If you remember the Robbie Burns poem, "To a Louse", you will recall his famous words, "O wad some power the gifte gie us to see oursels as ithers see us!" He was ridiculing a woman in church who was putting on airs, unaware that there were lice in her bonnet. How do I get from a Scottish poet's observation about human nature, to the conclusion that America is a louse, other than to note that bed bugs are on the rise in New York?

I continue to be struck by the fact that American technology companies are perceived by the rest of the world as invaders of indigenous cultures. Whether it is Google's search engine in China, or Russian hackers like BadB, who ran one of the most significant cyber crime networks in the world, the whiff of nationalism is unmistakable.

Globalism, a megatrend which the Internet makes possible, exposes our vulnerable underbelly. That fact that any country can have a global business via the internet, means economic nationalism has become a force to be reckoned with. The technology segment of American industry needs a lesson in diplomacy.

In the case of Google vs. China, the fact that the Chinese want to spy on political dissidents is secondary to their avowed strategy, which is to keep the lucrative search business in the hands of the Chinese. When it comes to Russian cyber crime, hackers are openly recruiting agents with the call to help them fight American Imperialism.

I don't have an answer yet, for how American technology providers can or should respond to the fact the rest of the world considers us as steamrollers of our national identity. But perhaps if we could see ourselves as others see us, we could make a few less blunders.