THE COMING

REVOLUTION IN ORBIT

THE COMING

REVOLUTION IN ORBIT

How space went from a great powersonly club to a DIY playground.

By Zach Rosenberg

Until recently, orbital space was an exclusive club. The Soviet Union and Russia, the United States, certain European nations, Japan, and China were the only builders of large satellites, and they controlled the only rockets capable of actually putting a heavy payload into orbit. Everyone else who wanted to send a package (or a person) whizzing around the planet had to deal with them.

But the clubs membership is expanding. In the past three years, Bolivia, Hungary, Belarus, and Lithuaniacountries not known for their technological prowess, let alone their space-far-

ing experiencehave placed their first satellites in orbit, as have dozens of obscure universities, scientific research institutions, and start-up companies. TJ3Sat was the first high school built satellite, but it will certainly not be the last.

Spaceflight is enormously expensive, and the single most costly component of operating a satellite is getting it into orbit in the first place. The upfront financial costs of designing, building, and testing a rocket run well into the billions or even tens of billions of dollars. International Launch Services, a U.S. subsidiary of the Russian company that builds Proton rockets,

A Falcon 9 rocket, built by SpaceX,

blasts off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on

December 8, 2010.

charges around $100 million to launch a single large satellite, according to industry clearinghouse Seradata. The highly reliable Ariane 5, sold by French company Arianespace and launched from French Guiana, will run you about $210 million per launch. All told, the cheapest launch options cost around $5,000 per pound of payload.

It is a commonly held view in the space industry that once prices break $1,000 per pound, the market will grow exponen-tially, ushering in an orbital revolution. Twenty years ago that threshold was a fever dream, but one company is set to run up against it as soon as this year. The result could be nothing less than the democratization of access to spaceand a boon for the students, scientists, companies, and governments that have grand plans for the final frontier.

THE ORBITAL REVOLUTION IS BEING DRIVEN FIRST AND FOREMOST BY THE fact that satellites are getting smaller, cheaper, and ever more capable. The miniaturization of electronics has led to new markets of small satellites with better capabilitiesvariously called microsats, nanosats, picosats, and the like. A lot of the growth were seeing in small satellites is in the 10-kilogram range, says Jeff Foust, a senior analyst with Futron, a prominent space analysis firm. A lot of developments out of universities can weigh as little as 1 kilogram, as opposed to the 100-kilogram microsatellites that constituted most of the small-satellite market a few years ago.

This shift is partly the result of space technology finally catch-ing up with the electronics revolution. Because of the enormous costs of building and launching satellites, the space industry puts payloads through stringent testing to ensure they can withstand the forces of launch, the vacuum and radiation of space, and limited Earth-based troubleshooting options. Nobody wants to explain why their multi-million dollar satellite keeps rebooting. So, advances on Earth can take years to percolate into the heavens. But now that more tech has been proved spaceworthyseveral successful test satellites, in fact, have been built from the guts of smartphonesinstitutions are free to use ever-smaller off-the-shelf components. That makes satellites cheaper to build, and their smaller size makes them cheaper to launch.

So inexpensive is the latest generation of small satsstarting around $30,000 in materials, by Fousts estimatethat new funding options have become possible. A handful of crowd- funded satellites have been launched to monitor atmospheric conditions, and a satellite to spot asteroids is on the way. And though these cheaper satellites are less robust and have shorter life spans than their larger predecessors, they are also easier to replace: The small satellites are more technically capable and less expensive, says Mark Sirangelo, corporate vice president of satellite and spacecraft builder Sierra Nevada Corp., and as launch costs come down, it may be better to continually upgrade them than to build a large satellite that lasts 20 years but which cant be upgraded and whose technology becomes increasingly obsolete soon after they launch.

Launch costs do remain a major stumbling block, but here, too, changes in the industry favor the proliferation of satellite capabilities.

Competition is emerging in the launch market, both in the United States and abroad. After decades of having rockets built to government standards for government roles, in 2006 NASA announced a new public-private partnership, called Commercial

Orbital Transportation Services. The government needed to replace the Space Shuttle fleet, which would be retired in 2011 and was the only set of vehicles the United States had to fly cargo and astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS). Rather than defining precise specifications for each part and contracting to build them, NASA allowed companies to come up with their own designsand paid them as they passed various milestones. We wanted to do an experiment, explains Scott Pace, a George Washington University professor who was then an associate administrator at NASA. It was somewhat unique for the space business, but not terribly unique in other areas like aviation or railroads. The government goes in and says, were going to help support development of a capability and then be a customer of that capability.

