The Future of EU-US Tech Security Policy – Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA)

Ronan Murphy
Hello everybody, and thank you very much for joining us here. This is the Center for European Policy Analysis conversation hosted in conjunction with the Embassy of Poland in the United States, and we’re talking today about the the future of US-EU tech security policy. The reason we’re partnering with Poland is because Poland is currently President of the European Council. So we’re delighted to be joined from Poland, live, we hope, by Piotr Kobielski, who is the, and make sure I want to give you a full title, the Deputy Head and International Cooperation Chairman of the Polish Presidency Task Force at the Ministry of Digital Affairs the Republic of Poland, and we’re also joined by our senior fellow here at CEPA, that is Fiona Alexander, who has many, many years experience in government here in the United States, and is a strategist in residence at the School of International Service, Distinguished Fellow at the Internet Fellow at the Internet Governance Lab at American University, As well as being a senior fellow at CEPA and working in her own consultancy. Full bios will be available on our site. Don’t worry. And we’re also delighted to be joined by Steve Lang. And Steve is currently the Coordinator for International Communications and Information Policy at the US Department of State. I should refer to you as the Honorable Steve Lang, I’m quite sure. And we might start with you about bounce across the Atlantic a bit here in sequence, Steve, and talk about when we’re talking about technology and security, and we’re talking about the US position. And you’ve long operated a model here of secure by design, via trusted vendors, partners that you can work with. How can you expand or how are you expanding those definitions, maybe to work with partners like the EU and trusted allies elsewhere.

Steve Lang
Well, thank you very much, Ronan, and thank you for the opportunity for joining this great panel. It’s always great to be able to have this kind of engagement with stakeholders in industry, civil society, academia, the technical community. I actually feel like Fiona falls into every single one of those categories. So this is this is really a good panel, but I think this topic is extremely important. Technology is increasingly foundational to economic power, military strength and geopolitical influence. And if we don’t set the global standards for technology, others will, particularly in cyberspace and digital policy, if you’re not setting the conditions in your favor, they are being set for you, and we, in the US State Department, are committed to creating and enhancing international partnerships to demonstrate American leadership and leverage US companies to counter and defeat cyber threats while advancing a vision for technology governance that embodies our shared democratic values. As Secretary Rubio has noted, all of the innovation that will advance the economies of this century will be based on telecommunications and digital technologies. Secure technology is the foundation of a prosperous economy, whether we’re talking about 5g or 6g cellular services, satellite networks, undersea cables, data centers or cloud services, and cloud storage. And, an ICT ecosystem that includes all these parts is most secure when it’s built by trusted suppliers and when strong cyber security practices are used throughout and we, in the State Department, in our engagement with counterparts overseas and stakeholders around the world continue to highlight the risks of untrusted technology and encourage governments to consider security and not just cost factors when, when setting regulations for ICT procurement, including data centers and cloud services, and we are very clear in our messages to other countries, to governments and to operators and companies around the world, that you should prioritize your own national security by putting in place policy and regulatory frameworks that fully exclude untrusted suppliers from the entire ICT ecosystem, including wireless networks, terrestrial and subsea cables, satellites, cloud services and data centers, etc. We make the point that there are clear and tangible benefits to using trusted ICT. Using trusted suppliers can help attract new businesses and provide a lower cost of ownership over the long term, by mitigating and avoiding key risks. We also believe strongly that use of trust of suppliers, signals to citizens and to the business community, a commitment to the essential building blocks of an innovation economy, including network security, the rule of law, protection of data privacy, protection of intellectual property, and free market competition, and, tech security is increasingly important to the business community. Companies want assurances that their data and IP really the lifeblood of their business, will be protected, and, as such, economies that rely upon trusted companies to supply their critical ICT infrastructure offer a more compelling case for foreign direct investment, so that is in some–what we’re prioritizing in our partnership and our engagement with governments and stakeholders around the world.

Ronan Murphy
Thank you very much, Steve. I think that tees you up, Piotr, maybe to talk about couple of months left in the Polish Presidency and where your priorities lie in terms of these digital and tech policy agenda. Some eminently quotable there, Steve, lots of things we could pull from what you had to say. We’re talking about clear and tangible benefits. We’re talking across a range of different infrastructure, 5g, 6g, undersea cables, and so on, and, what’s come back on the agenda in the EU in a big way is sovereignty, digital sovereignty. We are, we are talking here with the backdrop of a new trade conflict. And there is a danger, a likelihood, whatever way you want to put it, that tech policy will be dragged into that. And how do you see that from your side? Where does the competitiveness, sovereignty, working with trusted partners, whether it be US or otherwise, fit in with the with the agenda in the EU and for Poland in particular?

