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Cloud computing services over the Internet have the potential to spur a significant increase in government efficiency and decrease technology costs, as well as to create incentives and online platforms for innovation. Adoption of cloud computing technologies could lead to new, efficient ways of governing.

On April 7, the Brookings Institution hosted a policy forum that examines the economic benefits of cloud computing for local, state, and federal government. Federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra delivered a keynote address on the role of the government in developing and promoting cloud computing. Brookings Vice President Darrell West moderated a panel of experts and detailed the findings in his paper, "Saving Money through Cloud Computing," which analyzes its governmental cost-savings potential.

After the program, panelists took audience questions.

Video

• Cloud Computing a Fiscally Smart Move
• Cloud Computing Saves Money, Makes Government More Open
• Cloud Computing Will Fundamentally Change Government Operations
• Government on Cloud Will Yield Cost-Effective System

Audio

• The Economic Gains of Cloud Computing

Transcript

• Uncorrected Transcript (.pdf)

Event Materials

• 20100407_cloud_computing
• 0407_cloud_computing_kundra_remarks
• 0407_cloud_computing_kundra_presentation

      

Executive Summary

The move to the cloud is one of the defining information technology trends of the early 21st century. By providing businesses, universities, government agencies, and other entities with access to shared and often physically dispersed computing resources, cloud computing can simultaneously offer increased flexibility, reduced cost, and access to a wider array of services.

Cloud computing has also created a set of new challenges. For example, the issues of privacy and security in the cloud are well recognized and have been extensively discussed in the business and popular press. However, one critical issue that has received very little attention with respect to cloud computing is export control.

In the broadest sense, export control relates to regulations that the United States and many other countries have put in place to restrict the export of various sensitive items, information, and software.

There is an inherent tension between cloud computing and export control. While the concept of the cloud is centered on the premise of removing the need to track the details of data movement among various destinations, export control regulations are built largely around restrictions tied to those very movements.

If cloud computing is to reach its full potential, it is critical for providers and users of cloud services to address its implications with respect to export control. It is equally important to adapt the export control regulations to reflect the increasing prevalence of cloud computing in a manner that preserves the ability of American companies to benefit from the efficiencies of the cloud while also ensuring that American national security and foreign policy interests are adequately protected.

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• Download the Paper

       

“Missed connections” is the personals ads category for people whose encounters are too fleeting to form any union – a lost-and-found for relationships.  I gave that title to my paper on the conversation between the United States and for Europe on data, privacy, and surveillance because I thought it provides an apt metaphor for the hopes and frustrations on both sides of that conversation.

The United States and Europe are linked by common values and overlapping heritage, an enduring security alliance, and the world’s largest trading relationship.  Europe has become the largest crossroad of the Internet and the transatlantic backbone is the global Internet’s highest capacity route.

[I]

But differences in approaches to the regulation of the privacy of personal information threaten to disrupt the vast flow of information between Europe and the U.S.  These differences have been exacerbated by the Edward Snowden disclosures, especially stories about the PRISM program and eavesdropping on Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cell phone.  The reaction has been profound enough to give momentum to calls for suspension of the “Safe Harbor” agreement that facilitates transfers of data between the U.S. Europe; and Chancellor Merkel, the European Parliament, and other EU leaders who have called for some form of European Internet that would keep data on European citizens inside EU borders.  So it can seem like the U.S. and EU are gazing at each other from trains headed in opposite directions.

My paper went to press before last week’s European Court of Justice ruling that Google must block search results showing that a Spanish citizen had property attached for debt several years ago.  What is most startling about the decision is this information was accurate and had been published in a Spanish newspaper by government mandate but – for these reasons – the newspaper was not obligated to remove the information from its website; nevertheless, Google could be required to remove links to that website from search results in Spain. That is quite different from the way the right to privacy has been applied in America.  The decision’s discussion of search as “profiling” bears out what the paper says about European attitudes toward Google and U.S. Internet companies.  So the decision heightens the differences between the U.S. and Europe.

Nonetheless, it does not have to be so desperate.  In my paper, I look at the issues that have divided the United States and Europe when it comes to data and the things they have in common, the issues currently in play, and some ways the United States can help to steer the conversation in the right direction.