The result was two brand-new launch vehicles produced by private sector firms and backed by a mixture of government and corporate funds: SpaceXs Falcon 9 and Orbital Sciences Antares, both of which have successfully launched custom-built capsules to deliver cargo to the ISS. New rockets are rare enough, but the funding mechanism was a spaceflight first. The two companies have already contracted with the U.S. government for 20 resupply flights to the ISS, and more are likely. The same public-private approach is being used to develop reusable spacecraft to ferry American astronauts to the station, with SpaceX, Boeing, and Sierra Nevada all competing for the job. (Currently, the astronauts ride up in Soyuz rocket capsules at a cost of $50 million per seat, payable to the Russian government.)

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iterations is that they may prove commercially viable, irrespec-tive of government contracts. For the advertised price of $56 million, far less than its nearest competitor, the Falcon 9 has garnered robust demand from the commercial sector, with eight launches to date and a backlog of around 35, many from telecommunications companies. And this year or next, SpaceX is supposed to conduct its first launch of the Falcon Heavy, which, if successful, would be capable of launching 53 metric tons, by far the most powerful rocket available on the market. SpaceX plans to charge $135 million for a launch, meaning it will nearly break the $1,000-per-pound threshold that experts believe may radically shift the industry. Even more exciting is that the company is on a quest for the holy grail of spaceflight: a fully reusable launch system that could reduce costs further because its propulsion system would not be destroyed in the process of reaching orbit.

Costs may also drop as launch firms make better use of existing capabilities. Building a new rocket or satellite is difficult, but then economies of scale kick in and drive down marginal costs. The most capable rocket flying today, United Launch Alliances Delta IV Heavy, is essentially three regular Delta IVs bolted together. And the U.S. government has agreed to buy the cores in bulk rather than individually. SpaceXs Falcon 9 is so inexpensive partly because it uses nine smaller rocket engines on the first stage instead of one big one. The Falcon Heavy will use three cores for a total of 27 such engines.

Competition is heating up outside the United States as well. Notably, new medium-sized launch vehicles are available from Europe and Japan (Vega and Epsilon, respectively), and India has declared it will make its new heavy rocket, the GSLV, available for purchase, building on the commercial success of the smaller PSLV, which has launched several European government and commercial-imaging satellites. China, with an ambitiously large space program, continues to offer its Long March rockets commercially, with new variants in the works. Soon, the French will introduce an improved version of the Ariane 5 and its eventual replacement, the Ariane 6. Russias Proton will be replaced by the more capable Angara. Brazil and Indonesia, among others, have expressed serious interest in new launch sites and rockets, which would introduce yet more players to the market.

THE USE OF SATELLITES IS UBIQUITOUS IN MODERN LIFE, FROM GPS TO radio (yes, radio: If you listened to NPR this morning, chances are the signal from the recording station was bounced to the local affiliate off a satellite). The result is a $300 billion industry, of which three-quarters is commercial, though often the line between government and commercial is blurry, given the strategic import of capabilities like global positioning. According to a database curated by the Union of Concerned Scientists, nearly 1,100 active satellites are in orbit. That number is set to double by 2022, based on programs that have already been announced, according to Euroconsult, a major satellite-market consultancy, and the number will doubtless grow further as new programs take shape.

The boom in small-sat capabilities is already democratizing access to space, allowing increasing numbers of educators and scientists to take advantage of orbit. Small satellites that were launched in 2013 alone included a Canadian telescope to detect near-Earth objects like asteroids, a Peruvian sensor to gather data on Earths atmosphere for radio astronomers, a Russian sen-

sor to take geomagnetic readingsthe list goes on. These experiments simply wouldnt have been possible just a few years ago because of the prohibitive cost.

