INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION AND LEADERSHIP IN THE DIGITAL ENVIRONMENT

The sphere of technology has become one of the most important in the struggle for power in the XXI century. By the beginning of the third decade of the new century, the design of two main “technological ecosystems” – American and Chinese – is obvious. In this regard, a dilemma is relevant for Russia: to connect to one of the existing platforms or to develop its own? The choice in favor of the first option presupposes the definition of the conditions under which such “accession” should take place. The second option requires a more ambitious strategy that will determine the key parameters of the Russian “technoecosystem” itself.

The American system is the oldest, largest and most developed. It is based on the unconditional technological leadership of the United States. The key goal of the American strategy in the technology sector is to maintain the initiative in the field of innovation, prolong its own dominance and prevent the emergence of comparable competitors in the global market. To do this, active personnel work is being carried out, preferential conditions are being created for the development of the startup ecosystem, and methods of competition that are far from economic are being used.

The market capacity and favorable internal conditions allowed the United States to bring to the market the largest technology and Internet giants whose intellectual property rights are legally protected. An indirect but significant factor of the American techno-economic system is the creation of numerous common goods. All this allows American companies to provide a trial version of their own products to the whole world, which gives the user the opportunity to access one of the most advanced technologies without excessive costs. The principles of openness and freedom in the digital sphere proposed by the United States are captivating. However, there is no doubt that at the moment when Americans doubt their own hegemony in the technological environment, these principles will be immediately revised. There will be insurmountable borders and barriers aimed at deterring competitors and protecting American leadership.

Even within the United States itself, the decisions of tech giants to block and delete more than 70 thousand accounts, including the pages of President Donald Trump, are similar to open attempts to seize management tools from the authorities. In this case, the companies played for the political establishment against the objectionable “spoiler” of the system. It is likely that in the coming years, a team of political, financial and technological globalists will continue to work together to counteract the national industrial agenda in America and other countries. At the same time, there are concerns from the camp of Democrats that, no matter how convenient the technologies offered by corporations, the strengthening of the influence of tech giants is dangerous both because of their accumulation of “unprecedented economic power” and because of the increase in “control over political communication and communications.” The dominance of tech giants in the dissemination of information and their ability to politically mobilize the masses already pose a threat to democratic governments.

The Chinese techno-economic platform is smaller than the American one, although even here the claims to technological leadership are obvious. A significant amount of financial and human resources allows the Chinese ecosystem to be self-contained and administratively redistribute resources to those areas of technological development that the CPC Politburo considers the most promising. The Chinese were the first in the world to experiment with the autonomization of a number of services and services, building the “Great Chinese Digital Wall” (The Great Firewall of China). And if the Americans provide the whole world with a trial version of their product, then the competitiveness of the Chinese model is based on the cheapness of their offer and participation in financing advanced developments in other countries. At the same time, China relies on waiting tactics and does not respond to US provocations. In China, America is rightly regarded as a more significant and strong player in this area. However, the growth rate of the Chinese technology industry allows Beijing to count on the fact that achieving a market position comparable to the United States is a matter of time. It is unlikely that the Americans will be able to stop this process. There is a demand for pragmatism in world politics. Responding to it, an increasing number of American allies (including Europeans) favorably perceive China’s proposals for cooperation in the digital sphere.

The growing awareness by European countries of the importance of digital sovereignty may be potentially interesting for Russia. Key European countries – Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands – are afraid of dependence on Americans and Chinese. The need to develop a national technology platform is particularly emphasized by the French. Europeans are afraid of losing their subjectivity in the global technological environment and eventually find themselves in a situation where their voice will not be taken into account.

Russia and the Europeans are united by fears of becoming dependent on leading players and losing their own autonomy. At the same time, Russia, like some other European countries, has the competence to form an independent pole of power in the digital sphere. Russian arguments about the development of a data compatibility standard are more likely to be heard in Europe than in China and the USA.

The latter two States themselves have a significant amount of data and are not ready to share it with third countries. However, Moscow’s political differences with the Europeans may become an insurmountable obstacle to full-fledged collaboration, which is an additional motivating factor for Russia in forming its own technological platform.

Global trends in the development of the digital environment

The global digital revolution has led to a radical transformation not only of technological and economic structures, but also of social relations, the very philosophy of human life. These changes have fully manifested themselves in the sphere of international relations. The current situation in the world is similar (albeit at a fundamentally new level) since the invention of nuclear weapons and the beginning of space exploration, when technological changes have significantly changed the international behavior of States. It is already possible to identify a number of trends launched by new technologies that will determine the directions of further evolution of the system of international relations.

