Is Microsoft a Digital Nation and Does It Have a Secretary of State?

Longtime Slashdot reader cccc828 shares a report from The Economist, which poses the question: Is Microsoft a digital nation and does it have a secretary of state? "The answer of Brad Smith, the software giant's top lawyer, is, well, diplomatic," the report says. "Nation states are run by governments and firms need to be accountable to them, he says. But yes, he admits, he worries a lot about geopolitics these days." Here's an excerpt from the report: Mr Smith presides over an operation comparable in size to the foreign office of a mid-sized country. Its 1,500 employees work in departments like "Law Enforcement and National Security" or "Digital Diplomacy Group." It has outposts in 56 countries, sending regular cables to headquarters in Redmond, near Seattle. Mr Smith is as itinerant as a foreign minister. In one year he visited 22 countries and met representatives of 40 governments. [...] Mr Smith says a coherent corporate foreign policy is simply good business: it creates trust, which attracts customers. His doctrine indeed sits well with Microsoft's business model, based on sales of services and software. It can afford to be more of a purist on privacy and the spread of disinformation, the most politically contentious tech issues of the day, than giants whose profits come from targeted advertising on social networks. Acknowledging Microsoft's mixed record in the past, the article concludes: A dose of hypocrisy is perhaps inevitable in an organization the size of Microsoft. Critics level a more fundamental charge against its foreign policy, however. Where, they ask, does it -- and fellow tech giants -- derive the legitimacy to be independent actors on the international stage? This is the wrong question to pose. As businesses, they have every right to defend the interests of shareholders, employees and customers. As global ones, their priorities may differ from those of their home country's elected officials. And as entities which control much of the world's digital infrastructure, they should have a say in designing the international norms which govern it. At a time when many governments refuse to lead, why should the firms not be allowed to? Especially if, like Microsoft's, their efforts blend principles with pragmatism. How does your company deal with the ever more complex realities of world politics?

Power voids don't exist

[cowdung]

Power voids don't exist. If we don't elect leaders, then others will take charge of the power void. If the world is not run by democratically elected institutions, then it will be run by powerful corporations, international criminal gangs, a small number of Wall Street stock holders, and any other organization that is able to build a strong enough presence around the world.

We can chose to elect leaders, or we can leave it so that things get randomly resolved by whoever is able to seize power at any given time.

Agree

[JBMcB]

I agree, with the caveat that elected leaders don't have much of an incentive to be much better than the corporations that are the alternative. If I don't like the company that makes my computer it's not that big of a deal to change that situation. If I don't like how my government is run, changing it is quite a bit more difficult.

Re:

[mccalli]

Although I agree with you in spirit, in practice I've had much more success voting and changing a government than I would have if I suddenly took a dislike to, let's say Intel. I can easily vote for another party, but I can't easily force the rest of the world off Windows/Intel and not interact with them.

Intel is just an example here, there are plenty of other corporations I would struggle to avoid. I wear glasses - I would struggle to avoid Luxottica for instance. I'm sure there are various medical exam

Re:

[alvinrod]

If you live in a Democracy this is certainly true, but ask any person who has lived under a dictatorship (whether in effect or actual name) about how easy it is to vote for any real change. Refusing to do business with a company becomes much easier by comparison and the company will have a much harder time sending you to the gulag if you stop doing business with them.

I think the real underlying lesson is to avoid giving any entity too much power or control over your life. It doesn't matter whether it's a

Re:

[jythie]

It all depends on how many people you need to please in order to keep your position. Corporate leaders generally only need to please their board, which can be done via general profits or direct payments. Elected leaders, for all we complain about 'money in politics', ultimately need to keep large numbers of voting citizens on their side, and it is really hard to buy them off directly, so they have to keep them happy with policy instead.

Re:

[SirAstral]

You have it so backwards and wrong no wonder we cannot escape government corruption.

