
companies to deliver products globally.65 Much like Cisco, Qualcomm, IBM,
Microsoft, and Hewlett-Packard all reported in late 2013 that sales were
down in China as a result of the NSA revelations.66 Sanford C. Bernstein
analyst Toni Sacconaghi has predicted that after the NSA revelations, US
technology companies face the most revenue risk in China by a wide margin , followed
by Brazil and other emerging markets.67 Industry observers have also questioned whether
companies like Applewhich hopes to bring in significant revenue from iPhone
sales in Chinawill feel the impact overseas.68 Even AT&T reportedly faced
intense scrutiny regarding its proposed acquisition of Vodafone, a European wireless carrier, after
journalists revealed the extent of AT&Ts collaboration with the NSA.69 American
companies are also losing out on business opportunities and contracts with
large companies and foreign governments as a result of NSA spying . According
to an article in The New York Times, American businesses are being left off some requests
for proposals from foreign customers that previously would have included them. 70
This refers to German companies, for example, that are increasingly uncomfortable giving their
business to American firms. Meanwhile, the German government plans to change
its procurement rules to prevent American companies that cooperate with the
NSA or other intelligence organizations from being awarded federal IT contracts. 71
The government has already announced it intends to end its contract with Verizon ,
which provides Internet service to a number of government departments.72 There are indications that
Verizon is legally required to provide certain things to the NSA, and thats one of
the reasons the cooperation with Verizon wont continue, a spokesman for the
German Interior Ministry told the Associated Press in June.73 The NSA disclosures
have similarly been blamed for Brazils December 2013 decision to award a $4.5
billion contract to Saab over Boeing, an American company that had previously
Chambers wrote in a letter to the Obama Administration that if these allegations are true,

been the frontrunner in a deal to replace Brazils fleet of fighter jets .74 Welber Barral, a
former Brazilian trade secretary, suggested to Bloomberg News that Boeing would have won the contract a year

a source in the Brazilian government told Reuters that the NSA

problem ruined it for the Americans.76 As we will discuss in greater depth in the next section,
earlier,75 while

Germany and Brazil are also considering data localization proposals that could harm U.S. business interests and
prevent American companies from entering into new markets because of high compliance costs. Cost to Public Trust in
American Companies The pressure is increasing on American companies to respond to the revelations in order to mitigate potential backlash and prevent foreign companies from
poaching their business. According to the R Street Institute study, It appears the NSAs aggressive surveillance has created an overall fear among U.S. companies that there is guilt
by association from which they need to proactively distance themselves.79 Some companies have tried to regain trust by publicly stating that they are not part of PRISM or other
NSA programs, issuing disclaimers along the lines of those published by Amazon and Salesforce in June 2013.80 Others that have been directly linked to the NSA programs have
publicly criticized the American government and called for greater transparency in order to rebuild user confidence and counteract potential economic harms.81 To that end, nine
major American companiesAOL, Apple, Dropbox, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Twitter, and Yahoojoined together in the Reform Government Surveillance campaign in
January 2014, where they launched a website and wrote an open letter to government leaders laying out principles for surveillance reform, including an end to bulk collection and
opposition to data localization requirements.82 Since the launch, the coalition has urged reform on Capitol Hill through outreach and letters to Congress, supported the February
2014 The Day We Fight Back activist campaign, and hired a lobbyist to bolster their efforts to curb the NSAs reach.83 This unlikely, public partnership of some of Internets biggest
rivals speaks to the seriousness of the threats to their collective business interests.84 Indeed, according to an April 2014 Harris poll commissioned by a data security company, nearly
half of the 2,000 respondents (47 percent) have changed their online behavior since the NSA leaks, paying closer attention not only to the sites they visit but also to what they say and
do on the Internet.85 In particular, 26 percent indicated that they are now doing less online shopping and banking since learning the extent of government surveillance programs.
Clearly, there are significant financial incentives for companies to distance themselves from the programs, and as a result, they are expending capitalactual and politicalto do so.
Other companies have taken it a step further, developing new products or taking additional precautions to assure customers that their data is safe from the NSA. Many tech
companies feel they have no choice but to try to develop NSA resistant products because customers from China to Germany threaten to boycott American hardware and cloud services
they view as compromised, wrote USA Today in February 2014.86 Companies like Yahoo and Google have devoted increased resources to hardening their systems against NSA
surveillance in order to assure users that their data is adequately protected.87 Yahoo implemented automatic encryption on its email service in January 2014, and in March 2014
began encrypting all traffic that moved between its data centers, as well as queries on its homepage and its messaging service.88 Googles Vice President for Security Engineering,
Eric Grosse, referred to efforts to protect users data from government surveillance as an arms race, when discussing the companys move last fall to encrypt all information
travelling between its data centers.89 In June 2014, Google unveiled a source code extension for the Chrome browser called End-to-End which is designed to make email encryption
easy, and announced a new section of its transparency report called Safer Email which details the percentage of email that is encrypted in transit and identifies the providers who
support encryption.90 These changes are part of a new focus on encouraging users and companies to harden their systems against NSA surveillance, and the strategy appears to be
working. Almost immediately, Comcast announced its plans to work with Google to encrypt all email traffic exchanged with Gmail after the cable company was described as one of the
worst offenders in the new report.91 Meanwhile, Microsoft has been publicizing its policy that allows customers to store their data in Microsoft data centers in specific countries.92
John E. Frank, deputy general counsel at Microsoft, told The New York Times, Were hearing from customers, especially global enterprise customers, that they care more than ever
about where their content is stored and how it is used and secured.93 IBM is reportedly spending over a billion dollars to build overseas data centers in an effort to reassure foreign
customers that their data is protected from U.S. surveillance.94 In reference to foreign customers asking about whether their data is protected from government snooping, an IBM
executive said, My response is protect your data against any third party whether its the NSA, other governments, hackers, terrorists, whatever, adding that it is time to start
talking about encryption and VPNs and all the ways you can protect yourself.95 Finally, faced with an impossible choice between maintaining user trust and complying with
government requests, a handful of American companies that provide secure email services have had to shut down their operations altogether. Lavabit, a secure email service provider
that experienced a 1,900 percent increase in account registrations after the Snowden revelations, shuttered its business after it became clear that user data could not be protected
from government surveillance. When the NSA could not read Lavibits communications directly by breaking its encryption, the agency obtained orders compelling the company to
hand over information related to its encryption keys, which would have given the NSA the ability to decrypt the communications of all 400,000 of Lavabits customers.96 Silent Circle,
a secure communications provider that saw a 400 percent revenue increase following the Snowden revelations, followed Lavabits lead and shut down its secure mail service,

