Technology practice questions.

Social media's role in political mobilisation is double-edged because it can:

• Enable grassroots organising but also spread misinformation and surveillance
• Only ever strengthen democracy
• Only ever benefit authoritarian regimes
• Have no measurable effect at all on political behaviour, mobilisation or outcomes

Answer: Enable grassroots organising but also spread misinformation and surveillance

Compare its role in movements like the Arab Spring with its use for disinformation and state surveillance. Technology is a tool whose effect depends on who wields it.

In cyber security, the 'attribution problem' refers to:

• The unequal distribution of internet infrastructure between the Global North and South
• The difficulty of reliably identifying which actor is responsible for a cyber attack
• Deciding which UN agency should regulate cyberspace
• Assigning intellectual property rights to software developers

Answer: The difficulty of reliably identifying which actor is responsible for a cyber attack

Attackers can route operations through proxies, botnets and false flags, so victims struggle to prove responsibility — which weakens deterrence and complicates lawful retaliation.

Which of the following best exemplifies 'digital authoritarianism'?

• A national government publishing detailed budget data on a public open-data portal
• A city introducing online voting for local referendums
• A state subsidising rural broadband expansion
• A state using mass facial-recognition and censorship to suppress dissent

Answer: A state using mass facial-recognition and censorship to suppress dissent

Digital authoritarianism is the use of digital technologies — surveillance, censorship, social scoring — to monitor, repress and manipulate populations; the other options are digital governance or development policies.

The central legal and ethical objection raised against lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS) in the UN CCW debates is that they:

• Remove human control over lethal targeting decisions
• Are more expensive than conventional weapons systems
• React too slowly to be militarily useful
• Violate World Trade Organization rules on subsidies

Answer: Remove human control over lethal targeting decisions

Critics argue that delegating kill decisions to machines undermines human dignity, accountability and compliance with IHL principles such as distinction and proportionality — hence the campaign for 'meaningful human control'.

The 'Brussels effect' in technology governance describes the phenomenon whereby:

• NATO headquarters in Brussels directs allied cyber commands
• EU member states harmonise their national parliaments' procedures
• EU rules like the GDPR become de facto global standards as firms apply them worldwide
• The eurozone's single monetary policy directly shapes global technology investment flows worldwide

Answer: EU rules like the GDPR become de facto global standards as firms apply them worldwide

Because access to the large EU market requires compliance, firms often adopt EU rules globally, exporting European regulatory standards without any treaty — a form of unilateral regulatory power.

Governments that adopt 'data localisation' laws, requiring citizens' data to be stored on servers inside the country, primarily justify them as protecting:

• Net neutrality guarantees for all domestic internet service providers
• Digital sovereignty and state control over citizens' data
• Lower consumer prices for cloud services
• The global free flow of information

Answer: Digital sovereignty and state control over citizens' data

Data localisation is framed as an assertion of digital sovereignty — keeping data within national jurisdiction and beyond foreign surveillance — though critics see it as fragmenting the internet and enabling domestic control.