If you elect a leader to exercise power, then that means you are transferring power from yourself to them. There was no void, just someone refusing to exercise it because of fear or ignorance.

Democracies are not possible. If they were government would not need to exist. Democracy is Majority Tyranny over the Minority and will never be anything else. If people really were able to govern themselves then they would automati

Re:

[quantumghost]

Emigration.

Megacorps Loom

[Tuxguin]

So long as corporations are allowed to grow in power, in part fueled by tolerating their operational privacy, we are headed straight for even worse global corporate dystopias

Re:

[SirAstral]

but that is what we want.

Every political group in power wants to either control them or be in bed with them. They never want to increase their competition... even when they say that is their objective.

You usually go to government to establish relationships with businesses and people, not to break them up.

Dumb headlines

[raymorris]

Is Microsoft a nation?

Nation, n. (14c)
1. A large group of people having a common origin, language, and tradition and usually constituting a political entity. When a nation is coincident with a state, the term nation-state is often used.

2. A stable community of people inhabiting a defined territory and organized under an independent government

So no, Microsoft has virtually nothing in common with a nation.

Re:Dumb headlines

[sheramil]

Right, but it did make an attention-grabbing headline.

Is Google an empire? Is Apple a plutocracy? Is 4chan an anarcho-syndicalist commune?

Business as usual

[Livius]

Since the first days of the military-industrial complex people have been alarmed about corporations large enough to have the power to bully small nations the way large nations bully small nations, and since globalization people have been alarmed by multi-nationals evading the sovereignty of actual states with varying degrees of success. Nothing new here except maybe that Microsoft could be in a little bit of a different situation having not only financial clout but also having its own spyware installed on so many computers.

An ad company

[AHuxley]

is not a nation.

sure...

[e432776]

..like how the Dutch East India Co [wikipedia.org] was a nation (a "company-state").

Inventing terms doesn't help understand anything

[ET3D]

To use the Wikipedia definition: A nation is a stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, history, ethnicity, or psychological make-up manifested in a common culture.

Microsoft isn't a nation by any reasonable definition. It's a corporation. Which implies for example that its community isn't stable, because it hires and fires people.

If there is such a thing as a 'digital nation', the people who read Slashdot, for example, would be much more of that than Microsoft. And ev

Re:

[jythie]

'nation' is indeed the wrong word. What they are really trying to do is talk about being a 'state'.. which is actually a much more interesting question since in political modeling, states and corporations are essentially modeled the same way but with different resources available. Their rules and behaviors are the same, only differing in how much of which tools they can use to exercise power.

Re:

[AHuxley]

Re 'the people who read Slashdot"
Need flag, anthem eg a Shadilay. A Convention. A server for the hosting.
Create a government with laws.
Go full 1776 with a John Hancock font.

No it isn't

[johannesg]

Does it control land? Does it have citizens? Does it provide passports (i.e. a nationality) to those citizens? Do those citizens pay taxes? Can it coerce those citizens (i.e. lock them up or even kill them if they misbehave)? Does it write laws? Does it have treaties with other states? Does it have an army?

The answer to all those questions is "no". It's not a nation, digital or otherwise, it's just a bunch of lawyers with delusions of grandeur. They work for a powerful company and that gives them access to

Re:

[jythie]

There is an old idea that the one thing, the ONLY thing that determines if you are a state or not is if other states recognize you as one.. all other parameters are just descriptive. That is where things get interesting since, while these megacorps are not recognized as states in terms of sitting in the UN, they do function like states in many ways in terms of diplomacy.

Though even within those questions, while they have no citizens, they do have their own laws and essentially extradition treaties that re

cables

[fattmatt]

"It has outposts in 56 countries, sending regular cables to headquarters in Redmond" ... still using the ol' telegraph? I believe you...

PR Fest

[Micah NC]

Person1: Isn't Microsoft just a bunch of marketing and public relations?

Person2: Are you talking about IBM?

Person1: Ah, you got me.