American power over socks, as in other sectors, is unmatched and has rested, since the 1940s, on different central foundations that make up its doctrine of domination. One of these central foundations makes the media an extremely useful tool for the capacity of influence that this country has: the ideology of free trade or (neo) liberalism
Just before the end of World War II (1944), the USA They approved a measure where they committed to promoting freedom of information and unrestricted communication in the world. The Bretton Woods agreements in June 1944 for monetary exchanges, also creating the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and, in 1947, the General Agreement on Customs Tariffs and Trade (GATT), laid the (neo) liberal free-trade regulatory foundations to defend the doctrine of American influence. The multilateral agreements designed by these organizations applied the free dissemination of information and communication, forming an important pillar for the fight against crime. communism
This doctrine, which dominated the years of the Cold War and after it, materialized an American vision (originally embodied in the Constitution of 1791) of press freedom. The development of communication infrastructures occurred in parallel to coordinate with the doctrine of influence and, ultimately, domination. In 1964, the Congressional Foreign Affairs Commission He considered that the primary purpose of the United States was to impose leadership in the world through voluntary adherence to North American values. So the political objective sought to influence public opinion or those in power through communication techniques. What in geopolitics can be called softpower .
A doctrine for global information domination
This doctrine, which made information a commodity like any other and a means of American influence on a planetary scale, is considered a tool of Realpolitik (1). The doctrine tends to tear down all the “walls” for the creation of a commercial space within the entire dimension of the globe, thus ensuring free competition and the free circulation of American products such as radio or television programs with the purpose of creating a framework of influence. Today, the Internet represents the new dimension of that doctrine geopolitics of the cold war, no matter how hard it is for us to understand since Internet It has many positive dimensions, for example for the rapid exchange of information.
So information and communication technologies are considered one of the foundations of governance of the world for USA Since the 2000s, a new economy has crystallized under the rise of American companies founded on industrial activities and on new strategic sectors such as online commerce (e-commerce), online financial transactions, etc. Today it can be seen that of the top 10 most visited websites in the world, 8 of them They are of “Yankee” origin (according to Marketing PGC(2)).
Apparently these companies do not present any threat to societies and, therefore, we would not say that they can exert a “malignant” influence. Let’s proceed to an approximation.
The dimension of the Snowden Case
Échelon is an espionage system created in 1947 which is part of a treaty between the United Kingdom and the USA, so, later, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Denmark, Norway, Turkey and Germany. It consisted, in principle, of sharing information between the different secret services and information agencies. The most important of the above is the National Security Agency (NSA) whose discovery to public opinion occurred with the statements of Edward Snowden in June 2013. This system is made up of a network of 120 satellites forming a global web of wiretapping, high-frequency radio emissions, submarine cables, the Internet… American websites are complicit in the access of the NSA within their networks like Facebook, Gmail or Skype
There is no need to make a very long list of the consequences of espionage massive towards society. It would almost be enough for us to carry out an exercise of imagination. However, we want to mention that this espionage capacity, far from being harmless, articulates an attack, not only on the human rights of intimacy(3), but also at other levels of human life, allowing knowledge about social, economic, governmental behaviors… This accumulation of knowledge, called Bigdata directly interferes with the progress of the world and is counted as another weapon within the framework of geopolitics global. Although the qualification of hegemonic power is being questioned, USA remains as a potential candidate to renew its status as the world’s pivot.