Editor's Note: TechTakes is a new series that collects the diverse perspectives of scholars around the Brookings Institution on technology policy issues. This first post in the series features contributions from Scott Andes, Susan Hennessey, Adie Tomer, Walter Valdivia, Darrell M. West, and Niam Yaraghi on the Internet of Things.

In the coming years, the number of devices around the world connected to the Internet of Things (IoT) will grow rapidly. Sensors located in buildings, vehicles, appliances, and clothing will create enormous quantities of data for consumers, corporations, and governments to analyze. Maximizing the benefits of IoT will require thoughtful policies. Given that IoT policy cuts across many disciplines and levels of government, who should coordinate the development of new IoT platforms? How will we secure billions of connected devices from cyberattacks? Who will have access to the data created by these devices? Below, Brookings scholars contribute their individual perspectives on the policy challenges and opportunities associated with the Internet of Things.

The Internet of Things will be everywhere

Darrell M. West is vice president and director of Governance Studies and founding director of the Center for Technology Innovation.

Humans are lovable creatures, but prone to inefficiency, ineffectiveness, and distraction. They like to do other things when they are driving such as listening to music, talking on the phone, texting, or checking email. Judging from the frequency of accidents though, many individuals believe they are more effective at multi-tasking than is actually the case.

The reality of these all too human traits is encouraging a movement from communication between computers to communication between machines. Driverless cars soon will appear on the highways in large numbers, and not just as a demonstration project. Remote monitoring devices will transmit vital signs to health providers, who then can let people know if their blood pressure has spiked or heart rhythm has shifted in a dangerous direction. Sensors in appliances will let individuals know when they are running low on milk, bread, or cereal. Thermostats will adjust their energy settings to the times when people actually are in the house, thereby saving substantial amounts of money while also protecting natural resources.

With the coming rise of a 5G network, the Internet of Things will unleash high-speed devices and a fully connected society. Advanced digital devices will enable a wide range of new applications from energy and transportation to home security and healthcare. They will help humans manage the annoyances of daily lives such as traffic jams, not being able to find parking places, or keeping track of physical fitness. The widespread adoption of smart appliances, smart energy grids, resource management tools, and health sensors will improve how people connect with one another and their electronic devices. But they also will raise serious security, privacy, and policy issues.

Implications for surveillance

Susan Hennessey is Fellow in National Security in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution. She is the Managing Editor of the Lawfare blog, which is devoted to sober and serious discussion of "Hard National Security Choices.”

As the debate over encryption and diminished law enforcement access to communications enters the public arena, some posit the growing Internet of Things as a solution to “Going Dark.” A recently released Harvard Berkman Center report, “Don’t Panic,” concludes in part that losses of communication content will be offset by the growth of IoT and networked sensors. It argues IoT provides “prime mechanisms for surveillance: alternative vectors for information-gathering that could more than fill many of the gaps left behind by sources that have gone dark – so much so that they raise troubling questions about how exposed to eavesdropping the general public is poised to become.”

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper agrees that IoT has some surveillance potential. He recently testified before Congress that “[i]n the future, intelligence services might use the IoT for identification, surveillance, monitoring, location tracking, and targeting for recruitment, or to gain access to networks or user credentials.”

But intelligence gathering in the Internet age is fundamentally about finding needles in haystacks – IoT is poised to add significantly more hay than needles. Law enforcement and the intelligence community will have to develop new methods to isolate and process the magnitude of information. And Congress and the courts will have to decide how laws should govern this type of access.

For now, the unanswered question remains: How many refrigerators does it take to catch a terrorist?

IoT governance

Scott Andes is a senior policy analyst and associate fellow at the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Initiative on Innovation and Placemaking, a part of the Centennial Scholar Initiative at the Brookings Institution.

