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Existential Risk & Emerging Technology Governance

by on August 5, 2020 · 2 comments

“The world should think better about catastrophic and existential risks.” So says a new feature essay in The Economist. Indeed it should, and that includes existential risks associated with emerging technologies.

The primary focus of my research these days revolves around broad-based governance trends for emerging technologies. In particular, I have spent the last few years attempting to better understand how and why “soft law” techniques have been tapped to fill governance gaps. As I noted in this recent post compiling my recent writing on the topic;

soft law refers to informal, collaborative, and constantly evolving governance mechanisms that differ from hard law in that they lack the same degree of enforceability. Soft law builds upon and operates in the shadow of hard law. But soft law lacks the same degree of formality that hard law possess. Despite many shortcomings and criticisms, compared with hard law, soft law can be more rapidly and flexibly adapted to suit new circumstances and address complex technological governance challenges. This is why many regulatory agencies are tapping soft law methods to address shortcomings in the traditional hard law governance systems.

I argued in recent law review articles as well as my latest book, despite its imperfections, I believe that soft law has an important role to play in filling governance gaps that hard law struggles to address. But there are some instances where soft law simply will not cut it. Continue reading →

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Mercatus Center Scholars Contributions to Cybersecurity Research

by on February 23, 2015 · 2 comments

by Adam Thierer & Andrea Castillo

Cybersecurity policy is a big issue this year, so we thought it be worth reminding folks of some contributions to the literature made by Mercatus Center-affiliated scholars in recent years. Our research, which can be found here, can be condensed to these five core points:

1)         Institutions, societies, and economies are more resilient than we give them credit for and can deal with adversity, even cybersecurity threats.

See: Sean Lawson, “Beyond Cyber-Doom: Assessing the Limits of Hypothetical Scenarios in the Framing of Cyber-Threats,” December 19, 2012.

2)         Companies and organizations have a vested interest in finding creative solutions to these problems through ongoing experimentation and they are pursing them with great vigor.

See: Eli Dourado, “Internet Security Without Law: How Service Providers Create Order Online,” June 19, 2012.

3)         Over-arching, top-down “cybersecurity frameworks” threaten to undermine dynamism in cybersecurity and Internet governance, and could promote rent-seeking and corruption. Instead, the government should foster continued dynamic cybersecurity efforts through the development of a robust private-sector cybersecurity insurance market.

See: Eli Dourado and Andrea Castillo, “Why the Cybersecurity Framework Will Make Us Less Secure,” April 17, 2014.

4)         The language sometimes used to describe cybersecurity threats sometimes borders on “techno-panic” rhetoric that is based on “threat inflation.

See the Lawson paper already cited as well as: Jerry Brito & Tate Watkins “Loving the Cyber Bomb? The Dangers of Threat Inflation in Cybersecurity Policy,” April 10, 2012; and Adam Thierer, “Technopanics, Threat Inflation, and the Danger of an Information Technology Precautionary Principle,” January 25, 2013.

5)         Finally, taking these other points into account, our scholars have conclude that academics and policymakers should be very cautious about how they define “market failure” in the cybersecurity context. Moreover, to the extent they propose new regulatory controls to address perceived problems, those rules should be subjected to rigorous benefit-cost analysis.

See: Eli Dourado, “Is There a Cybersecurity Market Failure,” January 23, 2012.

 

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Of Curves and Chaos

by on September 30, 2008 · 8 comments

Apologies for the non-technology post, but since the only topics of conversation these days are Wall Street, credit default swaps, and Putin’s flights over Alaska, I thought I’d post my review of Dave Smick’s new book The World is Curved: Hidden Dangers to the Global Economy…the Mortgage Crisis Was Only the Beginning.

                                                                                                            <div style="100%"><a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/6320801/Not-So-Flat-After-All-Forbescom-092908-by-Bret-Swanson">"Not So Flat After All" - Forbes.com - 09.29.08 - by Bret Swanson</a> - <a href="http://www.scribd.com/upload">Upload a Document to Scribd</a></div>

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