Tech Fit 4 Europe podcast Episode 11 Guest: Wolfgang Ischinger Tech Fit 4 Europe (podcast series) -- Episode 11 -- Geopolitics of Tech: Time for Trust & Transatlantic Ties? Casper Klynge [host] Wolfgang Ischinger [guest] Chairman - Munich Security Conference Wolfgang Ischinger (@ischinger) / Twitter Running time: 55:45 [MUSIC] CASPER KLYNGE: Hello, and welcome to Tech Fit 4 Europe and your podcast serious looking at the big policy questions behind today’s technologies and the people who shape them. My name is Casper Klynge, I’m the vice president for European government affairs at Microsoft. Together with my team, I’ll be bringing you some of the most influential voices on pressing policy issues. Thanks for joining and enjoy the episode. Well, once again, welcome to the Tech Fit 4 Europe podcast. It’s going to be, I think, a very interesting discussion today because I’m honored to have with me Ambassador Wolfgang Ischinger, a long-term diplomat who served in Washington, D.C., and London. And also, a person I’ve actually had an encounter within a previous life because I was serving in Kosovo for the European Union, heading the planning mission for the Rule of Law mission when Ambassador Ischinger was representing the troika and the status negotiations for Kosovo. We do have a dark past together. But we’re going to have a discussion about foreign policy, about geopolitics, about the role of technology and digitalization in today’s world. First of all, Ambassador Ischinger – Wolfgang – great to have you on the pod and thanks very much for doing this. WOLFGANG ISCHINGER: Pleasure to be with you, Casper. Real pleasure. CASPER KLYNGE: Fantastic. Just to come clean from the beginning, we of course at Microsoft are a close partner of the Munich Security Conference and are really happy to support the work that you’re doing there. I thought I would begin by being totally inappropriate. Of course, being Danish, Wolfgang, you know that there is no filter between what we think and what comes out. I thought I would say you’re an old hand, and apologies for perhaps making that statement in the beginning. You’ve been in diplomacy for decades. You’ve been following international relations. How has that changed in the last 10, 15, 20 years? Of course, I’m alluding to the role that technology is playing in today’s world. Why don’t we begin there? WOLFGANG ISCHINGER: That’s a great question, Casper, and quite frankly, let me start by pointing to a fundamental change that I’ve seen over the years with the organization I’m now responsible for – the Munich Security Conference. 1 Tech Fit 4 Europe podcast Episode 11 Guest: Wolfgang Ischinger When I first attended this annual event in Munich as a simple participant way back in the 1990s when I was political director in the German Foreign Ministry, the people who came together there were generals, senior diplomats, foreign ministers, defense ministers, and some academic advisors at NGO representatives. There was no tech industry present. We thought or they thought that the business of international crisis management, the business of managing global affairs was essentially something for diplomats and the military to handle. Today, fast forward, enormous change. In today’s world, when I define international security, I cannot define this term without including in a very, very comprehensive manner all sorts of elements of technology. We cannot discuss cybersecurity, for example, among generals and diplomats because we’re simply, quite frankly, not competent in that. So, we need the tech folks. We need even let me put it this way: We need the next generation because these people are usually more competent than my generation. That is a very simple example of how dramatic the change has been over the years. I have found that going forward, for the Munich Security Conference, issues like tech, innovation, to the extent that they will influence defense and international cooperation, international institutions, etc., will be just as important as, for example, questions of global energy security, global climate security, global health security. That’s the one we learned over the last year. CASPER KLYNGE: Absolutely. WOLFGANG ISCHINGER: This is a non-military area of international security that 20 years ago no one was actually ready to talk about that in Munich. So, enormous change, and the tech change is the single most important one because it has, of course, also changed the way diplomats do their business. When I was a young diplomat, we would type a report and that would then be encrypted in a very complicated manner by some specialists and sent home. Today, my younger colleagues in the German Foreign Ministry and Danish Foreign Ministry and State Department, they communicate with each other of course via e-mail and other options all day long. It’s a far more comprehensive communications environment in which we live. That has substantially and dramatically changed the way diplomacy is actually conducted today as a business. CASPER KLYNGE: Of course, this is sweet music in my ears. It will come as no surprise. Of course, also, when I look at the job previously being an ambassador to the tech industry, I couldn’t agree more with your points. As a long-term observer and a practitioner in diplomacy, do you think that the reckoning that you have today, Wolfgang, is that shared by diplomats more widely or do we still have a catch-up need for diplomacy to evolve into a 21st century where technology and digitalization has not only changed the pace of diplomacy, but in fact, also changed the nature of diplomacy? WOLFGANG ISCHINGER: Absolutely. Of course, we are in a catching-up kind of phase. Let me try to make a very fundamental point. When I went to law school, essentially half a century ago, I’m sorry to say, the idea presented to us students at the time was that the state – that governments – actually have a monopoly concerning the ability to inflict major damage. Speaking of kinetic energy, if somebody violates your borders, you send in the tanks or the airplanes and you fire at them and that is only being done under the auspices or directly executed by government forces. 2 Tech Fit 4 Europe podcast Episode 11 Guest: Wolfgang Ischinger Today, the capacity to inflict damage as we have just seen recently with the Colonial Pipeline and so many other examples and solar winds in the United States, the capacity to inflict damage is no longer a monopoly of governments. The entire international system, the relationship, the power balance has changed in a fundamental way. Non-government actors, as we call them, all of a sudden assume roles and responsibilities or irresponsibilities, I should say, that were unknown to us in the world of diplomacy. We’re all scratching our heads and trying to figure out, is the system which our grandfathers erected in New York, the U.N., built on the ashes of World War Two, where nation-states are the only ones admitted as members, is that still the right kind of configuration? Or should certain non-state actors, whether they are large companies – many companies like the one you’re representing, have of course a much larger budget than many governments and are far more powerful than many of the small governments around. What about large NGOs like Human Rights Watch, Amnesty, or so? Or foundations like the Gates Foundation, which have done more for global health than the entire WHO was able to do for decades. The tech revolution, in my view as an at least former practicing diplomat, has brought about change which we diplomats find very hard to put our arms around. It’s a huge challenge and it’s only beginning. CASPER KLYNGE: I’d be curious to ask you how you see that evolve also in the framework of the Munich Security Conference. I think what you’re pointing out here, Wolfgang, is such a fundamental aspect of the world we live in. Unfortunately, when we look back at the last 14 months with COVID-19, we have had a pause on normal life, but unfortunately, the cyber-attacks have not paused our activities. In fact, we’ve seen, as you mentioned, a number of high-profile attacks. We’ve seen even healthcare services being attacked by particularly unethical aggressors. How has that set itself through in the Munich Security Conference? Do you see the cybersecurity threat being discussed in the same way as you would if green men crosses a border, and thereby in a very fundamental way, breaks the sovereignty of nations? Do you think that has evolved into a mainstream discussion today? WOLFGANG ISCHINGER: Increasingly so, yes. We are here on a rapidly evolving trajectory, where four or five years ago, when I put a cybersecurity item on our agenda in Munich, I was worried that people would go and have coffee when somebody would climb up and speak from the restroom with using terms which most generals or most parliamentarians, at least at that time, were not yet sufficiently familiar with. But the opposite happened. We found that these first cyber events which we organized attracted enormous attention. People were not stupid. They understood that this is actually a future coming challenge which will grow in terms of importance for our lives, for our work in terms of new threats. Yesterday, in a different setting, somebody said in a meeting I attended cyber can be a tool, a useful tool for mankind, not only for communication purposes, it can also be a weapon.