It is abundantly clear that the NSA

surveillance programs are currently having a serious, negative impact on
the U.S. economy and threatening the future competitiveness of American
technology companies. Not only are U.S. companies losing overseas sales and
getting dropped from contracts with foreign companies and governmentsthey are
also watching their competitive advantage in fast-growing industries like cloud
computing and webhosting disappear, opening the door for foreign companies who
claim to offer more secure alternative products to poach their business. Industry
efforts to increase transparency and accountability as well as concrete steps to
promote better security by adopting encryption and other best practices are
positive signs, but U.S. companies cannot solve this problem alone. Its not
explaining that the decision was made because we see the writing on the wall.97

blowing over, said Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith at a recent conference. In June of 2014, it is clear it is

Without meaningful government reform and better

oversight, concerns about the breadth of NSA surveillance could lead to
permanent shifts in the global technology market and do lasting damage to
the U.S. economy.
getting worse, not better.98

Its reverse causual cloud computing is key to the economy

Coviello, Executive Vice President, EMC Corporation, 11
Art, "Can Cloud Computing Save The American Economy?", March 13 2011, Forbes,
www.forbes.com/sites/ciocentral/2011/03/13/can-cloud-computing-save-theamerican-economy/

The American dream is in peril from the confluence of sky rocketing deficits, high
unemployment, and the ticking time bomb of an aging baby boomer generation,
with its coincident increase in the burden of entitlements as a percentage of GDP . For
the first time, the next generation of Americans, our grandchildren, risk having a lower standard of living than we

We will not save

or cut our way back to economic prosperity. The way forward is innovation.
America must innovate its way out of economic stagnation and back to economic
growth. As has been the case for the last 150 years, Americans have always responded well in a crisis and yet
enjoyed. It is not a problem that can be remedied with tax increases and budget reductions.

again, we are well positioned to lead the world out of this one. Want proof? American businesses systemically and
culturally react fast. Two years after the economic downturn began the United States was generating 97% of its
economic output with only 90% of the labor. This sort of gain in productivity ultimately translates into increased
economic activity, the ability to pay down debt and a higher standard of living for those of us who are employed.

