There was much fuss last year about the Metaverse, especially when Mark Zuckerberg went so far as to rename his company Facebook “Meta” in recognition of the centrality of the Metaverse in his plans for the future of the company. Much of this enthusiasm has since cooled, in part as realisation of the technological challenges grew and in part because of the lack of enthusiasm of Meta´s investors for the costs of Metaverse research at a time of falling advertising revenues. Zuckerberg himself seems to have backed off, stressing instead the importance of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Meta´s future. Oddly, the enthusiasm about the metaverse seems to have remained in the field of diplomatic studies, particularly among those focused on public diplomacy. Speculation abounds about how diplomacy will operate in the Metaverse and whether countries should construct embassies there. To my mind this demonstrates a failure to understand the geopolitics of the Metaverse and the process of its construction. The diplomacy of the Metaverse will belong long before it comes into being.
We should not overlook the technical challenges of generating the Metaverse. Possibly the most serious centre on computing power, or compute, and how to build sufficient compute into practical wearable devices that will generate a “realistic” experience of a virtual world. Such devices will require a wide range of rare earth materials and consume enormous amounts of energy, if they can be developed. This will inevitably limit access to the Metaverse to those with the access to the necessary compute and energy sources. In his novel Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson envisages a Metaverse to which only a small proportion of the world´s population has access, and even them among there are distinctions in the levels of access depending on the compute available in each individual’s device. This will not be a universal virtual world, but a club open to the privileged elite.
But this does not even touch on the geopolitical challenges, which may prove even greater. The Metaverse will not arrive in the world like the Internet, a unitary fait accompli. The Internet was developed in the US by scientists and engineers working with the Pentagon as a means of communication among them. When it was released into the world all its design features and protocols had already been decided. There was nothing to debate – you accepted it or rejected it, but you could not re-open it. It arrived at a very particular geopolitical moment – what Hal Brands calls the unipolar moment. US hegemony was at its height, Russia was weak and mired in crises and China was only beginning to rise. The EU was still discovering its regulatory vocation. Had the internet emerged onto the international scene a decade before or a decade after, in different geopolitical environments, it is unlikely that we would have a single, unitary internet. As it is, there is growing evidence of a de facto fragmentation of the internet as different governance models compete.
The Metaverse does not arrive ready-made. US hegemony is no longer what it was. The future creation of the Metaverse has been well announced in advance. Companies and governments will debate and compete over its construction. Different governance models will compete from the beginning resulting in the construction of multiple competing Metaverses. While some Metaverses will map onto physical countries, and their governance reflect the sovereignty of those countries, others will map on to companies or the consortiums of companies that build them. These “non-national” Metaverses will need to resolve their own governance issues and their relations with each other and those Metaverses controlled by governments. Countries like China will undoubtedly seek to create its own Metaverse while limiting the access of its citizens to alternative Metaverses (and with companies like Ten Cent it will be well-placed to do so. The European Union may be less insistent on a single European Metaverse but will insist on strict regulation of any Metaverses its citizens have access to. In other words, multiple Metaverses reflecting different interests, governance models and national allegiances competing and collaborating with each other, much as we see countries, companies and NGOs competing and collaborating in the physical world. Such a world of competing Metaverses also raises the possibilities of tensions and conflict between them.
Thus, the interesting diplomacy of the Metaverse is not whether countries should open embassies and conduct their diplomatic relations with other countries and international organisations through the Metaverse. Given that there is unlikely to be a single Metaverse, this would amount to little more than a gimmick, with little more real impact than the Swedish Embassy in Second Life (if anyone can remember that). The real diplomacy of the Metaverse will be that of metaverse construction and Metaverse competition. If the technical challenges can be overcome (by no means certain), the construction of different Metaverses will be collaborative enterprises bringing together different companies, governments and user groups in complicated discussions about design, protocols and governance. Diplomatic skills, and the diplomats who can wield them, will be in high demand. Once the multiverse of metaverses is in place (and what a shame that quantum physics had already taken that word which so much better describes the development of virtual worlds), the focus will shift to the relationships between them, managing the conflicting interests, competition and collaboration that are the staples of diplomatic life. Far from converting diplomats into virtual avatars, the Metaverse, if it comes into being, is likely to increase the demand for real diplomats to manage the controversies and disputes it generates. Much as cyberspace already has …