GeoTech Center

John Goodman
Chief Executive, Accenture Federal Services

John Goodman is the Chief Executive of Accenture Federal Services (AFS), which serves clients across all sectors of the US federal government – defense, intelligence, public safety, health, and civilian.

FULL BIO

Teresa Carlson
Vice President, Worldwide Public Sector, Amazon Web Services

Teresa Carlson leads the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Worldwide Public Sector business, which includes state, local, central and regional governments; educational institutions and Ed Techs, and nonprofits and nongovernmental organizations (NGO), and acts as an advisor to Amazon Public Policy on global policy issues.

FULL BIO

Vint Cerf
VP and Chief Internet Evangelist, Google

Vinton G. Cerf is vice president and Chief Internet Evangelist for Google. He contributes to global policy development and continued spread of the Internet. Widely known as one of the “Fathers of the Internet,” Cerf is the co-designer of the TCP/IP protocols and the architecture of the Internet. He has served in executive positions at MCI, the Corporation for National Research Initiatives and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and on the faculty of Stanford University.

FULL BIO

Shirley Ann Jackson
President, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

The Honorable Shirley Ann Jackson, Ph.D. became the 18th president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute on July 1, 1999. Dr. Jackson is a theoretical physicist. Since coming to Rensselaer, Dr. Jackson has led the development of the Rensselaer Plan (the Institute’s strategic blueprint), has begun implementation of much of the Plan, while restructuring processes and procedures; and secured a $360 million unrestricted gift commitment to the university.

FULL BIO

Michael Chertoff
Former United States Secretary of Homeland Security

Michael Chertoff heads the Chertoff Group, providing high-level strategic counsel to corporate and government leaders on a broad range of security issues, from risk identification and prevention to preparedness, response and recovery. Mr. Chertoff is also senior of counsel at Covington & Burling LLP, and a member of the firm’s White Collar Defense and Investigations practice group.

FULL BIO

Zia Khan
Vice President for Innovation, The Rockefeller Foundation

As Senior Vice President for Innovation, Zia oversees the Foundation’s approach to developing solutions that can have transformative impact on people’s lives, with a focus on innovative finance, data & technology, and science. He writes and speaks frequently on leadership, strategy, and innovation. Zia has served on the World Economic Forum Advisory Council for Social Innovation and the US National Advisory Board for Impact Investing. He is an investor and advisor to a range of impact-oriented enterprises.

FULL BIO

Paul Daugherty
Group Chief Executive of Technology Services, Accenture

Paul Daugherty is a leading authority on the technology innovations shaping the future of business and society. In his role as Accenture’s Chief Technology and Innovation Officer, Paul predicts the future, sets Accenture’s technology strategy and directs its technology research and development, ventures and ecosystem relationships to incubate the next wave of technology businesses. As the founder of Accenture’s businesses in Cloud, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Blockchain and other emerging technologies, Paul advises the world’s top business and technology leaders on how to apply technology to reimagine and reinvent their organizations’ futures.

FULL BIO

Ramayya Krishnan
Director, Block Center for Technology and Society, Carnegie Mellon University

Ramayya Krishnan is the W. W. Cooper and Ruth F. Cooper Professor of Management Science and Information Systems at the H. John Heinz III College and the Department of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University. A faculty member at CMU since 1988, Krishnan was appointed Dean when the Heinz College was created in 2008. Krishnan was elected in 2017 to serve as the 25th President of INFORMS, and is an INFORMS Fellow.

FULL BIO

Michael J. Rogers
Former Chairman for the US House Intelligence Committee

Michael J. Rogers is an executive producer for the CNN program Declassified: Untold Stories of American Spies. He was the US Representative for Michigan’s 8th congressional district from 2001 to 2015. From 2011 to 2015, he was Chairman of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

FULL BIO

Susan M. Gordon
Former Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence

The Honorable Susan (Sue) M. Gordon served as Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) until August 15, 2019. With nearly three decades of experience in the IC, Ms. Gordon has served in a variety of leadership roles spanning numerous intelligence organizations and disciplines. Most recently, Ms. Gordon served as the Deputy Director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) from 2015 to 2017. In this role, she helped the director lead the agency and manage the National System of Geospatial Intelligence. She drove NGA’s transformation to meet the challenges of a 21st century intelligence agency. She also championed agile governance, recruitment and retention of a diverse workforce, and expansion of geospatial intelligence services to the open marketplace. She is known for her commitment to diversity and inclusion and, to the women and men of the IC.

