Technology Archive

When ailing Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez publicly anointed Nicolas Maduro as his desired successor a year ago, Chavez apparently forgot to hand over one element of his power: his more than 4 million Twitter followers. Chavez’s account, @chavezcandanga, has not posted a new message since Feb. 18, 2013, about two weeks before the populist leader’s death on March 5, 2013. The account retains Twitter’s coveted blue checkmark for “verified” accounts and, if anything, has gained followers since Chavez’s death. A triumphant press release issued by the Venezuelan Embassy in the U.S. a day after that final tweet noted that the […]

The way the Internet is governed is of strategic importance to modern society. Yet current Internet governance (IG) is not robust enough to address the Internet’s critical relevance. The revelations by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden about the deep reach of spy agencies online created a major earthquake in digital politics, showing the limitations of the existing Internet governance institutions in dealing with major economic and geopolitical tensions. Many governments, international organizations, think tanks and experts, have started a search for a new IG formula, moving the issue from the realm of engineers and geeks into the premier league of […]

In the past few years, India has been strengthening its civil nuclear cooperation with countries bordering China. This trend, when taken together with India’s interest in marketing surface-to-surface missiles in Asia, clearly signals a shift in New Delhi’s policy stance. China’s latest wave of nuclear exceptionalism toward Pakistan seems to be pushing India to abandon its traditional self-imposed limits on trade in strategic technology, with the result that India is now willing to broaden strategic technology options for countries on China’s periphery in order to secure Indian geoeconomic interests. New Delhi’s approach is somewhat reminiscent of the early 1980s, when […]