TECH DIPLOMACYTech Diplomacy: What It Is, and Why It’s Important
We need to get used to a new concept in international security: tech diplomacy. It means technological collaboration across sectors and between countries, but the simplicity of the idea shouldn’t disguise its importance.
We need to get used to a new concept in international security: tech diplomacy. It means technological collaboration across sectors and between countries, but the simplicity of the idea shouldn’t disguise its importance.
Tech diplomacy is a key tool to ensure that US allies and partners, including Australia, can stay ahead of or keep up with the pacing threat of adversaries, notably China, that are also seeking technological leadership.
It also offers opportunities for commercialization and the establishment of the rules and norms that govern uses.
Technology lies at the heart of geostrategic competition between China and the US. The US and its allies need to secure advantages in emerging technologies to meet ongoing and rapidly evolving national security imperatives. Western societies are also keen to ensure that producers of bleeding-edge technologies—such as advanced semiconductor chips, artificial intelligence and quantum computing—develop, deploy and adopt tools and knowhow in a trusted manner that protects individual and collective freedoms. Technology diplomacy—bringing together expertise from the three traditionally siloed domains of technology, business and foreign policy to advance national interests—is a tool the US and its partners can use to secure high tech and to counter the weaponization and abuse of technology by malign actors.
Technology is inherently neutral, neither good nor bad, which is why it’s necessary for like-minded allies and partners to advance it in a trusted manner to ensure that it can’t be easily abused to compromise the basic rights and freedoms of individuals as defined under international law. Collaboration that draws on technology, business and foreign policy ensures that the expertise that drives the R&D interacts with the expertise that drives commercialization and deployment and with the expertise that drives security goals and international regulation. This model of tech diplomacy ensures that the economic advantages of tech leadership are achieved and that technological development is guided by principles of trust that protect individual and collective rights.
Successful tech diplomacy efforts have already taken place, notably with the deployment of 5G networks. 5G technology built the infrastructure that would underpin the future of connective technology, which could significantly affect national security, rights, privacy and economics. Australia was the first mover in banning Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei from building the nation’s 5G networks.
