RICHARD A. CLARKE is Chair and CEO of Good Harbor Security Risk Management. He
has served the U.S. government as Special Adviser to the President for Cyberspace
Security, Special Assistant to the President for Global Aairs, and National Coordinator for
Security and Counterterrorism.
ROB KNAKE is Whitney H. Shepardson Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations
and a Senior Research Scientist at Northeastern University’s Global Resilience Institute. He
was Director of Cyber Policy at the National Security Council from 2011 to 2015.
They are the authors of The Fifth Domain: Defending Our Country, Our Companies, and Ourselves
in the Age of Cyber Threats (Penguin Press, 2019), from which this essay is adapted. Reprinted
by arrangement with Penguin Press, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of
Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright (c) 2019 by Richard A. Clarke and Robert K. Knake.184 μ¢¤³£ ¬μμ¬
The Internet Freedom
League
How to Push Back Against the
Authoritarian Assault on the Web
Richard A. Clarke and Rob Knake
T
he early days o the Internet inspired a lofty dream: authori-
tarian states, faced with the prospect o either connecting to a
new system o global communication or being left out o it,
would choose to connect. According to this line o utopian thinking,
once those countries connected, the Çow o new information and
ideas from the outside world would inexorably pull them toward eco-
nomic openness and political liberalization. In reality, something
quite dierent has happened. Instead o spreading democratic values
and liberal ideals, the Internet has become the backbone o authori-
tarian surveillance states all over the world. Regimes in China, Rus-
sia, and elsewhere have used the Internet’s infrastructure to build
their own national networks. At the same time, they have installed
technical and legal barriers to prevent their citizens from reaching the
wider Internet and to limit Western companies from entering their
digital markets.Return to Table of Contents