ICT/Cyber benefits and costs: Reconciling competing perspectives on the current and future balance

Information and communications technology (ICT)/cyber technologies become ever-more embedded in our economies and societies, bringing both benefits and risk-related costs. The balance between those benefits and costs, over time and across countries, remains poorly understood. This gives rise to conflicting narratives about the future of ICT: either (1) continued rapid benefit growth with new waves of ICT technology; or (2) increasing cyber-attack costs will come to swamp benefits.