Editor’s Note: Dipayan Ghosh is a fellow at New America and the Shorenstein Center at Harvard Kennedy School. He was a technology and economic policy advisor in the Obama White House, and more recently, a privacy and public policy advisor at Facebook. Stephen Wicker is professor of electrical and computer engineering at Cornell University and author of “Cellular Convergence and the Death of Privacy,” published by Oxford University Press. The opinions expressed in this commentary are theirs. CNN  —  Amidst a fresh cycle of reports...…Editor’s Note: Dipayan Ghosh is a fellow at New America and the Shorenstein Center at Harvard Kennedy School. He was a technology and economic policy advisor in the Obama White House, and more recently, a privacy and public policy advisor at Facebook. Stephen Wicker is professor of electrical and computer engineering at Cornell University and author of “Cellular Convergence and the Death of Privacy,” published by Oxford University Press. The opinions expressed in this commentary are theirs. CNN  —  Amidst a fresh cycle of reports...WW…

Not long ago, Americans used to worry — constantly and loudly — about what their country’s main cultural export was and what it said about them. In the 1990s, after the Iron Curtain came down, many Americans wondered whether the appealing lifestyles the world saw on U.S. sitcoms and blockbusters deserved some credit for energizing global resistance to communism. Then, as the optimism of the ’90s gave way to the shock and horror of 9/11, Americans asked, with palpable chagrin, whether the materialism and vulgarity of their TV shows and movies were contributing to the virulent...…Not long ago, Americans used to worry — constantly and loudly — about what their country’s main cultural export was and what it said about them. In the 1990s, after the Iron Curtain came down, many Americans wondered whether the appealing lifestyles the world saw on U.S. sitcoms and blockbusters deserved some credit for energizing global resistance to communism. Then, as the optimism of the ’90s gave way to the shock and horror of 9/11, Americans asked, with palpable chagrin, whether the materialism and vulgarity of their TV shows and movies were contributing to the virulent...WW…