It’s Personal Now: Georgetown Examines How Social Media Affects Our National Security

Georgetown University was one of the founding members of New America’s Public Interest Technology University Network, taking a stake in promoting PIT as a methodology and career path very early on. The school this fall was awarded a Network Challenge grant to support a program called 360 Tech: Innovation, Security, and Governance. Spearheaded by professors Laura K. Donohue and Anna Cave, the program is creating a multidisciplinary task force in a series of innovation labs to address some of the most serious challenges and risks presented by social media today. The project, the NatSec 360 Tech Incubator, launched earlier this year, and is expected to kickoff its first phase in early spring with the announcement of 15 members of its inaugural taskforce. PIT UNiverse editor-in-chief Karen Bannan sat down with Anna Cave to discuss the new program -- why it's necessary, what they hope to accomplish, and why it's so crucial in today's highly charged environment. Below, find an edited version of their conversation. 

Q: Tell me about the evolution of the grant proposal. 

Anna Cave: Georgetown, and Georgetown Law Center has by far the biggest, strongest national security program in the country, and the Center has been in the middle of that effort to develop our program that has been primarily student-focused. When I came on board there was an inflection point, an opportunity, and a desire to say, ‘We've built this really great foundation, which means we can affect the pipeline of national security leaders.’  We have had a couple of thousand JD [law] students go through national security courses and we have one of the only L.LM programs and its the top L.LM program in national security. [Editor’s note: An L.LM or Master of Laws degree is an advance degree granted in the field of law.] All that to say is that, with this program, we realized we can really affect the pipeline of national security leaders in Washington D.C. 

So there was this rich foundation to think, ‘How can we grow our Center to address this set of complex national security challenges related to social media that are really at our door.’ I've spent time in government and the nonprofit sector and now in academia and the private sector and...I come at these issues from a multidisciplinary perspective. I spent almost ten years working on foreign policy and national security mostly from a human rights lens where I was really quite frustrated by what is a siloed approach to the challenges that we face. It turns out complex challenges -- in this case security challenges --don't neatly sort themselves into silos. Climate change doesn't come to us and say, "I'm just a climate issue."  It actually touches on everything from science to policy to community level issues and humanitarian assistance, and the same is true with national security. Public health and the pandemic is a great example. Something that is very local in a completely different part of the world suddenly has a direct impact on American security and our global security. Tech also falls into that bucket where we have challenges that are suddenly really just taking off at a very rapid pace, and no infrastructure to deal with that and our societal decisions about how to put up guardrails and thinking about norms and standards have not kept pace with that. 

And so I wanted to think about using the launchpad of Georgetown to fix that, problem solving in a holistic, multidisciplinary, innovative way. With national security, usually people think, defense, going to war, conflict. Actually, though, national security is incredibly broad, and touches on so many different issues. Our national security apparatus was really developed post World War II so we have this infrastructure and government that just can't really tackle the really complex challenges that cut cross private sector, communities, government. We're not really equipped to do that. But a place like Georgetown, where we have access to many different kinds of expertise, as well as tapping into government and have great connections and networks there really can be a place where we think about innovative cross sector multidisciplinary solutions. 

Q: What exactly is the Network Challenge project?

Cave: We're launching what I'm calling an innovation incubator, a 360 innovation incubator -- and it's really kind of a problem solving lab -- to tackle cross cutting security challenges that touch on law, society, and policy challenges. This is our first pilot project focusing on social media. 

I think there are some people that would say, ‘Oh, social media and national security, I don't I don't really see the direct connection. But not just about a month ago, with the Capitol insurrection, now suddenly everyone sees the very direct connection that social media plays in our national security. We have private actors that have, in many cases, more power and more decision making authority to decide societal level issues than any government department or agency. But we had already been thinking about this for the last year, and could see this coming. This is an issue that is complex, that touches on many different aspects of government, private sector, NGOs, and affected communities, many of whom are affected far more and don't have a powerful voice.  