Government interest in new satellites is intense as well: Russia, China, India, and Europe are all building and maintain-ing their own navigation constellations so that they wont have to rely on GPS, which is run by the U.S. military. Several coun-tries have launched Automatic Identification System satellites to track ships, for both national security and safety reasons. The Indian navy launched its own dedicated satellite in 2013 that allows high-bandwidth, secure communications exceeding the range and data limits of its previous system. Even the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office and the Department of Defense, which have long had enormous, multibillion-dollar satellites, are taking advantage of the revolution in space access. Their need to gather and transmit data so outweighs even their significant capabilities that they have launched dozens of small sats to test and improve communications, early warning, and imaging.

Cheaper space data will also generate entirely new catego-ries of consumers. Local agribusinesses (and even individual farmers) deciding what to plant could order up bespoke soil-moisture measurements. Small shippers could receive regular traffic updates and road-closure information, which are currently difficult to obtain reliably outside major metro areas. Inexpensive small sats could dramatically expand real-time monitoring capabilitiesenormously useful for emergency responders fighting a forest fire or gauging the impact of an earthquake. Human rights organizations, through initiatives like the Satellite Sentinel Project, could chart violence in Sudan on a daily basis. News organiza-tions could track a distant oil spill as it happened, obviating reliance on government and corpo-rate sources.

And there are possibili-ties that have yet to be imagined. After all, personal computers and inexpensive cell phones not only opened new markets for old capabilities, but they also generated demand for entirely new products. It might just be a hobby or something that doesnt turn out to work very well, but it might turn out to be a precursor to something people havent thought of yet, says Foust. If you give that technology out and make it more accessible, people start doing all sorts of things, many of which never take off, but which may end up being the next Google or Instagram.

However remarkable some of its accomplishments, space flight has been dominated by risk aversion for much of the last half-century. Space is a radically demanding and unforgiving environment, and the costs of venturing into it were so high and the consequences of failure were so great that few had the means or the interest. That is all about to change.

Zach Rosenberg is a Washington, D.C.-based journalist.

FOREIGN POLICY 73

THE RESULT COULD BE NOTHING

LESS THAN THE DEMOCRATIZATION

OF ACCESS TO SPACE.

MARCH/APRIL 201474

IN OTHER WORDS

LIN SUN OO DOESNT TAKE HIS eyes off the field and forest before himthe rich green grass and the leaves on the lush trees stand, almost

obediently, as still as statues. It is quiet. It is motionless. It is going to be the perfect shot, he thinks. To the right of him, his cameraman patiently peers into a viewfinder and, with a few careful adjustments, locks the image into focus.

Before long, a thin pole of a manan

The ReckoningAfter decades of censorship, Burmas

filmmakers probe their countrys dark past. By Francis Wade

Photographs by Lauren DeCicca

Lelderly farmer named U Thaung Khaing, whose tanned, wrinkled hands are weathered from decades of working the land in central Burmainches into view. Barefoot and dressed in a brown longyi, white button-down shirt, and straw hat, he glides along a winding dirt path that slices through the dominant green in the shot. The producer exhales. The scene is exactly what he had envisionedand will be the perfect opener for his upcoming documentary.

In Lin Sun Oos film, U Thaung Khaings soft voice narrates a moving portrayal of Than Bo Lay, a village in Magway district, where, in 2010, the regime confiscated land from the areas farmers. During the militarys rule, the regime regularly appropriated property for its development projects, while offering little or no compensation to those who relied on the fields for their livelihoods.

When the 27-year-old documentarian

Burmese crews and actors set up before filming at the Myanmar Motion Picture Museum in Yangon on December 25, 2013.

FOREIGN POLICY 75

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first met the farmer, it seemed the two were equally relieved to have found one another. Wed found someone who was very articulate and with whom we could have an intimate conversation, Lin Sun Oo says. I think it was the first time he had got the chance to explain the impact of their loss of forest to outsiders.

But this moment represents more than a documentarian telling the story of a farmer who lost his land. It is a snapshot of two Burmese citizensan artist and a villagerenjoying the freedom to speak, criticize, and document openly, without fear of retribution from the military that ruled the country from 1962 until just a few years ago. For five decades, govern-ment censors gagged not only the news media, but also the film, art, and literature communities. For filmmakers in particular, the use of camcorders without a license and the unauthorized publishing or screening of recorded material was a criminal act. And, then, in November 2010, Burma held elections, the new government instituted reforms, and things began to change.

Today, Lin Sun Oo is among a handful of gutsy Burmese who are using motion pictures to push for greater political and historical transparency. Some are new to the film scene while others are climbing up from the underground. The shift heralds a significant revolution for the countrys film industryand for Burmas understanding of the abuses that its leaders had long concealed.

