WikiLeaks is posting these raw documents on the Web, the most permissive information medium we have yet to invent. As a result we are now experiencing yet another jump from the ploddingly analog to the explosively digital. Just as the concept of “privacy” fades into obscurity when sixteen-year-olds can present their innermost thoughts to an audience of billions, so, too, the Internet distribution of official secrets changes the rules of the game. Once all the documents are online they will be subjected not only to the often clumsy ministrations of journalists and historians but also to the far more efficient data-mining programs and pattern- analysis software of foreign governments and private companies (the extent of which, in the case of China’s handling of Google, the cables themselves make clear). The implications for the conduct of government policy (not to mention individual lives) are monumental. I wish I could predict what they might be, but I can’t. I’m not sure anyone can.