On 11 March 2020 the Atlantic Council GeoTech Center officially launched with the focused mission of: Championing positive paths forward that nations, economies, and societies can pursue to ensure new technologies and data empower people, prosperity, and peace.
That same day, COVID-19 was declared an official pandemic. Since then the Center has focused on connecting tech and data efforts across sectors and across nations to ensure we emerge from the pandemic stronger post-COVID-19 together. Please view our video recaps. Read our analyses. Glean insights on how tech, data, and leadership can ensure the world gets through the pandemic and we build a better post-COVID-19 world together.
Encouraging Data Trusts and Tech for Good
Encouraging the use of “Data Trusts for Good” as a way to overcome the challenges of sufficient data to address the COVID-19 crisis. Data trusts can inform the long-term recovery and global rebuilding without becoming a surveillance state, helping with COVID-19 recovery activities of all types. Data trusts can be used to train AI and algorithms in a way that ensures proprietary data is protected, personal data is protected, and data is deleted after a certain point.
Towards Global Pandemic Prevention and Recovery
Investigating the methods and means necessary to field technologies necessarily to autonomously detect and respond to future pandemics – be they natural or human-caused. This is necessary because there might be a second wave of COVID-19. Also as we approach a future where personalized medicine is possible, so is personalized poison, so we will need ways to detect, characterize, and mitigate future bio-threats. The Board would field technologies to do globally as a part of an “Immune System for the Planet” which could also enhanced early warning and preparedness relative to other global destabilizing events, such as environmental and ecological change, pollution, and other events that impact us all.