[I] "Europe Emerges as Global Internet Hub," Telegeography, September 18, 2013.

       

Introduction: Despite the launch of indirect, “proximity” talks between Palestinians and Israelis, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas continues to resist a resumption of direct negotiations with Israel absent a full settlement freeze. As chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and president of the Palestinian Authority (PA), Abbas also insists that any new negotiations pick up where previous talks left off in December 2008 and that the parties spell out ahead of time a clear “endgame,” including a timetable for concluding negotiations. While these may seem like unreasonable preconditions, Palestinian reluctance to dive headfirst into yet another round of negotiations is rooted in some genuine, hard-learned lessons drawn from nearly two decades of repeated failures both at the negotiating table and on the ground.

Not only have negotiations failed to bring Palestinians closer to their national aspirations but the peace process itself has presided over (and in some ways facilitated) a deepening of Israel’s occupation and an unprecedented schism within the Palestinian polity. Such failures have cost the Palestinian leadership dearly in terms of both its domestic legitimacy and its international credibility. While it remains committed to a negotiated settlement with Israel based on a two-state solution, the PLO/PA leadership has been forced to rethink previous approaches to the peace process and to negotiations, as much for its own survival as out of a desire for peace.

Haunted by past failures, Palestinian negotiators are now guided, to varying degrees, by six overlapping and sometimes conflicting lessons:

1. Realities on the ground must move in parallel with negotiations at the table.

2. Don’t engage in negotiations for their own sake.

3. Agreements are meaningless without implementation.

4. Incrementalism does not work.

5. Avoid being blamed at all costs.

6. Don’t go it alone.

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• Download Full Paper - English

      

Introduction:

In the ebb and flow of Middle East diplomacy, the two interrelated issues of an Israeli-Syrian peace settlement and Washington’s bilateral relationship with Damascus have gone up and down on Washington’s scale of importance. The election of Barack Obama raised expectations that the United States would give the two issues the priority they had not received during the eight years of the George W. Bush administration. Candidate Obama promised to assign a high priority to the resuscitation of the Arab-Israeli peace process, and separately to “engage” with Iran and Syria (as recommended by the Iraq Study Group in 2006).

In May 2009, shortly after assuming office, President Obama sent the assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, Jeffrey Feltman, and the senior director for the Middle East in the National Security Council, Daniel Shapiro, to Damascus to open a dialogue with Bashar al-Asad’s regime. Several members of Congress also travelled to Syria early in Obama’s first year, including the chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, John Kerry, and the chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Howard Berman. In addition, when the president appointed George Mitchell as special envoy to the Middle East, Mitchell named as his deputy Fred Hof, a respected expert on Syria and the Israeli-Syrian dispute. Last summer, both Mitchell and Hof visited Damascus and began their give and take with Syria.

And yet, after this apparent auspicious beginning, neither the bilateral relationship between the United States and Syria, nor the effort to revive the Israeli-Syrian negotiation has gained much traction. Damascus must be chagrined by the fact that when the Arab-Israeli peace process is discussed now, it is practically equated with the Israeli-Palestinian track. This paper analyzes the difficulties confronting Washington’s and Jerusalem’s respective Syria policies and offers an approach for dealing with Syria. Many of the recommendations stem from lessons resulting from the past rounds of negotiations, so it is important to understand what occurred.

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• Download Full Report - English

      

Syria is trapped on a crumbling precipice, and however it might fall will entail significant risks for the United States and for the Syrian people.

The brutal regime of Bashar al-Asad is employing its loyal military forces and sectarian thugs to crush the opposition and reassert its tyranny. Even if Bashar fails, Syria may not be out of the woods: an increasingly likely alternative to the current regime is a bloody civil war similar to what we saw in Lebanon, Bosnia, Congo, and most recently in Iraq. The horrors of such a war might even exceed the brutal reassertion of Asad’s control, and would cause spillover into Syria’s neighbors—Turkey, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Israel—that could be disastrous for them and for American interests in the Middle East.