The other through line that is really important, is that when you're talking about cross sectoral challenges, and you're thinking about ways to bring together entities that have certainly disparate and sometimes conflicting interests. When you work in government, you make a commitment to upholding the Constitution, right? Well, private sector companies have to upload shareholder interests. And when you have potentially conflicting interests, having a center or entity that does that convening that is really looking out for the public interest. Georgetown really has a strong ethos of social justice serving for the public interest and the public good, as is one of its core, foundational cultural commitments, and it really is at the DNA level. And so I think that's another reason I felt like Georgetown in particular would be well placed to take on a project like this.

Q: Can you tell us more about the form and function of the lab?

Cave: We have developed this interesting structure for the project. We're going to have a core team with a research component and an implementation component. That core team will include students, but also include fellows, our faculty, and faculty in the broader university. So we have someone from the ethics lab, for example, who will be part of our core team and who will run the day to day. One of the innovative pieces of this project is that we are establishing a multidisciplinary and really diverse task force. Most people who watch this space can see that innovation at its heart really depends on diversity. Diversity of perspective, diversity of expertise, diversity of background, diversity of ideology, diversity of ethnicity, of gender. It's by bringing together these very different perspectives that you get creative solutions. The approach so far has been very siloed, where it's the private sector determining what it's going to do. For example, with the Facebook oversight board or government saying, well, this is how we're going to regulate, you know, this sector.

This taskforce that we're establishing will include everyone from consumer and civil liberty and privacy groups, to representatives from marginalized communities, the private sector, founders and representatives of social media companies, venture capitalists, academia, public and technology think tanks and organizations, social media and tech oriented newsrooms, government officials, current current and past influencers. So really this interesting mix of backgrounds and people who can speak to different aspects of the problem.

We're going to be bringing them together in a series of what I'm calling innovation labs. We’re borrowing from design thinking and change management processes. Design thinking and creative problem solving and change management are approaches that have been used in the tech sector and in other sectors, increasingly, but haven't really been applied in the national security, law and policy sectors. These innovation tools will help bring to life and give us some structure and processes to work through in these innovation labs, with this diverse task force to move from problem identification to creative ideation and then to coming up with some potential models to think about governance for social media. Then we can move toward actually testing what those models could actually look like. This process will take place over roughly the course of a year.

The idea is to develop a blueprint for what a holistic governance model and models can look like for social media and how we as a society should be thinking about what are the parameters, what are the norms, what are the guidelines, how do we how do we how do we develop the boundaries for this this incredibly powerful tool that can both bring people together but also really cleave different segments of society?

Q: Have you given a lot of thought about how you get the social media companies to actually sign on and agree to use your framework?

Cave: I'll answer that in a couple of different ways. I think tech companies themselves realize that they can't, and actually do not want, to be the decider on all of these issues. There's an increasing realization --we saw a number of congressional hearings over the last year or two about this --tech companies realize that the way in which this has been essentially just left to companies to determine parameters one, exposes them to a lot of risk, public criticism, and potential legal risks. That's why there's an increasing recognition that there has to be a larger solution than just allowing tech companies themselves to decide. That's why you saw Facebook establish the so-called Supreme Court of Facebook. They had to create this oversight board because they recognize they can't and don't actually want to be the arbiters of issues that are so far reaching.

On a broader level, especially if you're looking down the road at the power of social media and how there can be unintended consequences, this has become a much bigger issue. There's a self interest to say society, government, actors, policymakers, the voters are not going to allow the status quo. There will be a change. I think everyone probably recognizes that. So why not have a have a have a say in the solutions and governance models are brought to the table?

Q: What's the first step in the process?

The first phase of this project is really about coming up with a blueprint or a model -- an implementation plan for what this could look like, and what the solutions are that need to be put on a table. The second second phase, which we would hope to do down the road, is actually thinking about how this would be implemented. And it's important to think through -- before you jump into implementation -- what's the right set of tools. That this first phase of the project is focused on that, and implementation would come in a second. And that's a much, much bigger issue in many cases that will require partnerships and many organizations working together to think about implementation.

