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One evening last November, the house lights at Fairfield Univer- sity’s Quick Center auditorium dimmed, and the full-house au- dience stared up at a 2008 film clip from The Colbert Report, the political comedy show. Steven Colbert’s guest was Jared Cohen, a twenty-six-year-old expert on the Islamic Middle East then working in the U.S. Department of State. Between the jokes, Cohen had a serious message to deliver: The back- ward, hate-mongering Middle East on our TV screens was but a sliver of the whole picture. The whole picture, he suggested, was considerably more hopeful than the news reports led us to believe. Colbert seemed unconvinced. “I hear a lot of chanting of ‘Death to America.’ That seems to be the number one hit over there.” “Oftentimes when you hear people shouting ‘Death to America'in the Middle East, they were paid fifty dollars a day to do it,” Cohen explained, “That's good money! I'd do it for much less," Colbert said, but the ramifications of his crack were sobering. Most of the chanters were young, jobless, and frus trated, and fifty dollars was good money indeed. In truth, Cohen said, Middle Eastern youth generally consider “Death to America” to be an empty slogan and ‘America itself to be a source of endless fascination. When the clip ended, Cohen himself walked onto the stage—tall and fair- skinned, with an upright gait, dark wavy hair, and somewhat slepy blue eyes. Cohen, the son of Dee and Donald Cohen of Weston, had come to expand con the dual message he has been pushing since Condoleezza Rice invited him to join the State Department in 2006: Youth in repressed societies lke Iran and Syria are really not much different from their Western counterparts; and the technology rrr tier revolution sweeping the globe has hand. ced us a golden opportunity to “connect” ‘with these young people, and thereby win them over, “Took at the world through the lens of connectivity,” Cohen said, causing some older people in the audience to shift their knees and frown. Perhaps they were envisioning young Americans absorbed in their gadgets, oblivious to live friends or to the sun shining on the last autumn leaves. But Cohen meant something else entirely—the power of cell phones and social media like Facebook and Twitter to create social change, to shed light in dark places. We never would have heard about Neda Agha-Soltan, the beautiful young Iranian shot dead amid post-election pro- tests in 2009, if not for acell phone video uploaded to the Internet. While the video could not change the outcome ofthe ele tion, it did embarrass Iran on the interna- tional stage, exposing its brutal tactics for all to see. (Iran shamed itself further by claiming the video was faked.) “The entize ‘world was forced to make a comment on it.” Cohen told his audience, then waited beat. “That's a change in policy.” History would soon endorse Cohen's message. In December protests erupted ‘young guns at State isthe fashioning of ‘a new dimension to foreign policy called “rwenty-first-century statecraft.” This new statecraft knows that borders once sealed bya Berlin Wall or Big Brother have been rendered porous by digital technology. It knows that this generation is the first in human history equipped to mobilize causes on a massive, even global scale, via digital networking. And it knows that the same technology used to instantly collect millions of relief dollars for Haiti (@ Hillary Rodham Clinton initiative) is also used to radicalize Muslim youth, ‘Ours isa world gone viral, and the good and the evil are doing. battle in digital space as well as ‘on physical topography. Cohen did not leave govern- ment because he lost interest in technology and its emerg- ing uses, but because (a) it was time, and (b) he wanted a different avenue of attack. Google offered him that ave- tue. In October the company best known for its search engine installed Cohen as founding director ofa new enti ty called Google Ideas. What is it, exactly? The thing is still in its formative stage, but Cohen envisions a “think/do” tank that generates innovative solu- tions to stubborn world prob- lems and then puts them into action. Think of it as a sort of, free-floating state department with private sector efficacy. When one considers Google's reach (unprecedented) and am tion (“Our goal is to change the world,” says CEO Eric Schmidt), one begins to ‘grasp that Cohen now sits ata great nexus ‘of technology and power and influence— and he's barely twenty-nine years old. But we are getting ahead of the story. LESSON LEARNED Cohen is Iucky to be alive. Six years ago, at the height of the war in Iraq, no MoFRLYMEDIACOM this Jew from Connecticut went bum- bling through the Middle East—hanging cout with Hezbollah in Beirut, partying ‘with Muslim youth in the back alleys of Teheran, interviewing Palestinian ter- roriss in the notorious refugee camps of southern Lebanon. Atone of these camps, Mia Mia, Cohen asked a gang of Hamas- devoted young men what they would do if 1 Jewish person walked into their camp. “We would cut his head off,” said a voice from the rear, and the gang erupted in laughter. ‘Then Cohen went to Iraq. Showing Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton talking with Jared Cohen fa rare regard for self-preservation, he entered