Collective Conscious

News that Google will be shut­ter­ing google​.cn isn’t entirely sur­pris­ing; the feud has been ongo­ing for some time now. What’s really inter­est­ing to see is the man­ner in which China, Google, and the United States have addressed the con­flict. Google and China have been nego­ti­at­ing directly through­out the entire affair, just as two sov­er­eign gov­ern­ments might han­dle a squab­ble over ter­ri­tory. China has even gone to the point of launch­ing cyber­at­tacks against Google.

This is not “busi­ness as usual.” This is a rad­i­cal new def­i­n­i­tion of the reach of a cor­po­ra­tion into the world of pol­i­tics and diplo­macy, and an accep­tance by major gov­ern­ments that geopol­i­tics an appro­pri­ate sphere for cor­po­ra­tions. Busi­nesses are increas­ingly able to oper­ate out­side national juris­dic­tions and on immense scales; the largest exceed the GDP of most nations, main­tain inde­pen­dent secu­rity forces larger than gov­ern­ment armies, and con­trol sums of money that can break sov­er­eign cur­ren­cies. It would not sur­prise me at all if cor­po­ra­tions became inter­na­tional actors on the scale of gov­ern­ments, con­flicts, diplo­macy, and all. The real ques­tion is how gov­ern­ments and the inter­na­tional insti­tu­tions that they uti­lize are going to deal with such a development.