The rapid development of science and technology has created prerequisites at the national and global levels for reducing socio-economic inequality. However, it also increased the vulnerability – and suspiciousness – of society in the face of new (or old, new-faced) challenges and threats. New channels and methods of communication have significantly increased the information connectivity of the world. But they also contributed to the atomization of states that seek to protect such channels from foreign interference. The explosive growth of technologies and ways to use them continues to blur the line between the virtual and real world, fact and fiction. This multiplies the uncertainty in international relations and strengthens their anarchic state.

This uncertainty is compounded by the growing gap between the dynamics of development and implementation of innovations and the speed of reflection of these changes in the regulatory fabric. Phenomena that are not regulated by international law become a challenge to the classical system of international relations. Thus, the absence of codified agreements to limit the use of artificial intelligence or supercomputers and cloud computing in the military field involves powers with such technologies in a vicious circle of a constant arms race, which diverts resources and attention from the development of their civilian applications. Despite the fact that in the new conditions it is the Internet that is becoming a key source of new dangers, world governments do not have unified approaches to defining the concept of “sovereignty in cyberspace”, work is not yet underway to develop international agreements similar to the outer space treaty, the Antarctic treaty or sovereignty in airspace.

The all-encompassing nature of digital transformation processes leads to the fact that they fall into the focus of attention of an increasing number of international organizations – both specialized (ITU) and non-core (UNESCO, UNCTAD, PACE). This disperses the international digital agenda and multiplies mutually exclusive approaches to its issues. The lack of a unified and clear conceptual and categorical apparatus in this area exacerbates contradictions and disputes.

On more technologically-oriented international platforms – governmental and non-governmental – the struggle is unfolding for universal recognition of technical standards created by states or large corporations. The most successful lobbyists from among governments and businesses receive a significant market advantage in the case of codification of their proposed standard: the whole world begins to consume their products, and they get the opportunity to significantly influence the further development of the chosen technology. Such a struggle for standards also has far-reaching international political consequences. Taking into account the continuing rapid penetration of “figures” into public life, the countries that supply digital technologies firmly “bind” the client states to themselves, “getting them hooked” on certain standards and types of solutions, increasing the dependence of such countries on their exports – by analogy with the export of weapons or energy resources.

The seriousness of this problem is vividly illustrated, for example, by the situation faced by the EAEU member states when implementing digital integration. The creation of a unified system of electronic exchange of legally significant documents has been greatly hampered by the fact that different EAEU states use different cryptographic standards, not all of which are recognized as secure. The lack of coordination in their implementation, albeit for objective reasons, has led to the emergence of a technical barrier to the development of integration processes, which at the same time has long-term political and economic consequences.

Global digitalization has significantly increased the international legal personality of non-State participants in international relations. Initially, the technical NGO “Corporation for the Management of Domain Names and IP Addresses”, created with the participation of the US government to regulate issues related to domain names, IP addresses and the functioning of the global network, has turned into a leading institute of “Internet governance”, where states do not have a dominant role.

Multinational giants – Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Huawei, TikTok, Alibaba, YouTube – are already talking on equal terms with national and foreign governments. It is impossible to ignore them as a factor of national security. On the one hand, the information accumulated by such ecosystems and the advanced solutions implemented by them are of great interest to the competent authorities. On the other hand, their ability as information resources to broadcast certain information messages to a huge audience, directly or indirectly – through controlled search results – becomes a factor in national political life. These properties of such corporations give them the “right to vote” in the international arena and at the same time make them objects of strict national regulation. The understandable desire of States to control their information activities and gain access to the data they have leads to the erosion of liberal values – freedom of speech, secrecy of correspondence, privacy – and raises the question of their applicability in the changed digital age.

A separate point in the confrontation between corporations and states remains the issue of their fair taxation, especially if their services operate in a foreign jurisdiction. It is important to avoid double taxation of such platforms in order to avoid deterioration of the situation of consumers and the products and services they receive.

Perhaps for the first time, ordinary citizens have gained the ability to directly influence international relations on such a scale as today. Social networks, instant messengers and Internet television have practically won the competition with traditional media, made each smartphone owner a potential journalist and endowed him with the ability to instantly make his “news” for millions of people. Such a seemingly gratifying manifestation of freedom to speak and be heard is overshadowed by the fact that in the era of “post-truth” verification of a fact is no longer a requirement for our trust in it. At best, unintentional subjectivism or a thirst for the attention of an “amateur reporter” who is not bound by professional journalistic ethics or the politics of the publication, and at worst, the dissemination of deliberately false information can have devastating consequences for society and the state.

