Ernest J. Wilson,  dean of the Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism at USC and a university fellow at the USC Center on Public Diplomacy, has a thoughtful piece in the Huffington Post on the ramifications of Google’s announcement that it may withdraw from China, and how it may affect not just China but also U.S. foreign policy:

A consequence of the digital economy’s timidity is that the U.S. foreign policy agenda has not changed very much in substance or tone. But now, if other major content producers follow Google into the ring, the strategic and diplomatic gravity of big Silicon Valley firms may finally match their economic weight. Of course, traditional matters like military strategy, state-to-state diplomacy and the like will always remain important elements of a nation’s statecraft. But moving forward we may see a couple of changes that suggest we have reached an inflection point.
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