Piotr Kobielski
Okay, so good morning, everybody. It is a tremendous pleasure to be in this panel. And let me extend the perspective of the Polish Ministry of Digital Affairs, but also in general, I will try to provide, like, more general scope of the Polish Presidency and the Polish Administration as such. So when we were, like, planning the Polish Presidency in 2024 we were, obviously, we said that public consideration, so we ask the in general, the public, what–which priorities to choose for the Polish Presidency. And remember, that was the very beginning of the institutional cycle in the European Union, when Poland was among those first to be as a presidency right after the elections to the European Parliament and right after the setting up the new European Commission, at that very moment, we assumed that we won’t have too many legislative proposals in digital areas on the table. So it was up to the presidency to set the tone and to set the stage and agenda and somehow shape that future agenda of the digital affairs in the European Union. As you rightly mentioned, for the last couple of years, there is an ongoing debate within the European Union on the so-called Digital Sovereignty, or digital–Well, there are, like, a couple of names and phrases which we use to describe the attitude or the steps which the European Union is willing to take in order not to cut itself from the external partners, but work on its own abilities. Poland was traditionally in a group of those states who were willing to develop the internal market, including its digital angle. It means that we are much in favor of the openness towards our friends, like-minded partners, our allies from outside of the European Union or Europe as such. So usually each six months we, for instance, meet within the so called D9+ group of states, mostly from Scandinavia, but also Ireland, a couple of–like Estonia, a couple of other member states of this specific group. Why am I mentioning this? Because in our position during the Polish Presidency, but also in those traditional venues, and that is going to last right after the Polish presidency. We are willing and we are going to continue to build the bridges, regardless of the–regardless of supporting this digital sovereignty or digital autonomy, as we also call it, we are going still to work with with the various partners from outside of the European Union in order to support, well, as we call it also, this democratic community in the world, the community of human rights, the same countries which share the very same values as we do in Poland, but in European Union at large. Having said that, we said the following priorities for the Polish Presidency, the top one priority–number one priority was the cyber security. Remember that we are in a very unique situation when we border with the country which waged open aggression and war against another European member states. We have a common border with the Russian Federation. We also have a common border with the Ukraine, that is the victim of this aggression. We also have a common border with the Belarus, who is a very close allies of the Russia. Having said that and having in mind the situation that this entire conflict also moved into the cybersecurity sphere, we decided to select the cybersecurity as our top priority. There are a couple of venues and and issues in the cybersecurity that needs to be clarified in the European Union, and the one that is very important for us is a common methodology for the large-scale incidents. We want to have a common methodology and way we respond to the very large incidents in the European Union. We need the EU27 and we don’t want to have 27 approaches, national approaches, to such incidents. So that was our top priority. There were, like, other digital priorities, like AI, but also digital regulations, and the last one was digital diplomacy. Digital diplomacy. We put an emphasis on digital diplomacy as we wish to collaborate and work together with European Commission towards or vis a vis our digital partners in the world, including the US, including as Radosław Sikorski said, regardless the new administration in the White House, whether it is, whether these are like the Democrats or the Republicans, the Polish stance would be very much the same. We are going to stay as a very close ally to the US, and we wish to work very closely on digital issues. One obstacle. First obstacle we faced was which is pretty obvious, the AI diffusion rule, but regardless of certain tensions and changes and shapes in the policy, on both sides of the Atlantic, in European Union, but also in the in the US, we decided to keep the very same position to work very closely with our US, allies and other partners. The European Union has four digital partnerships with the Canada, Singapore, South Korea, and Japan. So we decided to put an emphasis on this, and just to, maybe to close my my intervention, just in couple of days in stretching which is a city in northern western part of Poland, on May the eighth, we are going to help the conference that is exactly dedicated to the digital diplomacy. We are going to held a gathering of the EU 27 digital ambassadors. So from each capital city there will be the so called Digital Ambassador taking part in this gathering. And once again, we are going to discuss the issue of the digital partnerships. And as the presidency, we are going to push and elaborate and encourage our friends from the other EU member states. Let’s keep let’s keep those channels of communication open, because we are the one community, transatlantic community, within the NATO, within the European Union, committed to the democracy, committed to the rule of law, committed to the human rights and we. Stay together otherwise, otherwise, there are like much, much powerful forces out there. And if we are divided, and if we set some borders or discrepancies between between both sides of the Atlantics, we are not going to, we are not going to keep the pace and stay in this race with those let’s call it like a little forces out there. Thank you.