the country through Turkey and planned to stick to Iraqi Kurdistan, way up north, a fair distance from the insurgency tearing apart the rest of the country. After satisfying his curios: ity among the Kurds, he hired a taxi to ‘whisk him back up to the Turkish border. Drowsily he reclined inthe backseat of the driver's rusted-out Camry with its cracked ‘windshield and bullet hole in the door. ‘The Camry rattled along the highway and Cohen shut his eyes. When he awoke, the car stood motionless at a busy roadside. ‘The view out his window collided nastily with his expectations: Where were the green hills of Kurdistan, where was the ‘Turkish border? Cohen leaned forward ‘to question the driver, but the man had disappeared. Scrambling out of the car, exhausted and disoriented, Cohen tried to absorb the troubling scene around him: a torched car flipped on its hood, rubble- strewn buildings. “I was in Mosul,” he wrote later, “the most danger- ‘ous city in one of the most dan- ‘gerous countries in the world.” ‘The August sun beat down; the temperature had risen toa suffocating 130 degrees. Tt was even hotter inside the Camry, but Cohen felt he hhad no choice but to hunker down in the seat, out of sight. Curious passersby peered in at iim anyway as he pondered the absurdity of his predica- ment: a lone American Jew in Mosul—a largely Sunni city where Saddam Hussein's sons Uday and Qusay had sought refuge (and where the U.S. military had found and killed them). At length the driver returned, smiling and bearing ‘two jugs of black-market gaso- line, For unknown reasons he had driven not north to ‘Turkey, but west toward Syria, a dangerous route cluttered with Sunni insurgents and their roadside bombs. “I winced every time cour car approached garbage on the street, while the driver blithely barreled along, Cohen wrote. When he reached Syria, USS. troops manning the border regarded the American wearing baggy Kurdish pants and a Banana Republic T-shiet with disbelief. “What the hell are you doing here?” they asked. “You are in awar zone. ‘This is an insurgency.” in Tunisia, and in January Egypt caught the fever, which spread in turn to Bahrain, Yemen, Algeria, Libya and beyond. Since those who assembled in these countries could not have done so in great numbers without social media, their uprisings are often called “Facebook” or “Twitter” revolutions. From his own time as an intrepid solo traveler in the Middle East, in 2004 and 2005, Cohen saw the technological tidal wave just beginning to swell. “In Iran, 67 percent of the country is under the age of thirty,” he told me by phone from his apartment in New York City. “My belief was thatthe youth in Iran were ade facto opposition, and they didn't realize their significance as a demographic.” One ‘moment of enlightenment came as Cohen ‘wandered about a Teheran marketplace, watching the young congregate like bieds but seeming to purposefully avoid contact with one another. It was an odd sight “What are you guys doing?” Cohen asked one young man. “Oh, we're using Bluetooth,” he sai. ‘Where's your earpiece?” ‘What earpiece?” Hereitbears explaining that Bluetooth's inventors sought to fix a simple problem: how to drive a car and use the phone at the same time. In other words, Bluetooth technology transmits data wirelessly over short distances—such as between your earpiece and the cell phone resting in your cup holder. These kids had discov. ered that Bluetooth could work not just between a cell phone and its earpiece, but also among all cell phones within a cer- tain range. Cohen was still puzzled. They ‘were texting people standing right in the same cluster? Why not just talk? Soon he had his answer, and his revelation: These young people were strangers to one anoth: cr, and their messages floated indiscrimi: nately to every cell phone user within their litte bubble of space. The texts were creating sort of invisible, interactive bul- letin board: “Any good parties going down tonight?" "Who can tell me of a bass play cer for my rock band? In the free world, only a creep would send anonymous text messages to unsus- Pecting latte-sippers sitting three tables away at a Starbucks, But in authoritar jan regimes like Iran, the psychology is completely different. By putting a modest technology to innovative use, the young could get around monitoring, restrictions, and blockades; they could indulge their Cohen offered accidental proof of digital power by becoming the third most followed goverment employee on ‘Twitter, behind Barack Obama and John McCain. antiauthoritarian impulses “Aren't you worried about getting caught?" Cohen asked, The youngman shookhishead. "Nobody over thirty knows what Bluetooth is. “And so I got really interested in this notion of what happens when you throw technology into a repressive society,” Cohen said. “You can't even begin to imagine how it will be used.” Last September Cohen left the govern: ‘ment. His legacy, along with that of other a ‘country, Can I get you any more tea?” And they'd do these mind games with me.” ‘Unable to pursue his intended research, Cohen wandered the country, look- ing for friends his own age, intelligence agents “escorting” him much of the time. Eventually it dawned on him he had ‘come to study the wrong opposition. The important opposition were not political players, but