ALTHOUGH THE MAJORITY OF BURMESE HAD never seen one until recently, provoca-tive and artistic films are in Burmas very nature. As early as 1906, 21 years after Britain took control of the entire country, crowds gathered under the stars in Yangons narrow back streets to watch grainy images projected onto cotton sheets. But what started as pure theater evolved into a film scene far more substantialand political.

By 1920, Britains hold on the country was tight. Not only did a small number of British companies dominate the countrys economy, but Indian laborers were brought in to work the countrys jobs, fueling widespread indigenous unemployment. Film became an outlet for nationalist sentiment. In 1931, Parrot Film Co.led by U Sunny, a hardened patriot unafraid of beaming his anti-Brit-ish sentiment onto the big screende-buted 36 Animals, a film exposing the

complicity of the colonial police force in illegal gambling. Other filmmakers soon began casting a critical eye on British rule in Burma. These exposs helped fuel a movement for independence that gathered pace with protests in Yangon and Mandalay by the late 1930s. In 1948, as they shed their colonial possessions in a postwar retrenchment, the British withdrew and Burma became an independent democracy.

But Burmas brief flirtation with representative government was cut short by a 1962 coup that left the military in charge. It wasnt until the 1968 rollout of the Film Council, an outfit tasked with using cinema to promote the regimes ultranationalism, that the dictatorship actively constricted artistic freedom, according to Grace Swe Zin Htaik, secretary general of the Myanmar Motion Picture Organization. The big screen was

soon dominated by films like 1979s Ah Mi Myay Hma Thar Kaung Myar (Good Sons of the Motherland)produced by the Office of the Director of Combat Trainingin which Burmese patriots fended off foreign meddlers.

Burmese directors, however, didnt flinch just yet, and they continued creating films. In the early 1970s, A1 Film, the countrys most prominent production company, shot Journey to Piya, a film about a road trip gone wrongan old vehicle beset with multiple engine breakdowns served as a metaphor for the decade after the coup. This didnt go over well. And it didnt take long before the Film Council banned the film and the government put the companys founder on watch.

Authoritarian rule continued through-out the 1970s and 80s. Gen. Ne Win, who had led the coup, nationalized private industries and put them in the hands of military leaders. In 1987, on the advice of an astrologer, he announced that only bank notes divisible by ninean auspicious number for himwould be allowed, causing millions of Burmese to lose their savings overnight.

Ne Win resigned the following year, but with the military showing few signs that it would relinquish its grip on the country, hundreds of thousands of people across Burma took to the streets in 1988 to demand democratic elec-tions. The military responded with force, and within two months, up to 3,000 people were dead and thousands

Filmmakers began casting a critical eye on British rule in Burma. These exposs helped fuel a movement for independence.

The interior of the Waziyar Cinema, which first opened in 1999 in downtown Yangon.

MARCH/APRIL 201476

IN OTHER WORDS

were behind bars.Following Ne Wins resignation, a

clique of generals from his inner circle formed a military junta. The State Law and Order Restoration Council, as it was known, continued to use film as a propaganda tool. Burmas all-time highest-grossing film, 1996s Thu Chun Ma Kan Bi (Never Shall We Be Enslaved), which was reportedly funded by the regime, focused on the British Armys seizure of Mandalay in 1885. Its heroes were a group of army generals who ignored the demands of King Mindon Min to cease resistance against Britains conquest of the country. The film was almost euphoric in its depiction of the renegade fightersan unsubtle lesson in the importance of patriotism.

Decades of economic mismanagement during the Ne Win years followed by enormous military expenditures under the junta further degraded Burmas economy. By 2007, the Burmese people were furious: Sky-high fuel prices sparked the monk-led uprising that year in which more than 100 protesters were killed. Three years later, the regime, realizing citizen ire was not about to dissipate, held elections and introduced a quasi-civilian government led by President Thein Seina general nicknamed Mr. Clean for his rare ability to avoid corruption scandalswho instituted political and economic reforms in a bid to end sanctions and spur Western investment, all to much applause from the United States and Europe.