Ronan Murphy
Thank you, Piotr. That’s, that’s, that’s very comprehensive. I think there’s a lot of common ground there, but between what you both said so far and I think we don’t need, we don’t need to be told in CEPA, but the virtues of Fiona, Alexander, come to you now, Fiona, and we heard about cleared and tangible benefits. We heard about partnerships that the EU has with others, and we heard about the US looking to work with like minded allies. And you have tremendous experience with the international bodies, whether it be the UN or or again, internet governance or other areas. What, what would you like to see and what, what do you see as the approach likely to be taken in the US, in particular, to engagement with those bodies on with other partners. And, like I said, I think there is, there is scope for Co Op, further cooperation, it seems. Yeah, I

Fiona Alexander
Thanks, Ronan, and thanks for the invitation. To participate today and offer some perspectives in terms of sort of cooperation on these issue sets across different parts of the multilateral ecosystem. I might sort of break it into two different buckets, I think, in a specialized agency like the International Telecommunication Union, which has a long history of working on tech specific issues and also has a long history of allowing other stakeholders to participate, clearly, not as an equal, because they’re not a government in terms of a member state. But there are structures in these other institutions, whether it’s itu or UNESCO or something, that allows other people to participate in the conversation, which took many years to develop, I think you’re likely to see much more of an opportunity and ability to cooperate when the conversation is narrow, when it’s focused and when it’s specific to the issue at hand. And I think what happens is that in the larger multilateral ecosystem, and here I’m thinking of the New York based conversations and broader based institutions. I think the conversation often strays from the issue at hand, and often other issues get added in. And this is what happens, I think, in a larger geopolitical debate, where, when countries are together to talk about a certain issues, the conversation becomes almost like a Christmas tree and other issues that get added in. And I think what you’re seeing, and it’s not my job to speak for the current administration, I’ll defer to Ambassador Lang to do that. That’s the show. But it seems to me, just observing the cycle, I think, when the conversation becomes broad and when it starts to pull in a lot of issues that are not direct to the issue at hand, it’s becoming harder and harder for the US to agree with people, because the current administration has very specific views on what it wants and what it doesn’t want. So I think that could be a challenge we see going forward. So I think, you know, there’s great opportunity in sort of specialized agencies where there’s a focused conversation and you can talk and work together. I think the conversation becomes harder in the larger system when new issues get added in. And I was pleased to see maybe please is the wrong word, but I was intrigued to see what happened a few weeks ago at the Commission on science technology development, when the US proposed a streamlining of a conversation to make it more focused. I was always a big fan of that, and actually tried it many times when I was in the US government, in my environment. And often people don’t like that, because people get attached to the words that are there. Just want to update them, and then the conversation become instead of having the two or three page document, you end up with a 15 page document, and then next, the next cycle, an 18 page document. So I think this is a good opportunity for everyone to kind of have a level set and do some streamlining of the issues, and maybe then there’s opportunity for more collaboration and what’s happening in this space. But again, I’m a big fan of focusing in the conversation where you can have a place to have stakeholders be involved, and to have a conversation where the people that actually own and operate and run the networks are involved in the conversation, whether that’s industry or technical experts, and some institutions in the multilateral system are better adept at doing that than others,

Ronan Murphy
and given the the maybe skeptical view about multilateral organizations in the US at the moment, do you see, do you see those playing a role here? Or is that streamlined negotiation almost have to be face to face, peer to peer, whatever, one to one, a multi can be multilateral, but it involves parties who are already in a gang together. If you understand me, I know there’s ongoing negotiations around trade, and they’re they’re being broken into country by country. Is that a better is that a better way to get it done?

Fiona Alexander
One way is better than the other, and they’re not mutually exclusive. The multilateral so. System works is it’s whoever gets the most people on their side wins the conversation. And so that requires you to build coalitions. It’s very hard to go into a multilateral environment on your own and win whatever the win may be for you, but the same is true in a bilateral negotiation. These are all gifts and takes, and these are all compromises. So having regional blocks and for the US, the transatlantic relationship is important, but not any less important than the America’s regional relationship as well. Right? The US is part of lots of regions, and Europe has multiple complex separate regions other than the European Commission or the European Union. So the more you can build a bridge and the more you can have a broad set of coalition members, the more likely you are to have a good outcome in a multilateral setting, but that’s more complicated and can take more time.

