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Testing technology's stretch as an arm of diplomacy

WASHINGTON - When two young State Department staff members took a delegation of Silicon Valley executives to Syria recently, they billed it as a chance to use the promise of technology to reach out to a country with which the United States has long had icy relations.

Instead, the visit will be remembered for a series of breezy Twitter messages that the two colleagues sent home, riffing about how visitors can buy a tasty coffee drink at a university near Damascus and how one of them had challenged a Syrian communications minister to a cake-eating contest.

The messages raised hackles on Capitol Hill, where some Republicans were already leery of the Obama administration's efforts to engage Syria. They also embarrassed the State Department, which normally conducts its dealings with Damascus behind a veil of diplomatic politesse.

The two staff members, Alec Ross and Jared Cohen, were rapped on the knuckles for generating what two State Department officials called "stray voltage." Yet despite the youthful indiscretion, their broader goal of using technology to further diplomacy enjoys enthusiastic support from the highest levels of the department, notably Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

"We have a great team of really dedicated young people - primarily young people - who care deeply about connecting people up," Clinton said last week to a Russian audience during a U.S. visit by President Dmitry Medvedev. "And I'm very proud of the work they're doing." She singled out Cohen, 28, and Ross, 38, saying they symbolize the drive to create "21st-century statecraft."

They are the most visible of a small band of new-media evangelists who are trying to push a pinstriped bureaucracy into the digital age - some on leave from jobs in Silicon Valley, some from nonprofit organizations and some, like Cohen, barely out of graduate school.

Cohen and Ross were chagrined that the Twitter messages distracted from what they thought was a meaty trip. Their delegation, which included representatives from Microsoft, Dell, Cisco Systems and other companies, met with Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad, and other senior officials, as well as younger entrepreneurs who are bucking their country's tight control of the Internet.

Syria is still classified by the United States as a state sponsor of terrorism and is subject to sanctions. But under a waiver passed in 2004 by the Bush administration, U.S. companies can export some software and hardware to Syria, though in practice, few take advantage of it.

The delegation told Assad that companies would invest more in Syria if it stopped blocking social media websites like Facebook and YouTube, and did a better job of protecting intellectual property.

"What the companies did was to paint a picture of what Syria could have: how they would invest, what they would invest in, how it could potentially grow," Cohen said in an interview.

While the Syrians promoted a new law that would make it harder to block websites, the Americans are under no illusions   Read Full Article...