But the unrest in Syria, which is now entering its second year, also offers some important opportunities, ones that would come from the fall of the regime of Bashar al-Asad, whose family has ruled the country with an iron grip for over forty years. Syria is Iran’s oldest and most important ally in the Arab world, and the Iranian regime has doubled down on Asad, providing him with financial aid and military support to shore up his regime. Asad’s departure would deal a significant blow to Tehran, further isolating it at a time when it has few friends in the region or the world. In addition, Damascus is steadfast in its hostility toward Israel, and Asad’s regime is also a longtime supporter of terrorist groups like Hizballah and Hamas, and has at times aided al-Qa’ida terrorists and former regime elements in Iraq. The regime’s collapse, therefore, could have significant benefits for the United States and its allies in the region.

Actually ousting Asad, however, will not be easy. Although the Obama administration has for months called for Asad to go, every policy option to remove him is flawed, and some could even make the situation worse—seemingly a recipe for inaction. Doing nothing, however, means standing by while Asad murders his own people, and Syria plunges into civil war and risks becoming a failed state. Already the violence is staggering: as of March 2012, at least 8,000 Syrians have died and thousands more have been arrested and tortured in trying to topple the regime. At the same time, Syria is fragmenting. The Syrian opposition remains divided, and the Free Syrian Army is more a brand than a meaningful, unified force. Al- Qa’ida is urging fighters to join the fray in Syria, and sectarian killings and atrocities are growing. Should the violence continue to intensify, Syria’s neighbors may increase their meddling, and instability could spread, further weakening already-fragile neighbors like Iraq and Lebanon.

So to protect U.S. interests, Asad cannot triumph. But a failed Syria, one wracked by civil war, would be just as bad. Thus, U.S. policy must walk this tightrope, trying to remove Asad, but doing so in a way that keeps Syria an intact state capable of policing its borders and ensuring order at home. At the end of the day, however, removing Asad may not be doable at a price the United States is willing to pay. If so, the U.S. government may be forced to choose between living with a brutal but weakened Asad or getting rid of Asad regardless of the consequences.

This memo lays out six options for the United States to consider to achieve Asad’s overthrow, should it choose to do so:

1. Removing the regime via diplomacy;
2. Coercing the regime via sanctions and diplomatic isolation;
3. Arming the Syrian opposition to overthrow the regime;
4. Engaging in a Libya-like air campaign to help an opposition army gain victory;
5. Invading Syria with U.S.-led forces and toppling the regime directly; and
6. Participating in a multilateral, NATO-led effort to oust Asad and rebuild Syria.

The options are complex, and policymakers will probably try to combine several in an attempt to accentuate the positives and minimize the negatives, which will inevitably be difficult and bring out new complications. But by focusing on discrete approaches, this memo helps expose their relative strengths and weaknesses. For each course of action, this memo describes the strategy inherent to the option and what it would entail in practice. It also assesses the option’s advantages and disadvantages.

This memo does not endorse any particular policy option. Rather, it seeks to explain the risks and benefits of possible courses of action at this moment in time. As conditions change, some options may become more practical or desirable and others less so. The authors mostly agree on the advantages and disadvantages of each approach but weigh the relative rewards and costs differently.

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• Read the full paper

      

Last winter, Salafi parties in Egypt proved themselves a formidable political force, winning a quarter of the vote in the country’s first elections in the post-Mubarak era. For many in Washington, the unexpected strength of Egypt’s conservative religious groups raised unsettling questions about the future of U.S.-Egyptian relations and America’s security interests in the region.

 

Will the political success of Salafis turn Egypt into an anti-American power and strengthen jihadist groups like al-Qa’ida that are bent on using violence against the United States and its allies?

In the Saban Center Middle East Memo, William McCants, a Middle East specialist at CNA and adjunct faculty at Johns Hopkins University, examines the implications of the Salafis’ turn to, and success in, electoral politics. McCants argues that while political participation may not moderate Salafis’ positions on social issues, it will likely erode the strength of their most extreme and violent affiliates. For this reason, America’s interests may be best served when Salafis play a role in post-revolution politics.

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• The Lesser of Two Evils: The Salafi Turn to Party Politics in Egypt

      

The Saban Center for Middle East Policy joined with the American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for the Study of War in June 2012 to host a one-day crisis simulation that explored the implications of spillover from the ongoing violence in Syria. The simulation examined how the United States and its allies might address worsening instability in Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, Turkey, and elsewhere in the Middle East as a result of the internecine conflict in Syria.