the impressionable, reach: able young—the great majority of whom despises the ruling theocracy. Cohen real ized this one day in the town of Esfahan, after his weary escort retired to the hotel. Unfettered, Cohen aimed his camera at abit of police state propaganda: “Down ‘With the USA” stenciled in big black let- ters across the facade of an apartment building, A young man stepped forward, ‘urging him not to take the picture. “This does not represent the Iranian people!” he protested, “We love the USA. If you look around and you talk to people, you will not BY THE NUMBERS WworLD: 50% porcantage ofthe population that eee Contiratin of phene/interet Servos (lon cel ones Sn Zoiton access to web) PAKISTAN: 100 million number of cell phone users (in 2000, it was ‘only 300,000) AFGHANISTAN: 30% percentage of growth i call Fone ene since 2001 Data extracted rom The Dptal Disruption Connectivity andthe Buon of ower iby ere Schmit and SoralGohenForoen stars November/ December 2010 2 MorruymeD.cou see that we hate America, You will see the opposite.” Tn time subterranean Iran opened up for Cohen. He saw illegal satellite dishes (often smuggled through Kurdistan by donkey) planted on rooftops everywhere, enabling Iranians to tune in to the BBC, CNN, and that decadent teen drama, The (OC. He attended late-night parties (minus his escort) where the young drank, played cards, and danced to hip-hop music, and girls shed their ijabs in favor of slinkier Western attire. “For Iranians,” Cohen wrote, “this was their democracy after dark.” Even what wasn't secret was some- times shocking. Cohen learned that in Iran there are about 25,000 Jews, twenty-seven synagogues and even a Jewish member of, parliament. Strange for a country whose president would like to see Israel pushed into the sea. "The Middle East carried all sorts of expectation baffles. Wild beach parties in Lebanon? Gay raves in Syria? Iranians ‘who wept for us on 9/11? These sorts of things were not exceptional, Cohen found, but rather part of an identity concealed from authority figures: a youth identity. ven young militants—Cohen calls them “broken souls with dangerous toys"—have such an identity, and one can summon it by talking about universal subjects ike dat- ing and musi. Remarkably, as Cohen bade ‘goodbye to the impoverished young men ‘of Mia Mia, the ones who had joked about cutting off the heads of Jews, he exchanged Jhugs and handshakes. Perhaps there was hope yet. On the other hand: “You go to southern Lebanon, and you ask people why they like Hezbollah. It’s because Hezbollah pays their water bill, their elec- tricity bill, it pays for their school fees, it buys them their cell phones.” No amount of sensible, moderate rhetoric can break that sort of allegiance. OF U.S. INTEREST Notlong ater survivinghis ravelsto Iran, Lebanon, Syria and Irag, Cohen emerged as an intellectual of particular intrigue {In 2007 he published Children of ihad, an “Aren'tyou worried about getting caught?” Cohen asked. Theyoung man shook his head. a over thirty knows what Bluetooth is.” —Cohen’s conversation with young Iranian man eye-opening book about Middle Eastern youth that overthrows many an American preconception. Meanwhile, Condoleezza Rice tapped him to work on her policy planning staff, the State Department's “idea shop.” Such staffers usually labor in obscurity, but Cohen kept popping up in the news (including a write-up inthe New Yorker), largely because of his precocity: at twenty-four, he had written two wel regarded books, acquired mind-blowing experience at great personal risk, and was advising the secretary of state on the most complex foreign policy issues of the day. “He had insights into Iran that frankly we didn’t have in the government,” Rice told ‘The New York Times. “He was so articulate about it, I asked him to write up a memo that could send to the President.” ‘After Obama's election Hillary Rodham Clinton took the unusual step of keeping Cohen on. Cohen (who once told me he is liberal on most domestic issues) doesn't see foreign policy as necessarily Republican or Democratic; but in parti- san Washington his Bush provenance was suspect. “'d had such good relationships in the [Bush] administration,” he said. “And then one day I come to work and ‘everybody's gone. That's such a weird feeling. It was rebooting to day one, and OO EEE Jared Cohen (far left) at a briefing with President Bush on counterterrorism and counterradicalizaton. ROAD TO IRAN I first met Jared Cohen in June 2004, not long before he left for the Middle East. He struck me as sort of drowsy and off handedly brilliant. Though his interests were many—he was a talented athlete and artist—he appeared to be fast-track ing to a distinguished career in foreign policy. At age twenty-two, he was fresh from Stanford, where he'd written an award-winning examination of the 1994 Rwandan genocide called One Hundred Days of Silence. (In preparation, he'd bounced around Aftica on his own, where he earned a reputation for recklessness alongside his established academic bri liance. In 2001 he snuck into war-crazed Congo in the back ofa truck, under cover of bananas.) By the time I met him, at his parent's house in Weston, his focus had shifted from Africa to the Middle East. He was When one considers Google's reach (unprecedented) and ambition (‘Our goal isto change the world,” says CEO Eric Schmidt), one begins to grasp that Cohen now sits at a great nexus of technology and and influence—and he's barely twenty-nine years old. learning to speak Arabic and Farsi and \was about to pursue his new passion as a Rhodes scholar at Oxford. “Nobody's real: ly looking at modern relations with ran I see it asthe next hot spot in the Middle East,” he said then, presciently, Cohen hhad no intention of sitting cozily behind Oxford's rain-spattered windows, perus ing the latest scholarly literature about Iran. Instead, he planned to go to Iran himself, that December, to chat up both the theocracy’s leaders and their restless adversaries. Of course, Iran would never let him do that. The plan fell apart one night when the Revolutionary Guard rousted him ut of a sound sleep. “They brought me toaroom. They did this really weird thing where'dbesittingthere,and they‘dcome in and start screaming at me: ‘Have you ever seen the inside ofan Ir ian prison? You're in big trouble! You're never get- ting out of here.’ They'd slam the door shut. Then the same guy would come back twenty-five minutes later with tea and brochures and say, ‘We're so excited you're here in Iran, we hope you like our Thad to prove myselfall ver again. There were plenty of people who disliked me.” ‘Alec Ross, who worked on the Obama campaign and is now senior advisor for innovation to the Secretary of State, proved a critical aly. “There were all these haters trying to get this guy shot in the head,” Ross told an interviewer lst summer. “I read what he'd writen, and Tm ike, ‘This guys actually brilliant; he’s going to be my partner.’” CCohen had another champion in Anne- Marie Slaughter, the director of policy planning and a former Princeton dean. “T mean, her whole recent academic work was about a networked world,” Cohen said, “We saw the word in very similar ways” ‘As for Hillary Clinton? She's made ot nectivity such a hallmark of her steward- ship that Cohen call her the "godmother of twenty-first-century statecraft.” (Last January she delivered a major speech on Internet freedom, the first of its kind.) Yet when the New York Times Magazine ‘wrote about the new “digital diplomacy.” in July 2010, it focused on Cohen and Ross, and photographed them with their mobile devices drawn like six shooters. Cohen offered accidental proof of digital power by becoming the third most fol lowed government employee on Twitter, behind Barack Obama and John McCain, ONE FOR THE MASSES Cohen has not escaped criticism. In fact, he's somewhat controversial. During the Iranian street protests of June 2009, it hap- ‘pened that Twitter planned an hours-long shutdown in order to upgrade its website ‘The State Department (meaning Cohen) thought the timing unfortunate: Much news of Iran reached the West through ‘Twitter, which can broadcast, as it were, tomillions of people ata time and to virtu allyany device withascreen. Twitter going down at such a crucial moment, Cohen said, “could remove a critical information bridge.” What Cohen did next became the talk of foreign policy circles. He e-mailed his friend Jack Dorsey, founder and chair- rman of Twitter, and provided “situational awareness." By the end of the day, Twitter decided to postpone its shutdown. Cohen had proceeded on his own initia: tive and stood to receive a drubbing i his actions were judged to be roguish, “I've always been a big believer, in a moment of crisis, in doing something and asking for forgiveness later,” Cohen told me. [And when the Times broke the story (on page one) tricky questions emerged. The Obama administration's stated policy is not to meddle in Iran's internal affairs, Had Cohen meddled? Iran certainly thought so. And had Cohen medaled as well with a private company? “It’s an interesting precedent,” Cohen remarked “It raised all these questions that nobody knew the answer to...My feeling is, it doesn’t constitute meddling if you're not physically meddling in ran. And it doesn't constitute meddling witha private sector ‘company if you're not issuing an injunc- tion, They could have said no.” And the administration backed him up. ‘A.much broader debate, now acceerat ing, pits digital optimists (Cohen is often sald to be one) agains digital pessimist ‘The former claim that events like the Iran protests highlight digital tools’ abil- ity to give voice to masses of the voiceless, and thereby influence events; the latter (including the writer Maleolm Gladwell) argue that digital activism is pretty weak tea, and gives the possibly harmfal ill sion of accomplishing good when nothing much changes. Cohen insists the debate is pointless because it's setled. “In the Jas ten years, cell phone growth has risen from 907 million to 5 billion. Internet access has grown from 361 million to 2billion. Sots not that 'm an optimist; it’s that I don’t see the point of debating ‘whether technology matters when those are the kinds of trends you're working with.” Digital technology is not inherently ‘good or bad—no more than 2 knife is. It depends on who's wielding it, and to TED THE TAILOR Serving Greench vince 1948 Prsicion perfection end gual Rated Bes ofthe (olden Const 2010 2 Church Street Greenwich, CT 06830 Tal: 1-203-869-5699 Nantucket i eEeE——Eeeee

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