At the same time, the example of deleting Trump’s Twitter account demonstrates another trend. During the four years of Trump’s presidency, Twitter has been an important resource of his power and the main tool for fighting political opponents. With his help, Trump set the information agenda, dictated the political will, appointed to positions and dismissed yesterday’s like-minded people in disgrace. For millions of supporters of the president, Twitter has become a mouthpiece of dissatisfaction with Washington. With his help, it was possible, while remaining misunderstood, to be at least heard by the elites. Therefore, the president’s tweets amused some, frightened others, and irritated others.

At the symbol level, the removal of Trump’s account – even after he backed down and called on his supporters to peaceful protest – is much more demonstrative and sudden his “liquidation” as president two weeks before the end of his term than through a court or impeachment. But more importantly, this “liquidation” mission was carried out not by Congress, not by the military and not by the Supreme Court, but by the head of the Twitter technology company.

This case, most likely, on the one hand, will raise the request of third countries for “digital sovereignty” from American tech giants, on the other hand, it will strengthen the intention of these states to protect themselves from the dominance of their own and foreign technology companies by stricter legislative regulation of their activities on their territories. In the long run, this may strengthen the political fragmentation of the world.

The further development of cognitive technologies, primarily deepfake, gives attackers unlimited opportunities to create toxic content, which by the strength of its impact can already be classified as weapons of mass destruction.

Thus, the growth of the freedom of society and the strengthening of the instruments of its realization paradoxically develops in parallel with the strengthening of the police power of the state, and this becomes the new norm of everyday life. The strengthening of the second trend is also happening for objective reasons: the desire of states to ensure the safety of citizens, including by restricting their access to the “darknet” and uncontrolled elements of the network, can hardly be called a dictatorial whim of governments. The degree of deanonymization of users in the network will continue to increase.

The absence of institutions of arbitration or investigation of cyber incidents and cybercrimes recognized by all players, as well as the still weak development of digital forensics tools makes it almost impossible to reliably determine the party responsible for the incident. Which, in turn, increases the level of distrust and conflict between countries. At the same time, in the context of the development of new technologies – primarily the Internet of Things and autonomous intelligent systems – it is enough for attackers to have a powerful enough household computer or even a smartphone to hack the security system of a critical infrastructure facility and cause a disaster or seize sensitive information, and a hacker does not necessarily turn out to be a saboteur or a terrorist, it may be technically gifted “a teenager.”

The attempt of countries to protect themselves from such penetration has a number of consequences. First of all, states seek to limit the vulnerability of the network by stimulating import substitution and deep localization – it is easier to trust “their” controlled manufacturer of equipment or solutions. This leads to the disintegration of international production chains and a certain erosion of the principles of the international division of labor. In an environment where everyone who can start producing their own critical equipment and “software” (servers, operating systems, antiviruses and security systems), economic specialization loses its appeal. In addition, the definition of authorized operators, the restriction of competition in the market inevitably leads to a slowdown in the development of technologies, forcing states to live in a dilemma: progress or security. Here, as in many other aspects of the global digital economy, there is a contradiction between information exchange as a global phenomenon and physical infrastructure that has a territorial binding, which means that it is under a certain sovereignty.

This contradiction is evident in the issue of storing, processing and moving information through Internet channels. Historically, there has been a serious imbalance in the geographical distribution of the basic infrastructure and the nationality of the main Internet players. More than 60 percent of the total number of domains are managed by American players (Verisign, Afilias), more than 50 percent of content delivery networks belong to American companies (Amazon, Akamai, CloudFlaire), all major first-tier providers are residents of the United States, and ten of the thirteen DNS servers are located in the United States. It is not surprising that with such an “Internet geography” and awareness of the US readiness to take unilateral sanctions to very extreme measures, states that are not direct allies of Washington seek to create an alternative protected contour of the “national, sovereign Internet” – and the number of such states is increasing. On the other hand, according to experts, satellite Internet can displace cable Internet no later than the middle of this century – and in a new round the struggle will move into space or the upper atmosphere, but its nature, consisting in the unwillingness of states to leave key infrastructure outside their sovereign control zone, will remain.

The desire for sovereign control of an increasing number of States is reflected in their attitude to the issue of storing personal data of citizens. Both the European GDPR and the Russian so-called “Spring package”, with all the nuances of each approach, postulate the need for all Internet market operators to store personal data on servers located in national jurisdiction. This approach is aggressively opposed primarily by the Anglo-Saxon states participating in the “five eyes system” (USA, Great Britain, Canada, New Zealand, Australia), pointing to this measure as excessive and suppressing rights and freedoms. Taking into account the imbalances described above in the Internet space, the position of the United States and its allies is understandable. Nevertheless, as the digitization of a person’s identity increases, the possibility of his digital identification, moving all his personal data to cloud storage, the price of an error in protecting such information increases many times. In case of violation of the information storage security circuit, the identity of a citizen can not just be taken over by attackers – it can be completely erased, and such a digital death will cut off the victims of the attack from the possibility of realizing basic social rights. That is why the increasing strictness of national data storage requirements is becoming the dominant requirement of the era.

