State Department Strategist Says Generational Turnover in China Will Open Up Web Use

STANFORD, Calif. -- The State Department’s communications technology strategist pointed toward a generational solution for China’s restrictions on Internet use, rather than any short-term fix. “Demographics are destiny,” Alec Ross, the department’s innovation adviser, said late Wednesday at Stanford University. Of China’s 400 million Internet users, half are younger than 25 and “that number is going to go far higher,” he said. As it does, and the young people age, they'll demand freedom online from their government, Ross said.

Ross stressed the importance of the flood of smartphones going into the hands of many residents of poor countries. Seventy-five percent of cellphones “are in the developing world,” he said. “A big strategy is being developed” in the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review, and mobile figures in it significantly, he indicated.

A program allowing Mexicans, widely intimidated out of reporting crimes, to do that anonymously by text message and “compel the security forces to be on the scene in 10 minutes” will probably start in the fall, Ross said. It resulted from discussions by him and other Americans with Mexican government officials, “civil society” leaders and telecom-industry investor Carlos Slim, a Mexican businessman considered the world’s richest person, Ross said. “We don’t yet if that will work,” he acknowledged, “but we're very hopeful.”

A few “big inhibitors” stand between the State Department and full use of 21st century technology, Ross said. At least some involve the “statutes and regulations” governing how the department operates, he said. They aren’t calculated to make it fast and flexible, Ross said. Hiring a Web designer is an “elaborately formal process” that takes several months, and procurement rules are “prejudiced against small, innovative companies,” he said.

But the department has strong leadership going for it, Ross said. The president is highly encouraging of the use of information and communications technology, he said. And Secretary of State Hilary Clinton is “aggressive and smart and supportive of how innovation can be integrated into our statecraft,” Ross said.