Finding Deep Purpose in the Tech Industry During the Russia-Ukraine Conflict

What a long, strange trip it’s been since John Perry Barlow wrote a Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace. Even though work began on the Great Firewall of China two years later in 1998, until at least the early “Arab Spring” in 2011 the Internet was celebrated as a liberator through the sousveillance of mobile phones and the immediacy of global communication, which have continued sometimes to this day, for example enabling justice in the Floyd and Arbery murders and winning the information wars against brutal attacks on civilians and Russian disinformation. In the post-COVID world in which Deep Purpose is becoming both the reason to work and the basis for value, the tech/Internet industry is exceptionally blessed by its founding and history of purpose, both of which completely transcend the purposes of any individual companies and therefore also transcend what Ranjay Gulati means by Deep Purpose.

In the last few tragic weeks the world has seen another deep purpose emerge in the defensive security of the tech companies, first swiftly protecting Ukraine’s cloud and infrastructure, and then warning Europe of coordinated launching of DDOS and phishing attacks by the government-affiliated hackers of Russia, China and Belarus. As the war has already transformed our view of the energy sector and forged new energy alliances, it will forge a new view of both big tech companies and the volunteer army of 400,000 independent hackers being assembled by Ukraine. We will be lucky to have Mandiant, with which I have worked for more than a decade, protecting us and Europe directly. And to those whose views I greatly respect who say tech policy has broken down and European friends who have made tech company surveillance their biggest concern, I am beginning to reply that we are lucky to be associated with an industry so infused with such evident, undeniable, authentic purpose. Use it in good health and good faith.