“An Invisible, Ubiquitously Productive Presence”
February 27, 2026
In the 1990s, the internet was imagined as an “information superhighway.” At a time when most people were using dial-up modems, the superhighway was aspirational (super speed!), communal (lots of fellow travelers!), and publicly accessible (once logged on, anyone could go anywhere). Today that term has been consigned to history, alongside other telling neologisms and metaphors: “netizens,” “cyberspace,” and “world wide web.”
Now digital life takes place in a different metaphor: “the cloud.” “Associating cloud computing with clouds invokes the sense of an invisible, ubiquitously productive presence floating over the earthly realm,” writes Asad Ramzanali in Issues. In fact, cloud computing involves a vast infrastructure of data centers, power generation, and complex financial relationships. Has the metaphor of ephemerality helped the industry evade regulation?
Scrutiny is long overdue, argues Ramzanali: “In addition to being critical to nearly all facets of American life, cloud computing also undergirds frontier AI capabilities,” making it critical to the future of the US economy and national security. Ramzanali describes concrete ways that policymakers can safeguard its resilience, encourage competition, and ensure the cloud doesn’t vanish when it’s most needed.