During the debate this evening, presidential hopeful (and former HP executive) Carly Fiorina surprised us all by asking that we “tear down that cyberwall.” Especially Russian and Chinese cyberwalls. WTF?
Fiorina’s response came after a bizarre question about how terrorists “hide behind cyberwalls.”
Immediately, Twitter seized upon the new meme. It was especially exciting for those Fourth Estate types. Cyberwalls! A new terrible idea! Journalist Ezra Klein seemed delighted, but also perplexed:
https://twitter.com/embed/status/629403329227952129
Luckily Klein’s writer Timothy Lee at Vox was on the case (apparently he wasn’t kidding, which makes me feel sad and yet happy for him I guess):
Cyberwall explainer coming up.
— Timothy B. Lee (@binarybits) August 6, 2015
Other journalists quickly jumped in with some explanatory photographs.
https://twitter.com/embed/status/629403465068908545
https://twitter.com/embed/status/629403047647555584
Then Yahoo News correspondent Alyssa Bereznak and I threw in some additional thoughts.
https://twitter.com/embed/status/629406503599013888
https://twitter.com/embed/status/629418120491302913
Pretty soon we had some good suggestions for what to do with a cyberwall.
Hey, why don't we build a cyberwall on the Cyber-Mexican border? I bet that's a lot cheaper than a real wall
— Theo Syslack (@TheoSyslack) August 6, 2015
https://twitter.com/embed/status/629405931692920832
None of us were quite sure of the origin of the phrase “tear down this cyberwall,” but maybe it came from Reagan’s famous speech to Gorbachev? Or possibly elsewhere?
"Tear down this cyberwall, Mr. Gorbachev."
— Wanda (@itsWanda) August 6, 2015
https://twitter.com/embed/status/629402980316418049
https://twitter.com/embed/status/629403085173977088
Anyway, I hope our fine commentary on Twitter makes you feel better prepared to understand the big issues coming up this election season.
Contact the author at [email protected].
Public PGP key
PGP fingerprint: CA58 326B 1ACB 133B 0D15 5BCE 3FC6 9123 B2AA 1E1A