Two major issues arise for nation States in the coming years

The first question is to what extent they are able to guarantee the viability of their critical information infrastructure in the face of cyber warfare and the growth of network piracy. Cyberattacks or system failures in networks can permanently shut down entire industries and cities with unpredictable consequences for the country and its population, but the relevance and magnitude of such threats are still far from being realized.

The second question is how well governments understand the principles and methods of ensuring the security of personal data and how the procedure for the turnover of depersonalized big data will be regulated. Mastering such data by another state will allow it to build a reliable picture of the development of the economy and industry, the vulnerabilities of agriculture, the epidemiological situation, consumption profiles and adjust its political, military or economic strategy accordingly. Obviously, the accelerated development of national legislation regulating the principles of the circulation of national big data and access to interstate negotiations on this issue is a matter of the near future.

States and the future digital world: Duopoly or oligopoly?

Even today, the presence of states in the top league of world politics is unimaginable without a development strategy in the global digital environment, the availability of resources, their own ideas and products in this area. The very category of “great power” in the XXI century implies the creation of its own technological platforms, and ideally – the formation of a techno-economic block. Mandatory attributes of such a block are a significant chunk of the world market controlled by it, its own currency zone with an emission center, its own development model, a set of resources, technologies and scientific competencies that allow the block to be independent from others, at least in such key areas as defense and critical infrastructure.

The attempt of each of the blocks to exclude the influence of competitors on its critical infrastructure inevitably leads to the politicization of technologies and technological wars. Digital technologies, being end-to-end for the entire modern economic and socio-political space, are becoming the main field of a new war. Cyberattacks on digital critical infrastructure can be no less destructive than nuclear or biological weapons.

Against the background of the dominance of a number of developed countries in digital technologies and the emergence of global monopolies controlling network infrastructure and data flows, there is a threat of digital inequality and digital colonialism. Digital technological sovereignty is becoming a necessary condition for the sovereignty of political and national independence.

The restructuring of the principles of functioning of international economic relations and the entire model of global geo-economics provides new opportunities to the leading techno-economic blocs, a kind of “digital neocolonialists” of our time. The gap, now digital, continues to widen between global digital technology providers and recipient countries, which are gradually becoming increasingly dependent on technologically advanced states.

At the current stage, the “digital neocolonialist” countries offer exclusively preferential conditions for the objects of economic development to create the infrastructure necessary for the transition to the digital future. Thus, they immediately ensure their binding to their own solutions – from payment systems to data storage systems and electronic document management. But most importantly, they provide themselves with unlimited and practically free access to big data, getting from this not only an immediate economic effect and an additional advantage in the development of their own artificial intelligence tools and neural networks, but also effective tools for controlling their digital colonies.

Digital colonialism will continue to strengthen, and it is impossible to exclude the revival of the UN Trusteeship Council – already with new, digital functions and powers. At the same time, the canonical borders of the countries of the first, second and third world have already undergone enormous changes and will continue to change. Former third world countries get the opportunity to conditionally jump “from feudalism to socialism, bypassing the stage of capitalism” – the creation of advanced infrastructure of a new generation without the need to maintain the functioning of the old infrastructure (in its absence).

In this sense, it is possible to foresee the digital breakthrough of the richer states of the Middle East and Africa and their entry into significant roles in the digital arena. Finally, international financial and labor relations are also changing – digital assets move to more comfortable jurisdictions even more easily than financial ones, and practically leave no traces of such movement. The emergence of cryptocurrencies deprives the monopoly states of another sovereign right – the right to issue. The concepts of “brain drain” and “labor emigration” are also changing: now national “digital proletarians” should not move abroad – it is enough for them, staying at home, to work for a foreign corporation, alienating all their intellectual property, and vice versa – talented hipsters can move to more comfortable climatic conditions, while continuing to at the same time to develop the national economy.

At the same time, digital technologies, which form both the daily life and the information space of each person, are beginning to have an increasingly noticeable impact on his psyche and decision-making practices. An individual not only becomes a slave to the digital platforms of global monopolies, but is also really placed in a framework where his entire existence is tied to devices – a mobile phone, tablet, smartwatch. Under the guise of providing amenities, they restrict a person’s choice in decision-making and manipulate his behavior, including by pushing him to follow a “certain route”. In these unequal relations, digital monopolies expropriate and uncontrollably exploit personal data and even creative content on pain of exclusion from the social environment.

The widespread introduction of digital technologies, including the digitalization of industry and government agencies, the introduction of 5G networks, forms an imperative to ensure the security and sustainability of the entire digital critical infrastructure. Without solving this problem, digitalization may turn out to be the construction of a “house on the sand”.