Q: Can you tell us anything more about who will be included in the first part of the program?

Cave: We are just kicking off the project and we're starting to pull together the core team. Laura Donohue will chair the task force. She is a First Amendment scholar, she's worked a lot on tech, and she will be writing a book on this topic so she has deep interest and expertise around the issue. It is really a partnership between the two of us. She will be leading the task force while I think through the broader structure --to bring together the right people and developing the methodology itself.

We have not yet extended invitations. We're in the process of culling down a really interesting mix of people. The goal is really to find flexible thinkers, people who have a depth of expertise but also a curiosity and openness to many different kinds of issues and sectors and topics. And also, frankly, low ego.

There are a couple of partnerships that I could highlight now. I mentioned the Ethics Lab at Georgetown. They work in applied ethics --thinking through how ethics can be woven into various real world problem solving. Another partner that I would highlight is the MIT game lab. The reason for that is that we have a long experience running --and Laura has led this effort over the last decade -- the largest simulation to train on national security crises. The last one had something like 300 participants with these complex storylines that really helped students understand what it's like to be in the hot seat such as the National Security Council, in the intel community, at the Department of Justice, and think through what it's like to cull through information, present options, make decisions, and understand the legal frameworks. What we're looking to do now is to develop a next generation version of the simulation that takes into account the fact that so many other actors, including private sector actors, have a seat at the table in our national security decision making, and how to we deal with that. And so what we'd like to work with MIT game lab is a virtual simulation that can help us model and help both the task force in the initial instance and then thinking beyond that.

In design thinking, one of the aspects of that is how do you test and pilot potential solutions quickly. In law and policy that can be very hard. Legal solutions and policy solutions can take 10 years -- 20 years in some cases -- to really test and so in some ways, I think a tool like this can help us short circuit that process in some ways to help both the taskforce members but then down the road, students, work through what the actual risks are of social media and how different solutions can play out.

Q: When I talk to people about PIT they are always surprised when I say that lawyers, architects, psychologists, sociologists, and other non-tech careers can be considered public interest technology practitioners. What's your experience with that been? Is it difficult to convince a lawyer to embrace PIT?

Cave: This project is actually helpful in the sense that it's pretty expansive. There are so many different aspects of technology that it touches on --blockchain and cryptocurrencies, AI, and virtual reality. There are so many different aspects of tech, in this project that can capture the imagination. Students who are able to see that technology is actually woven into so much of our public life, so much of the public's life, it will enable them to to see the richness that public interest technology can bring to a career. You almost can't escape it at this point. It's something that is woven into our daily lives and affects not just our individual security, whether your data is hacked or your bank account is hacked, but also our broader national security in the U.S., and our global security. And so this project allows students to see that richness, and then also see how so many different sectors and career tracks will play into that. By having an ethicist and a philosopher combined with a policy decision maker combined with a government lawyer as well as advocacy groups --being able to tap into that network and seeing the multiplicity of ways that public interest technology can can play out will be a really amazing opportunity for students.

Q: Can you explain why you're focusing on social media rather than cybercrime?

This approach is kind of unique and innovative. We haven't seen anyone else make that effort to try to think about social media from a 360 perspective. A good example would be Russia, which is using social media to track down those who are protesting, but [Alexey] Navalny using social media to build a protester movement and to find an avenue for speaking out against the Russian government. And so you just see it being used both for for good and for ill, and this is so important. How do we think about social media as a society, and how do we think about it globally? Because it's not just a U.S. issue. It's also a global issue at this point, Europe has dealt with it from a legal perspective very differently than than we have. So how do we also think about the interplay of regulatory regimes? The tech companies are certainly thinking about it globally. There's a lot of complexity to unpack. It's an ambitious project, but it's a necessary one.