For filmmakers, the pivotal moment came in March 2011, when the presi-dent, in a speech, emphasized the role of the media in a free society. Almost overnight, independent media became a tool for democracy, where it had long only been viewed as nothing more than seditious and criminal by the regime. In January 2013, when the censorship board was dissolved, journalists, artists, and filmmakers were free to produce material without their work being vetted by the once-feared Information Ministry.

Within six months of Thein Seins seminal speech, a collective of filmmak-ers organized the Wathann Film Festival, Burmas first such event. The documen-taries it features have grown to become bold, provocative, and critical of the former regime. In 2013, its top documen-tary prize went to Shin Daewe, who

TOP TO BOTTOM: a demolished theater in Yangon; actress Grace Swe Zin Htaik looks at a painting of herself at the Motion Picture Museum; an old 35mm film camera and sound-recording machine at the museum.

FOREIGN POLICY 77

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tracked the plight of Burmese refugees from Kachin state when they fled to China in 2011 amid fierce fighting between the Burmese army and Kachin rebels. Because the government attempts to prevent journalists from entering rebel-held territory, the film offers rare insight into the human costs of this conflict.

Just a few years ago, this work could have landed Shin Daewe a 10-year prison sentence. But now, shes working on a documentary about a major industrial development on Burmas southern coastline that, upon completion, will become Southeast Asias largest industrial complexbut that could ultimately displace up to 30,000 people from the bucolic fishing villages that line the Dawei coast.

The budding documentary scene got another boost in January 2012, when Aung San Suu Kyichair of the National League for Democracy and a Nobel Peace Prize laureatehosted the first Art of Freedom Film Festival. Her inaugural speech, along with its coveted endorsement of the festival, signaled the importance of the industry to the

democratization process she has long demanded.

Similar to Wathann, Art of Freedoms top works have been largely political. One of the most highly acclaimed documenta-ries featured has been director Sai Kyaw

Khaings Click in Fear, which followed journalist Law Eh Soe as he covertly covered the 2007 uprising. Like the journalists he followed, Sai Kyaw Khaing had been underground, working as a cameraman and producer for the news organization Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB), a group of activists, political prisoners, and rebels turned journalists. Formed in exile in 1992, the collective established a network of journalists inside Burma to surreptitiously shoot footage of the abusive military regime. The network would then send the news to DVBs offices in Thailand and Norway, where the footage would be edited into news segments and transmitted back into Burma via radio and, in 2005, satellite TV.

The head organizer of the Wathann Film Fest, known only as Thaiddhi, is also no stranger to illicit journalism. After a cyclone ripped through southern Burma and killed up to 140,000 people in 2008, the regime locked down the region, blocking aid to victims, expelling the media, and ramping up surveillance of journalists. Videographers filmed in the delta and went about their work with meticulous care, often splitting off and

For filmmakers, the pivotal moment came in March 2011, when the president emphasized the role of the media in a free society. Almost overnight, independent media became a tool for democracy.

MARCH/APRIL 201478

IN OTHER WORDS

entering the region with their cameras disassembled and the component parts divided up among them to avoid detection. Thaiddhi and his team wrapped up NargisWhen Time Stopped Breathing in 2010, but his documentary, shot in the delta, was illegal, so he couldnt share it with anyone aside from a close network of friends and journalists inside Burma. The filmmaker finally showed his film in Burma in 2012.

Thaiddhi says that today Yangon has only a few production houses dedicated to documentary filmnot a huge number, but its a laudable start, given that only three years ago there was none. Most of todays documentaries are screened only at the independent film festivals like Wathann, which is now an annual fixture in Yangon. In the festivals first year, 23 Burmese films were screened. Two years later, in 2013, some 2,500 people attended the four-day event, which featured 33 Burmese-made films.

The expansion of nonfiction film stands in sharp contrast to the countrys declining commercial movie industrysaturated with the Burmese version of screwball comedies and love storieswhere, in 2012, only 30 percent of the movies in theaters were Burmese productions. In the 1970s, when Burmese film was at its peak, an average of 70 indigenous films were released every year, according to Grace Swe Zin Htaik. Unlike the laborious and time-consuming documentaries being produced today, the big-screen main-stream movies are sometimes cheaply and hastily created in seven days, including postproduction. In 2013, the Myanmar Motion Picture Academy Awards featured 12 award categories, but only 17 films were even considered.

