The Internet emerged nearly fifty years ago, and the World Wide Web is more than twenty-five years old, yet the digital age still continues to be described as revolutionary. Peter Cowhey and Jonathan Aronson argue that the turbulence shows no signs of ending anytime soon. Digital DNA: Disruption and the Challenges for Global Governance is the latest in a series of insightful books the authors have written over the past three decades on the international political economy (IPE) of information technology. Combining deep academic expertise with policy experience at senior levels, they are able guides through the tremendous complexity of the topic. Yet the book occasionally becomes entangled in the same complexity it seeks to address, to say nothing of the crisis brewing in the global liberal order that the book hopes to improve.

The authors begin with an intriguing confession that the “specific catalyst for this effort is a reflection on a failed project” (p. xii) at the Aspen Institute, where industry and government leaders attempted to reimagine the ground rules for the digital economy but “no consensus on first principles could be reached” (p. xiii). They thus set out to understand how vital regulatory functions can enhance global economic performance in a political environment where a lack of consensus may in fact be a fundamental feature of endemic technological churn. They argue that emerging “digital platform clusters” are poised to disrupt the geographically-concentrated but globally-dominant high-tech clusters exemplified by Silicon Valley and Boston’s Route 128. Firms in traditional as well as high-tech markets are becoming increasingly able to recombine and customize modular components, at relatively low cost, from globally distributed computing infrastructures (the cloud), networked appliances and devices (the internet of things), vast collective stores of information on everything (social media and big data), and sophisticated data analysis (artificial intelligence and software as a service). The recent emergence of blockchain and quantum technologies receives little mention but could easily be added to the mix to further the authors’ point. All of this “digital DNA” enables an “information and production disruption” (IPD) that is “powerful, ubiquitous, and global . . . . These changes will open enormous opportunities even as they create political controversy and economic rivalry” (p. 233).

The authors describe the book as “an extended thought experiment or plausibility probe” (p. xix) for the feasibility of a governance philosophy for this situation that they summarize as “FACE: flexible mechanisms, accountable authority, complementary governance arrangements, and experimental problem solving” (p. 234). There are three distinctive aspects to their approach, which cast important light on IPE practice in the twenty-first century. First is problem-solving by a restricted club of nations that is more likely to overcome coordination and cooperation problems that bedevil broad fora like the World Trade Organization (WTO) or International Telecommunication Union (ITU). Second is heavy reliance on multi-stakeholder organizations (MSOs) to harness technical expertise, improve operational management, and enhance policy legitimacy. Because nearly every economic sector and policy issue is becoming infused with “digital DNA,” governance generally is beginning to reflect dynamics in core information technology arenas where MSOs have long been prominent. Third is an emphasis on trade policy over other regulatory instruments because key obligations and enforcement mechanisms for managing cross-border interfaces are already in place and, further, it is possible to link objectives like human rights or privacy to trade policy. The empirical case studies of cloud computing, cybersecurity, and digital privacy provide rich illustrations of the disruptive effects of digital platform clusters and the regulatory interaction of clubs, MSOs, and trade policy.

Cowhey and Aronson lay out an ambitious normative agenda that advocates using “binding hard and soft rules” to transform more difficult cooperation problems into more feasible coordination problems through a process of gradual, bottom-up “quasi-convergence” of regional regulatory regimes that preserve flexibility as well as transparency (p. 235). Unfortunately, some key cooperation problems may either be too hard to paper over or, worse, may undermine progress that has already been made. This tension is most prominent in the chapter on cybersecurity, which is restricted to the protection of international banking and credit card transactions from the predations of cyber criminals. The discussion within this scope is excellent, and the case study of the evolution of the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT) is one of the highlights of the book. Yet the big problems of industrial espionage, democratic subversion, critical infrastructure security, and other national security issues at the core of modern cybersecurity policy debate receive little mention. This is an unfortunate omission given that the political economic constitution of cyberspace, which Cowhey and Aronson are uniquely placed to explain, is fundamentally important for understanding the dynamics of cyber conflict even at the high end (see Jon R. Lindsay, “Restrained by Design: The Political Economy of Cybersecurity,” Digital Policy, Regulation and Governance 19(6), 2017).

Information technology and policy is incredibly complex. Any credible analysis will inevitably reflect some of this complexity. There are a lot of moving parts in this book, and Cowhey and Aronson do an admirable job of sensitizing readers to the difficulties of managing their interactions. Everyone will learn something. Unfortunately, the lists of technical developments and policy challenges surveyed in Digital DNA are so comprehensive and nuanced that it can be difficult to discern the relationship between all the multifarious causal factors, behavioral implications, and normative recommendations. For example, the authors point out “five building blocks” of “national innovation systems” (p. 5); “five drivers” of the “information disruption” (p. 27); “six major dynamics” of “digital platform clusters” (p. 31); “six major consequences of the IPD” (p. 40), distinct from “five features emerging from the IPD” (p. 52); “thirteen market access issues to be addressed in the digital economy agreement [DEA]” (p. 63), for which “the structure of our proposed bargain for the DEA has five parts” (p. 241) complemented by five “soft rules” for digital privacy (p. 246); “six characteristics at a minimum” (p. 114) that will enable the “partial convergence” of global governance, along with “five refinements” (p. 180) reflected in the case of SWIFT; “five characteristics . . . at the heart of engineering and economics of the cloud market” (p. 129); fourteen “enabling and regulatory policies for the cloud” (p. 136); “three classes of problems for defense” (p. 169) that are shaped by “four classic incentive problems”; “five conditions that economists acknowledge can distort market performance” (p. 196) that affect privacy policy and that require a quite different set of “five basic building blocks” (p. 198) containing fifteen constituent principles (pp. 227–229); and so on.

It is thus with some irony that the authors note, “Laundry lists of initiatives are ubiquitous in governments because everyone wants a piece of an important policy game” (p. 235). In a further irony at one point the authors quote Buffalo Springfield lyrics: “There’s something happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear” (p. 26). The net result is a somewhat impressionistic argument that is undoubtedly correct in broad brushstrokes but elusive in its detail. The authors conclude appropriately with some humility, “Our plan will certainly be wrong in the details, but our goal is to set governance on the right vector for reform” (p. 58). Yet the very complexity of the ongoing evolution of the information revolution, together with the heterogeneity and ambiguity of the solutions that have evolved along the way, somewhat undermines the urgency of any proposed governance reforms. Muddling through will probably continue as the de facto approach to information technology governance whether it becomes quasi-converged official policy or not.

This is an optimistic book. Cowhey and Aronson are hopeful that expert negotiators and well-meaning advisors can create shared norms for economic efficiency and democratic accountability in the face of persistently turbulent but generally welfare-enhancing technological innovation. But to quote another anthem from the 1960s, “The times they are a-changin’.” A book with a 2017 copyright can give only brief mention to the election of U.S. president Donald J. Trump, who rides a wave of nationalist and protectionist sentiment, and the collapse of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which was just the sort of trading club that might have advanced the FACE agenda. The intensifying trade war between the United States and China, fraying relationships with key U.S. allies, popular backlash against immigration, trade, and information openness, and ominous Russian cyber espionage and influence campaigns have all further stressed the global liberal order (GLO). Cowhey and Aronson may indeed offer the only feasible approach to restoring the GLO in a world where American leadership can no longer be taken for granted. A more pessimistic possibility is that the normative principles they advocate may contain the seeds of an explanation for why the GLO is even dimmer than it appears.