March 2010

Even before Google began threatening to shut down its search service in China, it was not fitting in. Google and other major American Internet companies like Yahoo and eBay failed to gain significant traction in the Chinese market. And Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are blocked by the government. Instead, the hottest companies in the world's biggest Internet market have names like Baidu, Tencent and Alibaba — fast-growing local firms that are making huge profits. Post-Google, China's Internet market could increasingly resemble a lucrative, walled-off bazaar, experts say. Those homegrown successes, however, could have trouble becoming global brands.

[Commentary] Restrictions on Internet freedom in China have forced all foreign media companies that operate there to make and accept compromises. But then it should come as no surprise that an authoritarian government does not make it easy to promote the free flow of information.

Hard choices must be made on how to balance core values, shareholder profits and the best interests of Chinese consumers. So it's all the more impressive that Google has displayed sound instincts and judgment at every step of the way in China. And it's all the more alarming that in the end Google decided it had no choice but to abandon its Chinese-language search services hosted on mainland servers. Harsher control only feeds public dissatisfaction. We're seeing this in the reaction to the Google conflict, with normally nationalistic netizens expressing support for the company and even delivering flowers to its Beijing headquarters. Google has made censorship of search results, largely invisible until now, a topic of debate. Incrementally advancing freedom is the best that media companies can hope to do in China.

Staying out of the country entirely or plunging in with no bottom line have their own risks and opportunity costs. It's much harder to try to do business there while also preserving your values. But that is where valuable contributions can be made.

[Commentary] For four years, Google has caved to Beijing's demands to self-censor search results on its search engine within China. Now it has drawn a line in the sand about truth and transparency on the Internet. It will move its Chinese operations to Hong Kong in hopes of operating freely. Given Google's prominence on the Web, the move may force China's rulers to rethink their stranglehold over information reaching 1.3 billion Chinese.

But more important, Google's decision to stand up for an ideal may serve as a lesson for other companies operating in China - and perhaps even for President Obama. He has hesitated in challenging China's curbs on basic freedoms. Most of all, he has avoided official criticism of one of China's most damaging restraints: the manipulation of its currency on the open market.

The US must make sure its free-market model will prevail. With only a few words in the coming Treasury report, the Obama administration could signal that the course of history will be toward more - not less - economic freedom. Such a designation need not result in the US taking retaliatory action against Chinese imports. Rather, it could help Obama in rallying other countries to speak in one loud voice in hopes that China would become a responsible stakeholder in an open economic order. Google has spoken. Will Obama?

[Commentary] It has become commonplace since Sept. 11, 2001, to speak of the "war of ideas" between Muslim extremists and the West. But there has been too little attention paid to the U.S. military's mobilization for this war, which is often described by the oxymoronic phrase "information operations."

To populate this information "battle space," the military has funded a range of contractors, specialists, training programs and initiatives -- targeted on the hot wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the broader zone of conflict in the Middle East and Central Asia. Gen. David Petraeus, the Centcom commander who oversees that region, has been one of the military's most vocal proponents of aggressive information operations. The potential problems were highlighted on March 14, when the New York Times revealed that a Pentagon official from the "strategic communications" realm had funded contractors to gather intelligence in Afghanistan. Last week also brought a report by The Post's Ellen Nakashima that the military, in an offensive information operation, had shut down a jihadist Web site that the CIA had been monitoring for intelligence purposes. In both cases, it seemed the military was wandering into the covert-action arena traditionally reserved for the CIA.

This murky area should be marked with a flashing yellow warning light, meaning: "Slow down!" The United States should be careful about encouraging, in effect, the militarization of information -- and it should be especially cautious when these efforts bleed into the intelligence world. We are a nation that has prospered uniquely from open, untainted information flows. As I watch the covert contractors get their arms around this topic, it makes me nervous.