FULL BIO

Maurice Sonnenberg
Worked with Five Presidential Administrations

Maurice Sonnenberg has served as an outside advisor to five presidential administrations in the areas of international trade, finance, international relations, intelligence, and foreign election monitoring. In 1994 and 1995, he served as a member of the Moynihan Commission on Government Secrecy, and in 1996 as the Senior Advisor to the US Commission on the Roles and Capabilities of the US Intelligence Community. He was a member of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board under President Bill Clinton for 8 years. In 2000, he served as Vice-Chairman of the National Commission on Terrorism, also known as the Bremer Commission. In 2002, he was a member of the Task Force Report No. 40 of the Council on Foreign Relations called Terrorist Financing. In 2012-14, he served as co-Chairman of the National Commission for the Review of the Research and Development Programs for the Intelligence Community. He has also served as an Official US Observer at elections in Latin America. This includes multiple elections in El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Mexico.

FULL BIO

Philippe Amon
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, SICPA

Philippe Amon is the Chairman and CEO of SICPA, which develops technologies to provide security, traceability, and authentication for currencies, documents, and products across the globe. He is also a member of the Atlantic Council’s International Advisory Board. Philippe holds the position of Chairman & Chief Executive Officer for SICPA Holding SA and Chairman & Chief Executive Officer for SICPA Security Solutions SA (a subsidiary of SICPA Holding SA). He is also on the board of SICPA Securink Corp. (former Chairman).

FULL BIO

The Atlantic Council is honored to partner with the Rockefeller Foundation via a grant focused on data and AI efforts by China around the world. We started these activities in the middle of 2019 and they were part of a bigger plan to launch the new Atlantic Council GeoTech Center in 2020 — focused on the geopolitics of new technologies and advances in data.

The first roundtable of the series was held in Paris and brought together high-level delegations from the United States, China, and Europe for a wide-ranging discussion on emerging technologies.

The Atlantic Council’s endeavor to evaluate the implications of modern technologies for society and politics continued in Brussels, where the event was co-hosted by the European Parliamentary Research Service (EPRS).

Unlike previous gatherings where a majority of participants represented government institutions, the roundtable in Germany brought together business- and private-sector representatives. Together with policy experts, they discussed the emergence of new technologies, the rise of China, and the implications of a global AI race.

Two roundtables in Beijing and a third one in Shanghai brought together leaders from government, civil society, academia, and think tanks to discuss China’s role as a global citizen, the country’s use and development of artificial intelligence, and the implications of modern technologies for international relations.

Two digital roundtables with India brought together high-level experts to discuss the challenges, opportunities, and geopolitics of emerging technologies in the South Asian country. While the first focused on AI and health, the second centered on Sino-Indian relations.

The final roundtable of the Smart Partnerships Series focused on the African continent and how AI as well as other emerging technologies can be harnessed there for good.

An urgent challenge for the coming decade is to forge a global consensus to operationalize widely-shared ethical principles, standards, and norms to govern the development and use of artificial intelligence.

As has occurred with mobile phones, data and AI holds the potential to integrate a nexus of technologies enabling less-developed nations to leapfrog into the knowledge economy. Some members of society have dystopian fears that advances in data and AI may impede development and increase inequality. In contrast, rapidly digitizing less-developed states are deploying advances in data and AI to modernize healthcare, disaster-relief, finance and agriculture. A key question is: Can they obtain the human and financial resources, and achieve adequate governance to scale it up?

The cynical narrative towards China coming out of Washington has turned public opinion and influenced the Department of Defense to interpret every Chinese action as an escalation. Will Silicon Valley’s AI giants, working across borders and alongside Chinese counterparts, seize the opportunity to raise their voice and balance this narrative?