I'm grateful to Professor Howard for writing a thoughtful review of my book. I agree with some of his charges but find the policy agenda that follows from his critique to be somewhat naïve.

I concede that The Net Delusion “does not advance our understanding of the process by which millions of thousands of [people in the Middle East] mobilized with astounding political effect.” But, to borrow a phrase from software developers, I think that this is a feature, not a bug. My initial assumption in writing The Net Delusion had been that both journalists and academics spend too much time extolling the positive (i.e. democratization-enhancing) uses of social media and technology, leaving their more repressive uses almost invisible, both to the general public and to policy-makers (Internet use by terrorists is one exception; Howard is right to suggest that most such accounts are overblown.) As such, I didn't want to produce yet another Kumbaya account of the Internet's impact on democratization, for I feel that that side of the story is already well-covered elsewhere.

I also agree with Howard that “… it may go too far to argue that having a social media strategy as part of a modern foreign policy is delusional.” As Howard himself acknowledges, part of my overall project has been to show that technology matters—and it matters in ways than most Western policy-makers don't even anticipate. But simply acknowledging technology's importance is not enough to turn it into a potent tool of promoting democracy.

Politically, the Internet is not a neutral space and America's foreign policy carries all of its historical baggage to cyberspace with it. We need to think much harder about the costs of having an explicit “Internet freedom agenda.” The same goes for the costs of designing that agenda in a certain way—both factually and rhetorically—for any strategy to use the Internet to promote democracy is bound to have effects on other strategies and domains (including non-digital ones). So while Washington's intent in promoting an “Internet freedom agenda” might be pure and noble and in touch with the times, I can't compliment it on its nuance so far.

Moreover, I am much less sanguine than Howard about Washington's ability to avoid charges of hypocrisy—which may undermine the rest of their democracy agenda—that are bound to arise, as Western governments try to control the Internet in similar ways than their authoritarian counterparts (Britain's attempts to control social media to thwart any future riots and San Francisco's decision to shut down mobile networks to disrupt protests are cases in point.)

Translating Howard's main research finding—i.e. that information technology has a positive effect on democratization—into a set of Western policy objectives would be far more challenging than he seems to realize. This is so because Western governments have their own domestic concerns about the Internet, while Western companies are eager to abet most repressive governments in their push to keep in the Internet in check. The “delusion” that I am attacking in the title of my book refers not only to our tendency to view the Internet as the “ultimate liberator” but also to our false belief that the Internet is a tool that Western policy-makers can wield at will and without consequences.