During recent attacks by mobs on the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, Egypt, the American staff passed warnings to American citizens in Egypt through the embassy’s Twitter network. American embassies lead the diplomatic world in their use of Twitter, Facebook and other digital tools.

Contrast this communication system with the one used during the first conflict in the Arabian peninsula against Saddam Hussein of Iraq in the early 1990’s. I served at the U.S. consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, during that time. We set up telephone networks to pass information to American citizens in the region. No one owned a cell phone.

By the time of the second war with Iraq in the early 2000’s, I had returned for another tour in Saudi Arabia. We had graduated to emails for notification of events to our American citizen community. Only a few years later, our communication tools have advanced light years even from those times.

Besides using tweets to notify their citizens, U.S. officials abroad also monitor the tweets of foreign governments and political parties. These includes tweets in the native language as well as any English language tweets. During the Egyptian attacks, the U.S. Embassy noticed differing messages by governing Egyptians, depending on the language. A message in Arabic called on Egyptians to support the demonstrations against the Americans. A message in English offered sympathy and support to the Embassy.

The Embassy responded with its own tweet: “Thanks. By the way, have you checked out your own Arabic feeds? I hope you know we read those, too.”