Zay Par, a mainstream film director, sees opportunity in the marriage of fact and fiction. He is creating a fea-ture-length movie based on the events surrounding the 1988 uprising. If it makes it to the countrys theaters, it will be the first dramatization ever produced in Burma that deals with politically sensitive subject matter since the dawn of Ne Wins rule 52 years ago. It will also be the first time the momentous events of 1988 are rendered on the big screen. His intent is deliberate: to meld entertain-ment and education. We aim to promote knowledge among oppressed rural villagerseducate them about their rights, encourage them to read more.

The publics pent-up appetite for truth is certainly voracious. In the past year, the government has granted dozens of licenses for new daily newspapers. These newspapers, as well as foreign papers like the International New York Times and the Bangkok Post, are all sold at newsstands. In the past, newsstands were only permitted to sell newspapers and periodicals approved by the government. Papers were printed and then sent to the censors; because it was costly to reprint papers after the censors had redacted information, it was not uncommon to buy a newspaper with large holes actually cut out of some of the pages.

Although the climate of fear for filmmakers has eased, there is still a hangover effectand of course the ruling party, while elected, is backed by the military. Lin Sun Oo says that on several occasions in 2013, while shooting his documentary, he was followed by plainclothes police officers. They want you to know youre being watched, and

sometimes theyll ask where were going next, he says, adding that no action has yet been taken against him. Rather than succumbing to intimidation, he embraces their presence as inspiration. Sometimes they help find subjects for your story. Its a matter of getting them to understand why we believe its important.

The uncertainty over how this transitional period will play out pervades all rungs of Burmese society, from the military hawks anxious that democracy will dilute the Burmese elites power to the general population, which knows all too well its rulers mercurial nature. Burmese filmmakers, however, seem hopeful that they will be able to cast a light where shadows have long stood. Lin Sun Oo is both optimistic and cautious: I believe that we live in exciting times. We are at the cusp of change, but I am not able to determine what these changes will lead to.

Francis Wade is a freelance journalist based in Bangkok.

TOP: Actors prepare to sell tickets for the 2013 Myanmar Academy Awards in downtown Yangon in December 2013.

LEFT: Producer Lin Sun Oo.

FOREIGN POLICY 79

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created, helping to produce the jobless recovery with which the United States and other economies are struggling. As Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have discussed in their important books, Race Against the Machine and The Second Machine Age, we are likely to soon enter a period in which considerably less traditional work will be done by human beings. Just as previous technological revolutions nearly eliminat-ed entire classes of field workers, laborers, and craftsmen, the next wave of change will target white-collar jobs.

Economies are changing in other ways too. Data flows are becoming as important to competitive success as capital flows. Supply chains are changing dramatically not only because of shifting sources of resources and demand, but also because of manufacturing tools that, among other things, are creating new capacities for localized production. Technologies like 3-D printing, for example, may soon move some work from factories to local shops, even to homes.

Giant global companies are able to adapt better to these changes than are

political entities, tied down to the land beneath their feet like Gulliver in Lilliput. My friend, the author Tom Friedman, talks about these companies floating above the countries that were once their domiciles. New technologies are starting to make it possible for entire communi-ties of people to do the same.

This all suggests that traditional systems of social organization are increasingly ill-suited for our brave new world. Consider the law: Even flexible constitutions like that of the United States werent built to deal with the issues that would almost certainly be occupying the framers minds, were they alive todaylike who owns the data we produce, what privacy rights we should have, and whether we are born with an inalienable right to access the Internet. Existing economic models, global alliances, and international institutions are just as poorly equipped for handling the tasks at hand.

Who works inside these systems is also problematic. Lets take the U.S. Congress as an example, given that it is the top legislative body in the worlds most powerful country. Only 12 percent of Congresss members have a background

in science or technology, according to a 2011 study by the Employment Policies Institute. And based on my conversations with tech executives who regularly interact with Congress, just a handful of people on Capitol Hill truly understand the implications of the big data, cyber, and other technological revolutions. Turn the subject to how next-generation neuroscience and biotech developments will raise critical questions about how we deal with mental health, crime, extended life expectancy, bioethics, and health-care costs, and the number falls even further. In many cases to zero, a professor at one of Americas leading schools of public health recently told me.

The challenge we face is thus two-pronged: The structures organizing the world are rapidly approaching their sell-by datesthe time at which they need to be refreshed, reconsidered, and reinventedand the people who should be leading that process are among the least qualified to do so.

