From circulating liberalism to tech nationalism: U.S. soft power and Silicon Valley

ABSTRACT

The global internet was originally shoe-horned into making a U.S.-led international order in the post-Cold War. Soft power enthusiasts and the early architects of the global internet worked closely to turn global connectivity into a civilizing mission. Around the 2010s, the State Department embraced ‘internet freedom’ as a soft power strategy when U.S. dominance was challenged by global and regional counter-hegemons. I argue that the ‘tech Cold War’ is not new. But the emerging narrative aims to bolster the reputation of the U.S. government and the tech industry’s corporate power, thereby hoping to restore U.S. leadership in internet governance.

KEYWORDS:

• soft-power internationalism
• United States
• Silicon Valley
• tech nationalism

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Valentina Paskar for offering research support and comments, and the Center for Advanced Internet Studies (CAIS) in Bochum, Germany for hosting me in Spring/Summer 2022.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. See ‘21^st Century Statecraft’ at https://2009-2017.state.gov/statecraft/overview/index.htm (Accessed 18 September 2022.)

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Burcu Baykurt

Burcu Baykurt is an Assistant Professor of Media Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a faculty associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. She is the co-editor of Soft-Power Internationalism: Competing for Cultural Influence in the 21st Century Global Order (Columbia University Press 2021).