In order to eliminate the “barricades” and “minefields” on the path of the digital economy, the state must guarantee both the security of citizens and businesses, as well as clear legal relations in the digital environment. This is especially true for the ownership and use of personal and “depersonalized” data and created content.

The ownership and cost of data is just one of the problems that have accumulated in the digital environment that urgently need to be solved. No less urgent is the need to resolve the contradiction between the requirements of national or local data storage and global transparency of technological and corporate processes, where data on engine operation on an aircraft owned by an airline of one country and flying over another country is processed in real time in a third.

As techno-economic blocks are formed, the competition in the digital space takes the form of a war of platforms and standards. At the same time, a number of countries and regional associations that have neither control over a large part of the global digital market nor dominant platforms (for example, India, Brazil, Japan, Russia or the European Union) will be forced to look for common ways to preserve independence and competitiveness, including by creating common platforms based on an open architecture and open source.

Russia on the digital agenda: Opportunities and limitations

Russia is one of the few countries with technological reserves and human competencies to build its own technological ecosystem. The powerful engineering and mathematical school inherited by Russia from the Soviet Union remains a source of a key resource for digital development – qualified personnel. Russia has most of the features of a sovereign technology platform. A national search engine has been developed and continues to develop. Instagram Facebook and Vkontakte are still more popular than Russian social networks VKontakte and Odnoklassniki, not only in Russia, but also in most CIS countries. Own cloud technologies are developing, domestic processors are being created. Digital solutions of Russian companies have significant export potential – primarily cognitive and self-learning systems, solutions in the field of cybersecurity, secure electronic document management and platforms for providing services to the public. Launched two years ago, the national Digital Economy program will provide 97 percent of all national households and all social infrastructure facilities (schools, hospitals, police stations) with access to high-speed broadband Internet by 2024. This will radically change the opportunities for the development of entrepreneurship, telemedicine and distance education, and will allow Russia to overcome the “digital divide”. Russia is already among the top 10 countries in terms of the number of Internet users, and the website “Gosuslugi” with its two trillion annual transactions is the most popular website of public services in the world.

The share of the digital economy in the country’s GDP is growing. Despite the vagueness of the term itself, it is already about 4-5 percent of GDP, but it continues to grow rapidly at a pace comparable to the digital leaders. In addition, Russia has an impressive satellite and radio frequency resource, which is the key to the successful development of new generation networks.

The challenges that Russia faces in the field of digital development cannot be underestimated. Some of them are only a “digital” consequence of “analog” problems and threats. Others have a fundamentally new, original nature. In particular, Western sanctions not only restrict, among other things, access to foreign technologies, but also increase the risks of maintaining dependence on such technologies to an unacceptable level. The case related to the refusal of Siemens to supply turbines to the Crimea jeopardized plans to provide the peninsula with heat. If we extrapolate this incident to the digital sphere, a similar failure of SAP, Oracle, CISCO or Microsoft to ensure timely updating of their solutions operating in Russia can cause failures – even collapse – in the operation of critical systems, including public administration and the banking sector.

These and other trends in the development of world politics in the last few years have actualized for Russia the task of forming reliable protection of its own digital critical infrastructure. The fulfillment of this task depends both on the effectiveness of a phased and gradual transition from imported software and hardware complexes, and on the creation of an effective command vertical from the regulator to the executor throughout the country.

The decision of the Russian government to create registers of domestic software and electronic equipment is designed to reduce such risks. Without being included in these registers, companies cannot count on delivering their solutions to Russian state corporations and public authorities. Such measures have a long-term positive effect on the development of Russia as a sovereign technological power.

Building a counteraction in the field of information security is complicated by conceptual uncertainty – the fuzzy separation of two close, but different spheres related to information flows. Both the security of signals in a physical network carrying information and malicious ideological content in Russian practice are defined by the same concept of “information security”. In the practice of Russian competitors in digital leadership, the security of signals and networks is defined as cybersecurity. Countering threats in these two areas requires different competencies. While in Russia there is a sufficient understanding of how to deal with cyber threats, in the field of information content, the Russian strategy requires separate reflection and development.

Moscow’s accusations of cyber interference in the internal affairs of a number of states were used as a pretext to increase sanctions pressure and undoubtedly damaged Russia’s international image. However, this campaign had consequences for a number of large Russian enterprises and firms. They faced problems and discrimination in the markets of some Western countries. Perhaps even more significant than the reputational and even economic consequences are the risks that these accusations will be used by the United States and its allies as arguments for conducting “cyberstrikes of retaliation” or even “preventive cyberstrikes” against Russia.