The Saban Center’s Middle East Memo, “Unraveling the Syria Mess: A Crisis Simulation of Spillover from the Syrian Civil War,” authored by simulation conveners Kenneth M. Pollack, Frederick W. Kagan, Kimberly Kagan, and Marisa C. Sullivan, presents key lessons and observations from the exercise.

Among the key findings:

• A humanitarian crisis alone is unlikely to spur the international community to take action in Syria.
   
• Turkey is a linchpin in any effort to end the fighting in Syria, but Washington and Ankara may not see eye-to-eye on what the end game should be.
   
• U.S. history in Iraq and Lebanon make intervention there unlikely, even if spillover causes a renewal of large-scale violence.

The simulation suggested a tension between U.S. political antipathy toward greater involvement in Syria and the potential strategic desirability of early action.

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• Download the paper

Video

• Unraveling the Syria Mess

       

The potential for confrontation between the United States and Iran, stemming from ongoing tensions over Iran’s nuclear program and western covert actions intended to delay or degrade it, remains a pressing concern for U.S. policymakers. The Saban Center for Middle East Policy hosted a one-day crisis simulation in September that explored different scenarios should a confrontation occur.

The Saban Center's new Middle East Memo, A Series of Unfortunate Events: A Crisis Simulation of a U.S.-Iranian Confrontation, authored by senior fellow Kenneth M. Pollack, presents lessons and observations from the exercise.

Key findings include:

• Growing tensions are significantly reducing the “margin of error” between the two sides, increasing the potential for miscalculations to escalate to a conflict between the two countries.

• Should Iran make significant progress in enriching fissile material, both sides would have a powerful incentive to think short-term rather than long-term, in turn reinforcing the propensity for rapid escalation.

• U.S. policymakers must recognize the possibility that Iranian rhetoric about how the Islamic Republic would react in various situations may prove consistent with actual Iranian actions.

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• Download the paper

       

Introduction

The issue of Iran has become a central preoccupation for the international community in recent months, thanks to the intersection of the historic changes in the region, an American presidential election, sharpening rhetoric from Israel, and Tehran’s relentless determination to advance its nuclear capabilities. The focus of policymakers in Washington and around the world remains fixed on the options for forestalling Iran’s determined march toward a nuclear weapons capability. This is the appropriate objective; the best possible outcome for maintaining peace and security in the Gulf and avoiding a deeply destabilizing nuclear arms race remains a credible, durable solution that curtails Iran’s nuclear ambitions. And while achieving such an outcome remains profoundly problematic, largely as a result of Tehran’s intransigence, preventing Iran from crossing the nuclear weapons threshold—either through persuasion, coercion, or some combination of the two—remains fully and unambiguously within the capabilities of the international community.

The shadow cast by Tehran has created a particularly intense sense of existential anxiety for the smaller Gulf states, including Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Oman. After all, these are the same states whose civil orders were repeatedly disrupted by Iranian subversion and sponsorship of terrorism during the first decade after Iran’s Islamic revolution, and whose thriving economies rely on unimpeded access to the global commons. The events of the past decade have only exacerbated the smaller Gulf states’ endemic sense of insecurity. Iran has achieved a synergistic, sometimes even parasitic, relationship with the leadership of post-Saddam Iraq that, together with Tehran’s longstanding relationships with Syria and Lebanese Hizballah, greatly enables its bid for predominance in the heart of the Middle East. Today, the uncertainties surrounding the implications of regional flux have left Tehran simultaneously weakened and emboldened—a particularly dangerous combination for this particular array of Iranian leaders.

With Iran’s nuclear program advancing by the month and its efforts to tilt the regional balance in its favor growing more forceful, the small states of the Persian Gulf must face the distinct dilemma of preparing for the possible worst-case scenario of the nuclearization of their neighborhood, while participating ever more robustly in the international efforts to preclude that very possibility. In some respects, the Gulf states’ situation is unique. Unlike Israel, another small state that perceives an existential threat from Iran, the Gulf states cannot fall back upon either a presumptive nuclear deterrent or a primordial bond to the body politic of the world’s only remaining superpower. And in contrast to Iran’s other neighbors, the vast resources and history of ideological and territorial disputes between the Gulf states and Tehran significantly intensify the stakes. Even before the Gulf became the vital transportation corridor for global energy, the fault line in the regional balance of power had always run between the northern states and their southern rivals. The mere possibility that the north may gain a nuclear advantage is reshaping the security environment for Iran’s neighbors in the Gulf.

