Framing Information Transfer Management (ITM): A Four-Zone Framework for Governing Knowledge in the Age of AI

We propose a four-zone framework for understanding Information Transfer Management (ITM) in the age of advanced artificial intelligence. Drawing on the evolution of platforms like Freenet, Wikipedia, and ChatGPT, and contrasting distinct regulatory logics, the framework identifies four attractor forces—Sovereignty, Market, Morality, and Method—that shape geopolitical ITM zones. This approach is designed to support idiomatic diplomacy: forms of communication that remain tolerable even between fundamentally incompatible regimes. Such communicative capacity is essential for any jurisdiction that seeks to regulate AI services. We demonstrate the framework’s analytic utility by profiling eight thinkers—Confucius, Mao Zedong, Smith, Friedman, Montesquieu, Bourdieu, Popper, and Goodfellow—across the four zones. This leads us to propose an epistemic shift within the "Method" zone itself, one that relates scientific authority to the forces of power, capital, and conviction. We conclude by arguing that our framework is both empirically tractable and theoretically expandable, and offer several research questions concerning generative social phenomena that we hope others will develop further.