One of the existential challenges facing the free world today is its disunity over emerging technologies. Divergence between the US and the EU in this area has helped China and other autocratic regimes as they forge ahead with developing new tools, and establishing rules and norms that would guide many aspects of our lives, economies and security for generations.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is absolutely right: “Whoever becomes the leader in this [artificial intelligence] sphere will become the ruler of the world.”
US President Joe Biden’s agenda for strengthening democracy at home and abroad presents an opportunity to close this strategic gap. Leaders on both sides of the Atlantic must seize it, and build a technological alliance of democracies that would win the digital race and set the global rules in our mold.
Illustration: Mountain People
In their election platform, Biden and US Vice President Kamala Harris pledged to convene a global “Summit for Democracy” later this year. It is an excellent idea, and mirrors the Copenhagen Democracy Summit that the Alliance of Democracies Foundation has organized annually since 2018 — with Biden himself delivering the first keynote address.
However, several questions remain regarding the format of Biden’s summit, whether more wayward democracies would be invited, and what concrete tasks participants might agree to take forward from the meeting itself.
On the last point at least, Biden now has the makings of a blueprint. Since late 2018, the US National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, an eminent group of technology leaders chaired by former Google chief executive officer Eric Schmidt, has developed a series of recommendations that “comprehensively address the national security and defense needs of the United States” when it comes to artificial intelligence (AI). The Commission recently published its final report to the US president and the US Congress. Europeans and the US’ other democratic allies should read and act upon it, too.
When I addressed the commission’s conference at the end of 2019, I argued that the US’ trump card over China and Russia is its ability to build partnerships around the world. I am therefore pleased that one of the report’s central recommendations is for the US to build an “Emerging Technology Coalition” to establish democratic norms and values, and coordinate policies to counter the adoption of digital infrastructure made in China.
This coalition would also launch an “International Digital Democracy Initiative” to develop, promote, and fund the adoption of AI and associated technologies that accord with democratic values and advance the interests of our free societies.
This is the sort of positive agenda we need.
However, it would succeed only if transatlantic and Pacific partners start to realign themselves on some critical questions relating to emerging technologies, in particular concerning two commodities that many regard as the new oil: data and semiconductors. We need to develop a new democratic consensus on both.
On data, and data protection especially, it is the US that has grown out of sync with the rest of the free world. Japan has adopted similar standards to the EU’s so that data can flow freely, and the UK is committing to a similar post-Brexit regime.
Japan used its G20 presidency in 2019 to push for a global data-flows deal, but, despite some progress, China’s objections stymied the effort.
The free flow of data within a confidence-enhancing framework would be the single biggest boost that liberal democracies’ AI development could receive. Authoritarian regimes and their surveillance states have far easier access to metadata, so we need to work together to compete.
Likewise, a global semiconductor shortage and the ensuing shutdown of automotive factories around the world have highlighted our dependence on production plants in Taiwan and South Korea. They already have the necessary know-how and global supply chains, but we should nonetheless continue to find ways within our democratic alliance to support them.
Moreover, we need to build a democratic preference zone for semiconductors, and the critical raw materials and rare earths that would fuel our green and technological revolutions.
We know that Biden is personally committed to building transatlantic solutions to technological challenges. I saw this firsthand in 2018 when we cofounded the Transatlantic Commission on Election Integrity. We agreed that it was not enough for the US to look back at Russian interference in its 2016 presidential election, or for Europe to prepare for its multitude of elections in a silo.
Rather, our aim was to connect the efforts of democratic allies and prepare for future waves of election meddling, including those that deploy AI methods such as deepfake videos.
Biden can now apply a similar logic to ensure that the free world emerges on top in the next industrial revolution.
However, it takes two to tango, and if Europe closes the door on transatlantic tech cooperation, we should not complain when autocrats begin to set the rules.
Anders Fogh Rasmussen, a former NATO secretary-general and former prime minister of Denmark, is founder of the Alliance of Democracies Foundation.
Copyright: Project Syndicate
US aerospace company Boeing Co has in recent years been involved in numerous safety incidents, including crashes of its 737 Max airliners, which have caused widespread concern about the company’s safety record. It has recently come to light that titanium jet engine parts used by Boeing and its European competitor Airbus SE were sold with falsified documentation. The source of the titanium used in these parts has been traced back to an unknown Chinese company. It is clear that China is trying to sneak questionable titanium materials into the supply chain and use any ensuing problems as an opportunity to
It’s not every month that the US Department of State sends two deputy assistant secretary-level officials to Taiwan, together. Its rarer still that such senior State Department policy officers, once on the ground in Taipei, make a point of huddling with fellow diplomats from “like-minded” NATO, ANZUS and Japanese governments to coordinate their multilateral Taiwan policies. The State Department issued a press release on June 22 admitting that the two American “representatives” had “hosted consultations in Taipei” with their counterparts from the “Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs.” The consultations were blandly dubbed the “US-Taiwan Working Group on International Organizations.” The State
The Chinese Supreme People’s Court and other government agencies released new legal guidelines criminalizing “Taiwan independence diehard separatists.” While mostly symbolic — the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has never had jurisdiction over Taiwan — Tamkang University Graduate Institute of China Studies associate professor Chang Wu-ueh (張五岳), an expert on cross-strait relations, said: “They aim to explain domestically how they are countering ‘Taiwan independence,’ they aim to declare internationally their claimed jurisdiction over Taiwan and they aim to deter Taiwanese.” Analysts do not know for sure why Beijing is propagating these guidelines now. Under Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), deciphering the
Many local news media last week reported that COVID-19 is back, citing doctors’ observations and the Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) statistics. The CDC said that cases would peak this month and urged people to take preventive measures. Although COVID-19 has never been eliminated, it has become more manageable, and restrictions were dropped, enabling people to return to their normal way of life due to decreasing hospitalizations and deaths. In Taiwan, mandatory reporting of confirmed cases and home isolation ended in March last year, while the mask mandate at hospitals and healthcare facilities stopped in May. However, the CDC last week said the number