As with many new technology platforms, the Internet of Things is often approached as revolutionary, not evolutionary technology. The refrain is that some scientific Rubicon has been crossed and the impact of IoT will come soon regardless of public policy. Instead, the role of policymakers is to ensure this new technology is leveraged within public infrastructure and doesn’t adversely affect national security or aggravate inequality. While these goals are clearly important, they all assume technological advances of IoT are staunchly within the realm of the private sector and do not justify policy intervention. However, as with almost all new technologies that catch the public’s eye—robotics, clean energy, autonomous cars, etc.—hyperbolic news reporting overstates the market readiness of these technologies, further lowering the perceived need of policy support.

The problem with this perspective is twofold. First, greater scientific breakthroughs are still needed. The current rate of improvement in processing power and data storage, miniaturization of devices, and more energy efficient sensors only begin to scratch the surface of IoT’s full potential. Advances within next-generation computational power, autonomous devices, and interoperable systems still require scientific breakthroughs and are nowhere near deployment. Second, even if the necessary technological advancements of IoT have been met, it’s not clear the U.S. economy will be the prime recipient of its economic value. Nations that lead in advanced manufacturing, like Germany, may already be better poised to export IoT-enabled products. Policymakers in the United States should view technological advancements in IoT as a global economic race that can be won through sound science policies. These should include: accelerating basic engineering research; helping that research reach the market; supporting entrepreneurs’ access to capital; and training a science and engineering-ready workforce that can scale up new technologies.

IoT will democratize innovation

Walter D. Valdivia is a fellow in the Center for Technology Innovation at Brookings.

The Internet of Things could be a wonderful thing, but not in the way we imagine it.

Today, the debate is dominated by cheerleaders or worrywarts. But their perspectives are merely two sides of the same coin: technical questions about reliability of communications and operations, and questions about system security. Our public imagination about the future is being narrowly circumscribed by these questions. However, as the Internet of Things starts to become a thing—or multiples things, or a networked plurality—it is likely to intrude so intensely into our daily lives that alternative imaginations will emerge and will demand a hearing.

A compelling vision of the future is necessary to organize and coordinate the various market and political agents who will integrate IoT into society. Technological success is usually measured in terms set by the purveyor of that vision. Traditionally, this is a small group with a financial stake in technological development: the innovating industry. However, the intrusiveness and pervasiveness of the Internet of Things will prompt ordinary citizens to augment that vision. Citizen participation will deny any group a monopoly on that vision of the future. Such a development would be a true step in the direction of democratizing innovation. It could make IoT a wonderful thing indeed.

Applications of IoT for infrastructure

Adie Tomer is a fellow at the Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program and a member of the Metropolitan Infrastructure Initiative.

The Internet of Things and the built environment are a natural fit. The built environment is essentially just a collection of physical objects—from sidewalks and streets to buildings and water pipes—that all need to be managed in some capacity. Today, we measure our shared use of those objects through antiquated analog or digital systems. Think of the electricity meter on a building, or a person manually counting pedestrians on a busy city street. Digital, Internet-connected sensors promise to modernize measurement, relaying a whole suit of indicators to centralized databases tweaked to make sense of such big data.

But let’s not fool ourselves. Simply outfitting cities and metro areas with more sensors won’t solve any of our pressing urban issues. Without governance frameworks to apply the data towards goals around transportation congestion, more efficient energy use, or reduced water waste, these sensors could be just another public investment that doesn’t lead to public benefit.

The real goal for IoT in the urban space, then, is to ensure our built environment supports broader economic, social, and environmental objectives. And that’s not a technology issue—that’s a question around leadership and agenda-setting.

Applications of IoT for health care

Niam Yaraghi is a fellow in the Brookings Institution's Center for Technology Innovation.

Health care is one of the most exciting application areas for IoT. Imagine that your Fitbit could determine if you fall, are seriously hurt, and need to be rushed to hospital. It automatically pings the closest ambulance and sends a brief summary of your medical status to the EMT personnel so that they can prepare for your emergency services even before they reach the scene. On the way, the ambulance will not need to use sirens to make way since the other autonomous vehicles have already received a notification about approaching ambulance and clear the way while the red lights automatically turn green. 

IoT will definitely improve the efficiency of health care services by reducing medical redundancies and errors. This dream will come true sooner than you think. However, if we do not appropriately address the privacy and security issues of healthcare data, then IoT can be our next nightmare. What if terrorist organizations (who are becoming increasingly technology savvy) find a way to hack into Fitbit and send wrong information to an EMT? Who owns our medical data? Can we prevent Fitbit from selling our health data to third parties? Given these concerns, I believe we should design a policy framework that encourages accountability and responsibility with regards to health data. The framework should precisely define who owns data; who can collect, store, mine and use it; and what penalties will be enforced if entities acted outside of this framework.

Executive Summary

Two-thirds of Americans have broadband Internet access in their homes.[1] But because of poor infrastructure or high prices, the remaining third of Americans do not. In some areas, broadband Internet is plainly unavailable because of inadequate infrastructure: More than 14 million Americans – approximately 5 percent of the total population – live in areas where terrestrial (as opposed to mobile) fixed broadband connectivity is unavailable.[2] The effects of insufficient infrastructure development have contributed to racial and cultural disparities in broadband access; for example, terrestrial broadband is available to only 10 percent of residents on tribal lands.[3]

Even where terrestrial broadband connectivity is available, however, the high price of broadband service can be prohibitive, especially to lower income Americans. While 93 percent of adults earning more than $75,000 per year are wired for broadband at home, the terrestrial broadband adoption rate is only 40 percent among adults earning less than $20,000 annually.[4] These costs also contribute to racial disparities; almost 70 percent of whites have adopted terrestrial broadband at home,   but only 59 percent of blacks and 49 percent of Hispanics have done the same.[5]

America's wireless infrastructure is better developed, but many Americans still lack wireless broadband coverage. According to a recent study, 3G wireless networks cover a good portion of the country, including 98 percent of the United States population,[6] but certain states have dramatically lower coverage rates than others. For example, only 71 percent of West Virginia's population is covered by a 3G network.[7] Wireless providers will likely use existing 3G infrastructure to enable the impending transition to 4G networks.[8] Unless wireless infrastructure expands quickly, those Americans that remain unconnected may be left behind.

Though America is responsible for the invention and development of Internet technology, the United States has fallen behind competing nations on a variety of important indicators, including broadband adoption rate and price. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's survey of 31 developed nations, the United States is ranked fourteenth in broadband penetration rate (i.e. the number of subscribers per 100 inhabitants); only 27.1 percent of Americans have adopted wired broadband subscriptions, compared to 37.8 percent of residents of the Netherlands.[9]

America also trails in ensuring the affordability of broadband service. The average price for a medium-speed (2.5Mbps-10Mbps) Internet plan in America is the seventeenth lowest among its competitor nations. For a medium-speed plan, the average American must pay $38 per month, while an average subscriber in Japan (ranked first) pays only $22 for a connection of the same quality.[10]

The National Broadband Plan (NBP), drafted by the Federal Communication Commission and released in 2010, seeks to provide all Americans with affordable broadband Internet access.[11] Doing so will not be cheap; analysts project that developing the infrastructure necessary for full broadband penetration will require $24 billion in subsidies and spending.[12] President Obama’s stimulus package has already set aside $4.9 billion to develop broadband infrastructure,[13] and some small ongoing federal programs receive an annual appropriation to promote broadband penetration.[14] However, these funding streams will only account for one-third of the $24 billion necessary to achieve the FCC's goal of full broadband penetration.[15] Moreover, developing infrastructure alone is not enough; many low-income Americans are unable to afford Internet access, even if it is offered in their locality.

To close this funding gap and to make broadband more accessible, the National Broadband Plan proposes to transform the Universal Service Fund – a subsidy program that spends $8.7 billion every year to develop infrastructure and improve affordability for telephone service – into a program that would do the same for broadband Internet.

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In recent years, relations between the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the African Union have been crumbling. Relations between the two were once solid with strong support from AU member countries.  The ICC has had support from African countries because of the court’s ability to prevent Rwandan genocide-type atrocities and ease power differentials between small and large African nations in international trial situations. 

Brookings nonresident scholar, John Mukum Mbaku, discusses the rising tensions between the ICC and African countries in his contribution to Foresight Africa, a collection of short briefs on the top challenges and opportunities for Africa in 2014.

Read the related paper »

According to John Mbaku, some African countries see the ICC as quite problematic because of the perceived bias that the court brings mostly African criminal cases to trial.  Other countries feel their sovereignty is threatened by the court.  The African Union has gone so far as to ask member countries not to comply or cooperate with the ICC and has attempted (unsuccessfully) to withdraw from The Hague.  A major trigger for these the recent issues with the ICC and African countries was the election of Uhuru Kenyatta as president of Kenya. Kenyatta was indicted by the ICC for crimes against humanity and for allegedly inciting ethnic violence following the highly disputed 2007 elections in Kenya.  

John argues that repairing the ties between African countries and the ICC will be difficult, but might be possible through reforms to the ICC process and commitment to stronger judicial systems in African nations.

Read Foresight Africa 2014, which details the top priorities for Africa in the coming year, to learn more about the prospects for strengthening  international justice in Africa, and other critical issues for the region.

For many years, Africans have complained that the International Criminal Court (ICC) has concentrated its efforts exclusively in Africa, a process that has made a mockery of the court’s claims to bring about an end to global impunity. Some Africans have even argued that the ICC’s claims that it is helping bring about justice in Africa are not unlike those made by proponents of the colonial order established by the Berlin Conference in 1884-1885.

On Tuesday, March 11, I participated in a panel discussion entitled, “The International Criminal Court in Africa: Bias, Legitimate Objections, or Excuses for Impunity?” co-hosted by New York University’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies (SCPS), Center for Global Affairs and the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ).  The program brought together experts interested in justice and peaceful coexistence in Africa to examine the role that the International Criminal Court (ICC) can play in minimizing impunity in the continent.

I was joined by Ambassador Tiina Intelmann, president of the Assembly of States Parties of the International Criminal Court; Richard Dicker, director of the International Justice Program at Human Rights Watch; and Jennifer Trahan, clinical associate professor at the New York University’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies (SCPS), Center for Global Affairs.  David Tolbert, president of the International Center for Transitional Justice, moderated the discussion.

The most important conclusions from what was a robust dialogue were that (i) it is very important that African countries develop the legal and institutional capacity to deal effectively and fully with impunity and other extra-legal activities that impede human development and peaceful coexistence; (ii) the international community should help African countries develop that capacity; (iii) the ICC should make a concerted effort to open dialogue with the African Union in particular and Africans generally in order for the court to gain a better insight into African problems, while, at the same time, help Africans understand and appreciate the nature of the ICC’s work, how it functions, and why it is a critical international body in the fight against impunity; and (iv) the ICC needs to improve openness and transparency in its activities. To make the ICC a truly international court, important countries such as the United States, India, the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation need to be brought aboard. Obviously, more dialogue is needed and it is my hope that soon, we will be able to undertake a discussion of this type somewhere in Africa.

During my presentation, I argued that an important part of improving relations between Africa and the ICC is that Africans must take ownership of their problems and find ways to resolve them themselves. For one thing, justice is most effectively delivered locally. Hence, the first line of business is for each African country to develop the legal and institutional capacity to deal with impunity and other governance problems. External actors, notably the ICC, should only be considered conflict-resolution instruments of last resort.

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Crisis seems to be the byword for Brazil today: political crisis, economic crisis, corruption crisis. Even the 2016 Rio Olympics seem to teeter on the edge of failure, according to the governor of the state of Rio de Janeiro. Yet despite the steady drum beat of grim news, Brazil is more than likely to resume its upward trajectory within a few years. Its present economic and political troubles mask a number of positives: the strength of its democracy and a new found willingness to fight corruption at all costs. With the correct policies in place, its economy will recover in due course. The impeachment process against Dilma Rousseff will soon be over, one way or the other. The present troubles are merely a temporary detour on Brazil’s long quest to achieve major power status and a consequential role in the international system. In a world in turmoil, where geopolitical tensions are on the rise and the fabric of international politics is stressed by events such as Brexit, we should not lose sight of Brazil’s history of and potential for contributing to sustaining the liberal international order.

Brazil’s aspirations for greatness

Brazil has long aspired to grandeza (greatness) both at home and abroad. As its first ambassador to Washington, Joaquim Nabuco (1905-1910) once said, “Brazil has always been conscious of its size, and it has been governed by a prophetic sense with regard to its future.” As we document in our new book, Brazil has reached for major power status at least four times in the past 100 years: participating as a co-belligerent with the Allies in World War One and seeking a permanent seat on the Council of the League of Nations thereafter; joining the Allies in World War II and aspiring to a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) in 1945; mastering nuclear technology beginning in the 1970s, including launching a covert military program (now terminated) to build a nuclear explosive device; and most recently, beginning with the presidency of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-2011), seeking to become a leader in multilateral institutions, including actively campaigning for a permanent seat on the UNSC.

A decade ago, many Brazilians believed that this time their country was poised to secure its position as a major power. As the seventh largest economy in the world with the 10th largest defense budget and significant soft power, Brazilian leaders such as Lula saw their country as being “in the mix” of major powers who, while not able to make the international order alone, could very well shape its evolution through uncertain times together with other major powers. Certainly, they no longer saw Brazil as one of the middle or small powers, the “order takers” in the international system.

Brazil saw a new opportunity to emerge as a major power in the advent of a relatively stable and peaceful post-Cold War geopolitical order, the decade-long commodity boom that supercharged its economy after 2002, and the rise of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa). Between 2002 and 2013, Brazil’s virtuous trifecta—democratic consolidation, rapid economic growth, and reduced inequality—was a boon to its soft power. This combination was highly attractive to many in the developing world, contributing to Brazil’s claim to leadership on the international stage as a bridge between the global South and the great powers. International peace and stability particularly favored Brazil’s predilection for deploying soft power rather than hard power. And in the BRICS, Brazil saw an opportunity to work together with other emerging powers critical of the present international order to advance its agenda for reformed global institutions.

Rethinking Brazil’s approach to global influence

Brazil’s bridge-building strategy was effective in advancing its national interests in multilateral forums, most recently on global internet governance and global climate change. But the BRICS dimension of Brazil’s strategy detracted from its ability to influence the world’s great democracies. The BRICS identity associated Brazil with authoritarian powers—China and Russia—that were viewed by the United States and its allies, at best, as unhelpful critics and, at worst, as deliberate saboteurs of the present order. This undermined Brazil’s credibility with Washington and other leading democracies, and hindered its ability to advance its preferred policies on everything from nonproliferation to the reform of global economic institutions to the debate on humanitarian intervention. In retrospect, working more closely with other emerging democracies that seek reform of the international order, such as through the India-Brazil-South Africa association known as IBSA, would have more clearly signaled Brazil’s constructive intentions while still preserving its critical posture.

Today, the opportunities that powered Brazil’s most recent rise—post-Cold War geopolitical stability and a massive commodity boom—are receding, replaced by a more fractious and dangerous international system. Despite troubles at home, it is not too early for Brazil’s leaders to think anew about how to strengthen national capabilities and deploy them strategically to address this new environment. This includes fortifying domestic institutions, both to address the present crisis but also to restore the luster of Brazil’s soft power. It means bolstering Brazil’s hard power capabilities once the economy improves and deploying them in ways that contribute to its soft power, for example by taking on additional responsibility for leading critical international peacekeeping operations as it has in Haiti. It means thinking carefully about how to signal to the democratic great powers Brazil’s commitment to a strengthened liberal international order, even as it holds onto its own principles and works towards reform of multilateral institutions. And eventually, as Brazil completes its recovery, it means contributing more substantially to the costs of maintaining its preferred global order. A Brazil that achieves all this will be well positioned to have a positive global impact, continuing to be a strong (if sometimes critical) partner for the United States in shaping the international order.