productivity gains
from working harder can only take us so far. Innovation and technology can and
must take us the rest of the way, creating new jobs and new industries . Our so
called information economy, for example, is ripe for innovation. Today, all
organizations are dependent on information technology. What makes me
optimistic about the future is that we have not even begun to scratch the surface of
all that can be accomplished by actually applying information technology
pervasively. We have spent trillions of dollars worldwide for the computers to create
and process information, networks to move it around and the hardware to store it.
But we are at a point where we spend 60 to 70% of IT budgets just to maintain
those systems and infrastructures. No wonder progress in applying IT is so slow. This is the
technology equivalent of every organization in the world, big or small, investing the
capital and human resources to build and operate their own electricity producing
power plants. But instead, picture a world where software platforms are available
online and easily customizable. Picture a world where compute power is generated
off site, available in quantities when and where you need it. And picture a world
where information is safely stored, efficiently managed and accessible, when and
where you need it. These are cloud infrastructures. The economies of scale,
flexibility and efficiency they offer will not only save organizations massive amounts
of capital and maintenance costs but emancipate them to apply and use
information as never before. An unbelievable opportunity to raise productivity while
creating unprecedented opportunities for businesses and workers. Now picture a healthUnfortunately it does not directly address the issue of unemployment. The fact is that

care system where a doctor has medical records at his fingertips, can see x-rays with the click of a mouse, is able to
learn and apply the latest diagnostic and surgical technique from anywhere in the world. Think of the efficiencies in
hospital supply chains, the delivery of prescription drugs, the processing of billing and insurance claims, reductions
in fraud, and the application of best practices for cost controls. The capacity for improvement is endless. As a

But for us to seize the

opportunity before us its imperative that we move from isolated centers of
excellence to connected systems of excellence. Pick any industry and systemic improvements like
these are available. A new age of innovation and technology advancement is within our
grasp an opportunity for job creation, greater productivity and economic growth.
The time for cloud computing is now. We need government and industry to
accelerate broad scale adoption of cloud infrastructures so we can reap the rewards
of a true information based economy. As I said at the outset, Americans respond well in a crisis. It is
matter of fact, these innovations are already being applied in isolated pockets.

the nature of our society: egalitarian, free, open and competitive that make us the most adaptive, inventive and
resilient country in the world. Time again for us to lead.

Now is key bleeding is happening plan can reverse it

Mindock 15 (By Clark Mindock @clarkmindock, NSA Surveillance Could Cost
Billions For US Internet Companies After Edward Snowden Revelations on June 10
2015 3:28 PM EDT
International Business Times)<http://www.ibtimes.com/nsa-surveillance-could-costbillions-us-internet-companies-after-edward-snowden-1959737>~BCai
Failure to reform National Security Administration spying programs revealed by
Edward Snowden could be more economically taxing than previously thought, says a
new study published by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation Tuesday. The study suggests the

programs could be affecting the technology sector as a whole , not just the cloudcomputing sector, and that the costs could soar much higher than previously
expected. Even modest declines in cloud computing revenues from the revealed
surveillance programs, according to a previous report, would cost between $21.5 billion and
$35 billion by 2016. New estimates show that the toll will likely far exceed ITIFs
initial $35 billion estimate. The U.S. governments failure to reform many of the
NSAs surveillance programs has damaged the competitiveness of the U.S. tech
sector and cost it a portion of the global market share , a summary of the report said.
Revelations by defense contractor Snowden in June 2013 exposed massive U.S. government surveillance
capabilities and showed the NSA collected American phone records in bulk, and without a warrant. The bulk phonerecord revelations, and many others in the same vein, including the required complacency of American telecom and
Internet companies in providing the data, raised questions about the transparency of American surveillance

The study, published this week, argues

that unless the American government can vigorously reform how NSA surveillance is
regulated and overseen, U.S. companies will lose contracts and, ultimately,
their competitive edge in a global market as consumers around the world
choose cloud computing and technology options that do not have potential
ties to American surveillance programs.
programs and prompted outrage from privacy advocates.

No root cause war turns structural violence

Joshua Goldstein, Intl Rel Prof @ American U, 2001, War and Gender, p. 412
First, peace activists face a dilemma in thinking about causes of war and working for
peace. Many peace scholars and activists support the approach, if you want peace,
work for justice. Then, if one believes that sexism contributes to war one can work
for gender justice specifically (perhaps among others) in order to pursue peace. This
approach brings strategic allies to the peace movement (women, labor, minorities),
but rests on the assumption that injustices cause war. The evidence in this book
suggests that causality runs at least as strongly the other way. War is not a
product of capitalism, imperialism, gender, innate aggression, or any other
single cause, although all of these influence wars outbreaks and outcomes.
Rather, war has in part fueled and sustained these and other injustices.9 So,if you
want peace, work for peace. Indeed, if you want justice (gender and others), work
for peace. Causality does not run just upward through the levels of analysis, from
types of individuals, societies, and governments up to war. It runs downward too.
Enloe suggests that changes in attitudes towards war and the military may be the
most important way to reverse womens oppression. The dilemma is that peace
work focused on justice brings to the peace movement energy, allies, and moral

grounding, yet, in light of this books evidence, the emphasis on injustice as the
main cause of war seems to be empirically inadequate.