In the information space, Russia’s vulnerabilities are obvious due to the dominance of American monopolies in the domestic segment – Google and Facebook. These monopolies exploit Russian data for free and are increasingly trying to influence the information field and the political situation in Russian domestic politics. Including through manipulation of content and restrictions on Russian users’ access to information and means of communication. Other non-Western countries face similar challenges. It makes sense to establish a more active dialogue with them about the principles of legislation of the digital age, especially in terms of data ownership rights, rules for their storage and use, joint fight against online piracy, general rules of conduct for states and businesses on the Internet. The fundamental challenge for Russian legislation in the digital sphere is to keep pace with the development of technologies and practices themselves as dynamically as possible, especially in such important areas for society as cybercrime and digital finance.

Another problem today is the low ability of Russian companies and the government to compete with global corporations for the best personnel. At the same time, formally, “brain drain” may not occur – Russian talents continue to remain in Russia, but give all the intellectual added value to foreign companies. Taking into account the disparity of the economic potentials of Russian and transnational business, the solution of this problem is possible only within the framework of the administrative or conceptual (but in any case state) plane of relations.

Also, Russia and Russian companies practically do not work on international platforms to introduce technological standards and regulations that are favorable for the functioning of Russian developments. This is partly due to Russia’s lack of a doctrinal document outlining its own international priorities in this area by analogy with the National Security Strategy or the Concept of Foreign Policy. In the future, this omission may cause technological isolation or actual coercion of Moscow to work with internationally recognized standards and protocols, in the development of which Russia actually did not take an active part.

The Roadmap of Russian Leadership in the digital Environment

The Russian digital agenda should reflect the position of our country as one of the main forces in the global system, as an exporter of security and stability. Russia’s global role in the digital world is the role of the leader of the “digital non-aligned movement” for those countries that would like to avoid the technological dictates of “digital neocolonialists”.

It is important that the development of the digital sector of the Russian economy, including electronics and information technology, is accompanied by expansion into global markets. Only in this case will Russia be able to recoup investments in breakthrough technologies, conquer key technological platforms of the next generation economy and build large, competitive businesses.

Spread over eleven time zones, Russia (even in a world where distances are dramatically reduced) continues to play the role of a safe link between Europe and Asia. This applies equally to the global energy infrastructure needed to support the highly energy-intensive digital economy of the future, and to the network of quantum communications necessary for secure data transmission. The cold climate of the northern regions of Russia, coupled with cheap electricity, gives our country a competitive advantage in the location of large data storage and processing centers.

One of the most important challenges for Russia today is the implementation of the EAEU digital integration program. It is necessary in a short time to provide an opportunity for government agencies and businesses of the member states of the Union to exchange legally significant documents through the integrated information system of the EAEU (AIS of the EAEU). This will increase the speed of transit of goods through the territory of the EAEU, increase the economic effects of this process and improve the quality of integration in the Union.

In addition, Russia, as the main “shareholder” of this process, should contribute to ensuring the interoperability of the EAEU AIS with the information systems of the CIS member states that tend to integrate, as well as states with which the EAEU has or is planning a free trade agreement. Digital integration here can and should outpace physical integration. Another important tool may be a special (for example, with the Eurasian Development Bank) program for the implementation of national e-government standards in interested partner countries.

The task of expanding the Russian economic and digital space acutely raises the question of finding strategic allies in the digital world and using existing political mechanisms for this purpose. In this regard, it is worth using the positive potential of our relations with the leading economies of the future – India, Indonesia, Brazil and others.

Equally important is the work on digital dialogue with the European Union. Firstly, digital transport corridors with seamless transit experience for businesses will become possible only if the EAEU AIS is interoperable with the information systems of Europe and China. Secondly, closer coordination is needed in the European direction regarding the use of the radio frequency spectrum – so far there are many contradictions with the EU border states on this issue. The solution to this problem is especially important if in the foreseeable future goods between countries will be moved by unmanned transport. In this case, both Russia and the EU will need a single standard for new generation networks and a single frequency range allocated to them. Thirdly, Russia and the European Union have adopted comparable (at least in terms of principles) regulatory requirements for the storage and transfer of personal data. It is important to harmonize these requirements for business convenience.

In addition, Russia and the EU are drawn closer by the desire to tax foreign digital giants, primarily American companies, with fair taxes. The formation of a consensus on the principles of such taxation will help Russia and the EU to act more effectively on multilateral platforms dealing with this issue. In the medium term, the issue of creating a single cross-border “pool” of big data, marked up in a unified way and accessible (including for a fee) to third parties, primarily American and Chinese companies, is also becoming important

Collaboration with the EU is important, if only because the Russian and European integration blocks are squeezed between two very self-sufficient information platforms – American and Chinese, each of which is already a “bigdata monster”. To become an additional center of gravity, Russia and the European Union, relatively small in terms of population and data generation, simply need to join forces.

