Download This PaperCybersecurity, National Security and Trade in the Digital Era
Research Paper, Saint Pierre Center for International Security (SPCIS), Guangzhou (forthcoming)
20 Pages Posted: 17 May 2019 Last revised: 17 Feb 2026
Date Written: November 06, 2024
Abstract
This note considers the nature of the cybersecurity concerns that have been raised in the decoupling debate and their implications for national security, contrasts those with the nature of the “essential security” concerns that have traditionally been allowed for in the rules-based trade framework, and draws conclusions for the trade-related security policy for the flow of data across borders, including across geopolitical fault lines. The framing of the WTO security exception reflects strategic and economic considerations that shaped security interests at the time of the creation of the GATT in 1947. The context today is very different – and going forward perhaps inconceivably more different. First, the “made in the world” system of production which evolved under the WTO in a unipolar security context is inherently vulnerable to the weaponization of trade and investment links that cross these divides in a newly multipolar world. Second, entirely new language is required to craft national security exceptions tailored for a digital environment where policy measures are not triggered by “emergencies” but are framed to address an environment of continuous threat, where the issue is not a “smoking gun” but a pre-positioned “loaded gun”; and where the consequences are highly skewed, with most cyber intrusions being trivial from a national security perspective but the cumulative threat is open-ended. Third, the way we reconcile trade and security in the new setting may need a fundamental adjustment, by renegotiating commitments to reflect the new reality of cyber vulnerabilities from connected devices in a multipolar order. Awareness of these risks has been made acute by the weaponization of the web illustrated by Israel’s remote detonation of pagers and other electronic devices acquired by Hezbollah and the cybersecurity-trade issues raised by the US “connected cars” initiative against the background of Tesla’s alleged disablement of a Cybertruck deployed by Russian forces in their invasion of Ukraine. Fourth, dispute settlement may have to shift from a hard legalism to a more diplomacy-based approach, given that “attacks” are virtually impossible to attribute with certainty and that normal rules of evidence cannot be expected to apply, since national security is inevitably shrouded in secrecy.
Keywords: Cybersecurity, data-driven economy, economic policy, national security, detente, China-US rivalry
JEL Classification: F13, F15
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation