THREATS BEYOND BORDERS: REGIME MOTIVES AND CAPABILITIES REGIME MOTIVES The governments of Iran, Egypt, and Syria all have the political will and capacity to repress dissidents abroad. They extend the influence of their security apparatus across borders using embassies as outposts, activists’ in-country relatives as proxies, and digital technologies as tools of surveillance and harassment. The most important assets of diaspora activism—the capacity to mobilize public attention and maintain close ties to the home country29—are also key triggers for repressive interventions as regimes feel provoked by the transnational influence and networks of individuals, groups, and organizations opposing them from afar. After the popular mobilizations of 2009-2011, rulers in the Middle East and North Africa have been wary about the destabilizing role of social media-fuelled protests aided by international civil society and diaspora communities. Western support for projects of democracy promotion and Internet freedom were perceived as threats to regime stability. Learning from recent experiences, regimes in the region have gone through different stages of “upgrading” to strengthen their resilience.30 In particular, they have built sophisticated systems of Internet censorship while exploiting digital technologies for purposes of surveillance, propaganda, and disinformation. Regime capabilities for Internet control have developed in line with the global securitization of online space and the diffusion of powerful surveillance tools provided by a private sector catering to the needs of intrusive states.31 Authoritarian rulers are generally confronted with a “twin problem of uncertainty” in which they are never fully sure about potential threats to regime stability, nor the actual success of their strategies to prevent such threats.32 Koinova, M. (2012). Autonomy and positionality in diaspora politics. International Political Sociology, 6(1), 99-103; Tufekci, Z. 29 (2013). “Not this one” social movements, the attention economy, and microcelebrity networked activism. American Behavioral Scientist, 57(7), 848-870. Bank, A., & Edel, M. (2015). Authoritarian regime learning: Comparative insights from the Arab uprisings. GIGA Working Papers. 30 https://www.giga-hamburg.de/de/system/files/publications/wp274_bank-edel.pdf; Heydemann, S., & Leenders, R. (Eds.). (2013). Middle East Authoritarianisms: Governance, Contestation, and Regime Resilience in Syria and Iran. Stanford University Press. Deibert, R. J., & Crete-Nishihata, M. (2012). Global governance and the spread of cyberspace controls. Global Governance: A 31 Review of Multilateralism and International Organizations, 18(3), 339–361; Gunitsky, S. (2015). Corrupting the cyber-commons: Social media as a tool of autocratic stability. Perspectives on Politics, 13(01), 42–54. Schedler, A. (2013). The Politics of Uncertainty: Sustaining and Subverting Electoral Authoritarianism Oxford University Press, 32 p. 21 12