At the same time, uniform rules and principles for the functioning of national data management systems, clearly establishing to whom and under what conditions this data may or may not be available, will ensure the national security of Russia and the EU. It is obvious that the entire volume of accumulated big data of a state or group of states is of exceptional intelligence, political, economic and military value, and ensuring their safety is one of the key tasks of national security. But there is also a more immediate political argument in favor of starting cooperation between Russia and the EU in the digital sphere. The progressive degradation of Russian-European relations has exhausted the bilateral agenda for substantive topics. The issues of developing the digital economy and jointly confronting common threats in the digital environment that really bring us closer together can provide fundamentally new areas for non-confrontational interaction.

A separate point for Russia is relations with the leading digital powers – China and the United States. Unlike the European and Eurasian tracks, joint economic projects with Moscow are extremely unlikely in both cases. Nevertheless, the political situation dictates different logics in relations with Washington and Beijing in this area.

With the PRC, it is necessary to continue to coordinate their positions on international platforms regarding issues of Internet regulation and data security. Our approaches are similar, although the Russian one seems to be more liberal and does not imply the creation of an analogue of the “Great Chinese Digital Wall” in our country. But there are two other sensitive issues that need to be discussed with Beijing, putting aside the awkwardness.

The first is China’s technological penetration into the EAEU states within the framework of the “digital Silk Road” doctrine. As in the case of Eurasian integration in general, it is important to interface, coordinate the actions of Chinese business and the state with the activities implemented within the framework of the EAEU – 2025 Digital Agenda.

The second is the development of rules of conduct for Chinese companies in the Russian market of highly qualified personnel and startups. Currently, Huawei is conducting large-scale work on the purchase of Russian technology companies and on attracting Russian specialists to its R&D units. At the same time, salaries in the company are significantly higher than the market, which leads to a flow of specialists from domestic companies. Obviously, in conditions of market rules and freedom of choice, this is a natural process, but it is also necessary to discuss compensatory actions for the national economy with the Chinese side. The Chinese side would never allow similar behavior of third-country companies in its market. The expansion of work with universities, localization of not only I&O departments, but also production, the transition to the creation of joint products, and not the “cannibalization” of startup solutions should become requirements for digital companies operating in our country.

Cooperation on political issues with the United States is even more relevant, despite the confrontational nature of bilateral relations. First of all, it is the development of confidence-building measures in cyberspace, the discussion of restrictions on the military use of digital technologies, the convergence of approaches to Internet regulation. Russia and the United States could initiate negotiations on the creation of new instruments for controlling new types of military technologies. It is also necessary to jointly understand the terminology: speaking of “Russian hackers”, Americans most often give examples of “social engineering”. It is necessary to make every effort to return pragmatism to Russian-American relations, even if Washington’s interest in this is not visible now. We are not talking about giving the United States a new credit of trust. Rather, it is about considering Washington’s every move carefully and assessing its possible consequences, without considering it as a priori hostile to Russian interests.

Russia needs a coordinated, clearly articulated and structured agenda to work in multilateral associations – the ITU, the Digital Twenty, the OECD. It is hardly reasonable to spend all the time pushing through exclusively Russian approaches and engage in fierce diplomatic battles with partners. Instead, at least two groups of “digital truths” should be recognized internally.

First. The location of DNS servers and the main Internet highways really did not work out in favor of Russia. Russia is not a first-level provider. In matters of shaping the digital agenda, Russia is a major regional power, not the second pole of this system. Individual digital corporations have become so powerful that they talk to states on an equal footing.

The second. The world tends much less towards “digital bipolarity” than it may seem. This is especially significant at the level of cyberspace regulation. Despite the proclaimed freedom of information movement, most countries seek to localize data storage in one form or another. In matters of digital regulation, all countries are authoritarian. There are areas that require strict regulation, even in more democratic countries. On the other hand, it is irrational to completely deny the concept of “multistakeholderism” – the plurality of those responsible – in the development of any decisions concerning regulation and further ways of developing new technologies. The regulator must inevitably conduct a dialogue with technology owners, and this is most often a business. Having realized these realities, Russia will be able to act as a conciliatory state in multilateral associations, determined to find a compromise.

Russia also has a chance to become an exponent of the interests of states that want to preserve their digital sovereignty and are not set up to be part of the Chinese or American digital empire, but do not have sufficient “subjectivity” for this. Both lines of behavior will expand our opportunities to realize our leadership potential, our “gravitational core”. This will make it possible to promote Russian candidates for leadership positions of such multilateral associations as, for example, ITU.

