Last week I attended the biannual principal investigators (PI) meeting of DHS Science and Technology Directorate’s Cybersecurity program. I found myself assigned the speaking slot at 9:30am on September 11, on the 26th floor of an Arlington building with a more majestic view of the Pentagon than I’ve ever had. I spent the coffee breaks looking out the windows at commercial aircraft continually flying right by the Pentagon en route to DCA, an airport the feds bravely did not close down after 9/11/2001. (who says the terrorists won?)

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Since talking to NYT reporters is like playing the children’s game of telephone, let me clarify: any developed region with enlightened government will make sure they and neighboring regions have decent network infrastructure so they have good trading partners, for a simple economic reason: in the 21st century the most economically valuable products will be composed of bits, so nations who move bits efficiently will be at an inherent advantage. this hardly seems like news to me. that this natural evolution is destroying the NYT and most of the rest of today’s mainstream media who no longer control the majority of distribution channels is a little more newsworthy, but i’ve never seen an NYT article about that. that the addressing and routing infrastructure is not capable of handling this growth is also newsworthy, as is the U.S. government’s recent accomplishment in improving DNS security in the face of tremendous obstacles. but i guess the NYT has bigger problems than figuring out how to report news on the Internet.

john,

geez, when you asked whether non-u.s. countries are building infrastructure to ‘go around’ the united states, i did not respond with “But economics also plays a role.” the words you put right before my name in your article. What I said to you is that all the folks I know building network infrastructure outside the United States are doing it for economic reasons, per steve gibbard’s article on “smart growth”, and because one thing we know about network economics is that anyone who can afford to build their own infrastructure, does (which i also pointed you to). And specifically not because they are trying to avoid U.S. surveillance. The idea of U.S. hegemony over data flow is silly — if the CIA is depending on it, we are doomed. Do you always insert sinister undertones even when simple economics explains the data?

k