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GeoTech Cues

Sep 15, 2020

Why data governance matters: Use, trade, intellectual property, and diplomacy

By Pari Esfandiari, PhD, Gregory F. Treverton, PhD

Global data and internet governance represents a scattered, multi-stakeholder, bottom-up, and driven by loose coordination among various players. Data governance can be thought of as incorporating a triangle of individuals and their privacy, nation-states and their interests, and the private sector and its profits. Its current status and prospects might be thought of along several lines of activity, which are interrelated but, for the sake of clarity and with some danger of oversimplification, are discussed in the following different sections: privacy and data use; regulating to police content; using antitrust to dilute data monopolies; self-regulation and digital trade; intellectual property rights; and digital diplomacy.

Cybersecurity Digital Policy

Report

Aug 31, 2020

Four myths about the cloud: The geopolitics of cloud computing

By Trey Herr

Cloud computing providers are more than companies—they govern vast utility infrastructure, play host to digital battlefields, and are magnificent engines of complexity. Cloud computing is embedded in contemporary geopolitics; the choices providers make are influenced by, and influential on, the behavior of states. In competition and cooperation, cloud computing is the canvas on which states conduct significant political, security, and economic activity.

Cybersecurity Internet

Feature

Jul 26, 2020

Deep impact: States and software supply chain attacks

By Trey Herr, June Lee, Will Loomis, and Stewart Scott

States have used software supply chain attacks to great effect. Hijacked updates have routinely delivered the most crippling state-backed attacks, thanks in part to a continued failure to secure the code-signing process.

China Cybersecurity

Trey Herr is senior director of the Cyber Statecraft Initiative (CSI), part of the Atlantic Council Technology Programs, and assistant professor of global security and policy at American University’s School of International Service. The CSI team works at the intersection of cybersecurity and geopolitics across conflict, cloud computing, supply chain policy, and more. Previously, Herr was a senior security strategist with Microsoft handling cybersecurity policy, as well as a fellow with the Belfer Cybersecurity Project at the Harvard Kennedy School and a nonresident fellow with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He holds a PhD in political science and BS in musical theatre and political science.