As cyberspace continues its rapid growth, embedding itself deeper into everything around us and helping to shape our identities, the models, norms, rules, and principles which have until now governed the US-anchored Internet are coming under stress. As cyber demographics shift to the global South and East, alternative models are being developed outside of the Internet’s old North Atlantic core. New rules and norms are spreading as practices grow and diversify. How to govern cyberspace in our intensely globalized world has become an acute public policy issue, for us all.

In the third annual Cyber Dialogue, participants addressed questions around the theme of “Governance without Government in Cyberspace?” Phrased deliberately as an open question, we interrogated the proper roles and limits for public and private authority in cyberspace across a range of fundamental issues. What power can states, private companies, and civil society exercise in this domain? What is the appropriate balance of power among the increasingly diverse set of cyber stakeholders, from the local to the global? Who, and whose values, will set the stage for the future of cyberspace governance? What are the checks and balances?