Author: Anthony Olcott / Publication Year: within 25 Years

Author:: Anthony Olcott
Publication Date:: 06-2011
Content Type:: Working Paper
Institution:: Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University
Abstract:: An odd document tiptoed onto the stage in early April 2011, surprisingly unnoticed, considering the radical shifts in U.S. policy for which it was arguing. Called A National Strategic Narrative, the fifteen-page booklet was put out by the Woodrow Wilson Center, and claimed to be authored by “Mr. Y”—although, unlike the mysterious “Mr. X” to whom the “Mr. Y” pseudonym refers (eventually revealed to be George Kennan, author of the famous “Long Telegram” of 1946, which argued for the policy that became known as “containment”), these authors are named in the pamphlet itself—Navy Captain Wayne Porter and Marine Colonel Mark Mykleby, both special strategic assistants to Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Michael Mullen.
Topic:: Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, and Globalization
Political Geography:: United States

Author:: Anthony Olcott
Publication Date:: 01-2011
Content Type:: Working Paper
Institution:: Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University
Abstract:: For this paper, I have decided to step through the proscenium and appeal directly across the “fourth wall” to whatever readers this piece may attract, in the hopes that someone among you will be able to help me figure out the answers to a set of questions with which I have been wrestling for several years. For fun, let's call this paper an exercise in crowd-sourcing.
Topic:: Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, Economics, International Trade and Finance, and Markets
Political Geography:: United States

Author:: Anthony Olcott
Publication Date:: 06-2010
Content Type:: Working Paper
Institution:: Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University
Abstract:: Speaking in China on November 16, 2009, President Barack Obama said, “I think that the more freely information flows, the stronger the society becomes, because then citizens of countries around the world can hold their own governments accountable. They can begin to think for themselves” [video—transcript]. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton quoted most of the same phrase two months later in her own ringing endorsement of Internet freedom, delivered in a speech at the Washington, DC, Newseum on January 21, 2010.
Topic:: International Relations, Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, Globalization, International Security, and Power Politics
Political Geography:: China and Washington

Author:: Anthony Olcott
Publication Date:: 06-2010
Content Type:: Working Paper
Institution:: Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University
Abstract:: Dr. Fingar made the comment above to highlight the challenges that “the explosive growth of the amount of information that is out there” now present to the analytic and policymaker communities—as illustrated by the fact that official People's Republic of China (PRC) statistics from 2003, the last year they were published, put the number of China's periodicals at 11,193. However, although Fingar did not say so, there is some chance that his project thirty-one years before may have been driven, in part at least, by the intelligence community's recognition that there was already too much information.
Topic:: Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, Intelligence, Science and Technology, and Communications
Political Geography:: China

Author:: Anthony Olcott
Publication Date:: 05-2010
Content Type:: Working Paper
Institution:: Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University
Abstract:: It is eerie to reread The Communist Manifesto while contemplating the profound and deeply unpredictable effects of the new information revolution. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels saw dialectical materialism and the iron laws of history as driving change, not the Internet and the digitization of information, but their jeremiad, that “all that is solid melts into air,” looks startlingly prescient in regard to huge swaths of the information industry. Book publishing, TV network news, newspapers, and even traditional universities are, if not melting into air, then at least finding their revenue bases eroding, their customer bases migrating, and the positions of prestige they once occupied shrinking toward nothingness.
Topic:: Demographics, Economics, Industrial Policy, Science and Technology, Social Stratification, and Culture

Author:: Anthony Olcott
Publication Date:: 04-2010
Content Type:: Working Paper
Institution:: Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University
Abstract:: Humans have always wanted information, but technological limitations have always made information difficult and costly to create, transmit, and retain. The consequences of those limitations are among the factors driving the formation of large administrative entities, primary among them states. Addressing and redressing the information shortage that physical reality mandated gave states the opportunity to control and channel information, in all manner of ways.
Topic:: Economics, Intelligence, Politics, Science and Technology, and Communications

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