Because the threat of Iran looms large, the exigency of considering the widest possible array of alternative prospects for the evolution of this protracted crisis is important. This paper tackles the scenarios that successive American presidents have deemed unacceptable—an Iranian development or acquisition of a nuclear weapons capability or of nuclear weapons themselves—and the implications that such scenarios would have for the global nonproliferation regime and regional security, with a particular focus on the special challenges faced by Iran’s southern neighbors. To protect against threats along their borders, the Gulf states have traditionally hedged their bets by seeking balanced relations with their more powerful neighbors while cultivating extra-regional allies. That formula is already changing, as evidenced by a new assertiveness in Gulf states’ postures toward Tehran and a new creativity in deploying strategies for deterring and mitigating Iran’s efforts to extend its influence and/or destabilize its neighbors. The Gulf states must transform this tactical innovation into a full-fledged new hedging policy: one that deploys every possible tool to prevent a nuclear Iran while taking every possible step to prepare for such an eventuality.

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• Thinking the Unthinkable: The Gulf States and a Nuclear Iran

       

During much of the past three years, the Syrian civil war has been the most prominent item on the Middle Eastern political agenda and has dominated the political-diplomatic discourse in the region and among policy makers, analysts and pundits interested in its affairs. 

Preoccupation with the Syrian crisis has derived from the sense, apparent since its early phases, that it was much more than a domestic issue. It has, indeed, become a conflict by-proxy between Iran and its regional rivals and the arena of American-Russian competition. It has also had a spillover effect on several neighboring countries and has been a bellwether for the state of the Arab Spring.

As the conflict festered it also prompted a broader discussion and debate over the future of the Arab State system. The collapse of Syria, the ongoing fighting in Iraq, and the general instability in the Middle East has led some observers to question whether the very geography of the region will be changed. Robin Wright, a journalist and scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, argues that “the map of the modern Middle East, a political and economic pivot in the international order, is in tatters.” Wright also warns that competing groups and ideologies are pulling the region apart: “A different map would be a strategic game changer for just about everybody, potentially reconfiguring alliances, security challenges, trade and energy flows for much of the world, too.”  Similarly, Parag Khanna, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, argues, “Nowhere is a rethinking of “the state” more necessary than in the Middle East.” He contends that “The Arab world will not be resurrected to its old glory until its map is redrawn to resemble a collection of autonomous national oases linked by Silk Roads of commerce.” Lt. Colonel Joel Rayburn, writing from the Hoover Institution, points out that the alternative may not be new states but rather simply collapse. “If watching the fall or near-fall of half a dozen regimes in the Arab Spring has taught us anything, it should be that the Arab states that appeared serenely stable to outsiders for the past half century were more brittle than we have understood,” warning darkly, “This conflict could very well touch us all, perhaps becoming an engine of jihad that spews forth attackers bent on bombing western embassies and cities or disrupting Persian Gulf oil markets long before the fire burns out.” 

This discussion touches on a key question: Will the collapse of one or several other Arab states produce a new order in the region? 

The regional order has been threatened before, but today’s challenge is unique. Syria is what has prompted the latest reevaluation of the Skyes-Picot borders, but many of the problems predated the Syrian civil war. Ambitious monarchs in the 1930s and 1940s challenged the order after the colonial period. The doctrine of Pan-Arab Nationalism and Gamal Abd al-Nasir’s messianic leadership in the 1950s and by Saddam Hussein in 1990 again posed a threat. Now it is now challenged not by a powerful state or a sweeping ideology but by the weakness of several Arab states that seem to be on the verge of implosion or disintegration.

This paper assesses the situation in Syria, with an emphasis on what might lead to its de facto partition or lasting collapse. It then examines Syria’s neighbors and their prospects for stability. The paper concludes by exploring how the United States, Israel and Iran might affect this tenuous balance.

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• The End of Sykes-Picot?: Reflections on the Prospects of the Arab State System