Another important step in the restructuring of Russian work in international organizations should be a more thorough selection of members of our delegations, ensuring their versatility. Today, the reality is that Russian diplomats are not always sufficiently aware of the technical aspects of the issues under consideration, while specialized technical specialists do not have enough knowledge of the art of negotiations. A separate role should be assigned to lobbyists – business representatives, who are, in fact, the ultimate beneficiary of most of the decisions taken. This kind of “digital realism”, instead of distractions to provocations and foreign policy “noises”, orients Russia to extremely pressing issues of ensuring the country’s digital interests in the world.

The recognition that in terms of creating 5G networks, Russia has completely lost the initiative or the ability to actively influence the agenda should push Moscow to focus on preparing our proposals for the 7G network standard (or is it 6G?), to step up work to neutralize the threat of isolation of Russia in matters of the radio frequency range allocated for the needs of a new generation of communications spectrum. On this issue, Russian views do not coincide with the overwhelming majority of countries in the world. The peculiarity of the regulatory regulation of the digital sphere is that the new laws will be written by those who write the codes, that is, the technical content of the innovation will largely determine its regulatory framework. Therefore, it is important to intensify the participation of Russian specialists in the development of standards and protocols for tomorrow’s technologies.

Conclusion

Against the background of the virtualization of all aspects of social life, the militarization of the information space is taking place. Taking advantage of the absence of borders in the digital space and generally recognized rules of conduct in it, states and organizations controlled by them distribute biased and disinformation content in order to promote their own interests and values. New technologies of virtual reality formation, such as deepfake, leave almost no chance for an ordinary person to separate lies from reality and are able to provoke religious and ethnic conflicts with impunity, destroy families, destroy the reputations of politicians and innocent people.

In the coming years, the question of the structure of regulation of the entire global Internet will inevitably arise. Under the pressure of block technological confrontation – mainly between the United States and China – and ideological and political struggle, it is already divided into digital “enclaves”. The basic value of the Internet as a worldwide equal and democratic environment (web neutrality) is also undermined by attempts, promoted, in particular, by the United States, to make the quality and speed of network traffic dependent on the client’s wallet. The inclusiveness of the Internet is becoming the key to reducing digital inequality, and with it the guarantor of global economic growth and social development.

Big data as the “new oil” of the digital age should have an understandable owner and an understandable value for the individual, business and the state. Only if a person and a citizen become the center of services and services in the digital environment, a balance of human rights, national priorities and business interests will be ensured, and it will be possible to regulate the currently uncontrolled global digital monopolies for the benefit of the whole society. The removal of the pages of President Trump and his supporters, as well as the “deplatforming” of the Parler social network, popular among Republicans, clearly outline the prospect of actions by tech giants to eliminate economic and political competitors if these tech giants decide to operate outside the United States. Since it is so tough and relatively easy to crack down on ideological opponents in the United States, why can’t this practice be made extraterritorial? Moreover, there are already precedents.

For Russia, the minimum task is to preserve sovereignty when making decisions affecting the main areas of national security. The maximum task is to create your own competitive technological ecosystem, become the leader of the techno-economic block and a key participant in the process of developing new rules of the game in this area. In this sense, gaining economic sovereignty is a simpler task than gaining informational sovereignty. But it seems that the survival of states in the future depends on its solution.

The export of technologies and competencies for the protection of sovereign critical infrastructure to countries wishing to ensure their independence and defense capability can and should become one of the most important political and foreign economic priorities of Russia. This will provide the country with a significant financial inflow and international influence. It is along this path that the powers claiming leadership positions in this area are already following.

Currently, the implementation of the critical infrastructure technology export strategy is hindered by the lack of experience of Russian high-tech companies in creating integrated platform solutions, their weak presence in the markets of potential partners, as well as insufficient financial capacity to work on large long-term projects.

As the civilizational and ideological confrontation escalates, examples of subversive information activity become more frequent, more and more countries are paying attention to the need for more careful control over malicious and subversive content on the Internet. In the United States, where an information war is unfolding between hostile political forces – as the 2020 presidential campaign showed – digital monopolies resort to outright censorship and manipulation in favor of their ideological supporters.

Russia should think about the mechanisms of active formation of the information space, which would allow it to lead in terms of relevance and quality of content and thereby limit foreign influence in its information space.

The challenge of the new time is the “impatience of the spirit”: a short clip or a post on a social network “wins” a full-fledged news report or an analytical article, the variety of multimedia experience distracts a person’s attention, and the speed of changes turns life into a race against time. The conservative, traditionally unhurried sphere of interstate communication is forced to change, “to run very fast in order to at least stay in place.” States that will be able to quickly rebuild clumsy foreign policy mechanisms faster than others have every chance to take a leading position in this rapid “new brave world”.