This can only be addressed by bridging the worrying divide between policymak-ing and technological development. Although it is encouraging to see some familiar faces from Silicon Valley and other parts of the tech world more frequently in Washington and world capitals these days, unless more show up, trouble looms. What we need is a wider, deeper conversation between the two sides and a major effort to find a new generation of leaders who truly under-stand innovationboth its potential and its pitfalls. If we can find these leaders, we can harness the promise of todays multiple tech revolutions, and their benefits can extendmore than they already havefrom top to bottom in a more closely integrated and ever- changing global community.

David Rothkopf is CEO and editor of the FP Group.

FOREIGN POLICY (ISSN 0015-7228) March/April 2014, issue number 205. Published six times each year, in Jan-uary, March, May, July, September, and November, by The FP Group, a division of The Graham Holdings Company, at 11 Dupont Circle NW, Suite 600, Washington, D.C. 20036. Subscriptions: U.S., $59.99 per year; Canada and other countries, $59.99. Periodicals Postage Paid in Washing-ton, D.C., and at additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send U.S. address changes to: FOREIGN POLICY, P.O. Box 283, Congers, NY 10920-0283. Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to: P.O. Box 503, RPO West Beaver Creek, Richmond Hill, ON L4B 4R6. Printed in the USA.

MARCH/APRIL 201480

The fabric of civilization is being rewoven around us. The very nature of life, work, and society is changing so profoundly that we are approaching a moment at which our old ways of thinking about the structures that sustain us may be seen as obsolete.

This happens periodically throughout historythink of the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the Industrial Revolution. Such eras often produce turmoil or upheaval, until leaders emerge who are able to help shape a new order for a new age.

The question today is whether our leaders are up to the challenge. Given their lack of grounding in the worlds most pressing scientific and technological issues, I fear many, if not most, are not.

Formerly disenfranchised populations are increasingly connecting to telecom, Internet, and other services. For instance, mobile-phone penetration was estimated to have surpassed 80 percent in Africa in the first quarter of 2013, accord-ing to figures published in 2012 by ABI Research. Whats more, it is growing faster in Africa than anywhere else in the world. And though smartphone penetration in Africa is just 20 percentpretty near global levelsit is expected to explode in the next few years.

Such trends mean that huge populations are connecting to one another and to communities worldwide. We are already seeing the implications in countless waysfrom Januarys flash-mob political protests in Brazilian malls, to the crowds that have amassed in Egypts Tahrir Square, to the success extremist groups have had in attracting recruits in Syria.

Connectivity, of course, does more than turbocharge and add

volatility to political processes. Next year, Facebook will surpass China as the worlds largest organized community, and while China has an army, history, and culture all its own, Facebook users are not constrained by borders or societal fragmentation. Sure, Facebook is not a country, but what of it? Geographically constrained communities are so 500 years ago. There are arguably stronger ties (or the potential for them) among people who share political, artistic, religious, or other similarities across national boundaries than there are among people who happen to be born down the street from one other.

New technologies and widening access to them are linking and empowering people in other ways as well. Education, for instance, is becoming more ubiquitous and harder to limit to the few who can afford it. Of course, we also saw more clearly than ever in 2013 that technological change is transforming the way powerful actorsfrom governments to businesses to rogue groupscan capture and use information to their advantage. In the years ahead, we certainly will see that the most technologically enabled will possess ever-greater means of building wealth, keeping down their opponents, and exacerbating inequality.

The economy is another front where the rapid pace of technological change is influencing virtually everything. It is making employment available outside traditional workplaces and providing new opportunities for the disabled and elderly. But it is also changing the way jobs are

DisconnectedBy David Rothkopf

Illustration by Matt Chase

COLUMN

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The Asia Foundation is using innovations in mobile technologyto increase access to security and justice for vulnerable groups,like trafficked women and girls. And were working with leadingdesign and technology firms to put activists at the center todrive that innovation.

In Cambodia, poverty and unsafe labor migration practices put many at risk ofexploitation and abuse, most commonly in labor and sex trafficking. Increasingaccess to security and justice for those at risk is at the forefront of our work.

Read more at asiafoundation.org #Asia60

Addressing the critical issues facing Asia in the 21st century