A couple of years ago I published a short piece arguing that in the digital era, from cyber attacks to disinformation, borders and geography are losing their importance they had in the era of strictly kinetic warfare. NATO is the North Atlantic Treaty Org., but... 1/x

the same adversaries also attack other liberal democracies: Japan, South Korea, Australia, etc... And I wondered whether it might make sense no longer to tether security and alliances to strictly kinetic warfare based alliances, but to adherence to free and fair elections, 2/x

rule of law, respect for human rights. It was and is a utopian idea, yet when I look at the response to covid19, there is again clear difference between the openness of authoritarian and liberal democratic states, again on an issue where borders today are far less important. 3/x

Which makes me think that in the case of both cyber & information security as well as disease control, we should be thinking more about alliances of liberal democracies than organizations such as (still useful) NATO as well as the not very useful WHO. We need to rethink... 4/x

security in the 21st century and create structures that are appropriate for the security of the liberal democratic order in an era where neither borders nor distances have the importance they once did. 5/end.

P.S. Creating new structures takes time. I do believe, however, that we need to move forward to enhance information and other exchanges in both information and public health security with a strict preference for liberal democracies. Only the US can lead here so maybe next year?