Ronan Murphy
Yeah, yeah. And I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. You get more people on your side, then that’s that’s how you move things along and filter might come back to you. It’s delighted to hear you mentioning the d9 plus, it’s a an organization, if we can call it an organization, a grouping, and which we’ve done quite a bit of work here at CEPA and continue to do so. And I know, I know you, you mentioned specifically cyber security, not necessarily an area the D9+ spends a lot of time on. But how does that marry with the the other item on the you tech agenda, the competitiveness compass, did you know, delivering on the goals in the digital decade, delivering on the recommendations of the draggy reports? And how is that done in a sovereign way? Or can it be done in a sovereign way? I challenge that assumption and where, where partnerships will play a role there.

Piotr Kobielski
I believe there’s no contradiction in incorporating with the outside partners. As I already underlined this. I mean, once again, if we, if we keep it as a as a one community, there’s, there’s no such contradiction as such. Specifically, during one of the previous meetings of the d9 plus in the in the Netherlands, in the Amsterdam, we were like highlighting a couple of angles in securing this technological security. One is, for instance, coming out of the finance European Investment Bank, when the European Investment Bank is reorienting the funds towards the cyber security and the security project as such, in Poland, we have our national perspective, national national approach to those, to those issues. How is that? How do we do it? We spend not two percentage points for of our GDP for our of our security, we are spending almost like 4.5 of the GDP percentage points for the for the security, maybe, maybe in near future, we are going to reach even 5.5 percentage points of our spending for the security me by myself. I come from the Military University of Technology. I joined that college in 2014 Now you wouldn’t, you wouldn’t even compare it to 2014 in terms of the new laboratories, in terms of developing new sets of technologies for the military because of the war in Ukraine. In 2022 just weeks after the the invasions, we invasion. We adopted the new the new Act dedicated to to the military, to our armed forces, but there was a one specific issue regulated in this in this act, and that was asserting our Cyber Command. It was in the past. It was in the past, but this command received a legal basis for developing the cyber security in Polish armed forces, but it was also vested with another task, which is a digital transformation of the of the of the Polish armed forces. So when you ask me, what is the venue we are trying to look into or or explore these are the military, because of the funds in the military and because of the technology and the gigs the students who then raise in the ranks of such institutions. They provide the new technologies into the system, and then, even when they retire. Even when they leave the armed forces, they join the market. So they are automatically the part of the ICT sector, of the specialists who are of the great value in general, not only the military, but also in this, in this civil sector.

Ronan Murphy
Thanks, Piotr. I think you’re talking. There about building cyber literacy at a high level. And I might, I might come to you, Ambassador to you, Steve, about the something that has worked quite well in the cyber area. In particular, we can’t divorce security from tech that’s now acknowledged. And there are, there are, you know, aspects of regulation that are troubling on both sides of the Atlantic, certainly a higher volume of it coming from Brussels. But COVID mentioned as well the the AI diffusion rules, which the polls in particular were not happy about and and I can understand that. But how does the how is that dialog progressing, and how important is the cooperation in staying ahead of competitors who we may not want to get ahead.

Steve Lang
Thanks, Ronan. And first of all, I just want to highlight that the United States appreciates Poland’s attention to cybersecurity and cyber defense during its Presidency of the EU Council, and also that we support the Warsaw calls recognition that investing in Europe’s digital resilience has to go hand in hand with establishing more effective coordination and incident response mechanisms. We also want to encourage Poland’s interest in regulation simplification efforts. Vice President Vance in particular, has been emphatic on the importance of reducing barriers to innovation across the tech sector, because innovation is the engine that drives the economy on both sides of the Atlantic, US companies that are are better and able to innovate and create new and existing technologies and exciting technologies that provide secure, reliable and and trustworthy products can enable all of our economies to excel, and we believe that this is true across the spectrum of critical technologies, from cellular and satellite to cloud and computing, and in this sense, as Secretary Rubio has said several times, America first is not America alone, and we are going to continue to emphasize to partners that our growth and innovation can bring mutual prosperity and security through partnership and cooperation on these critical issues, including secure cloud and our administration has remained concerned that certain European approaches to technology security, especially for cloud services, may harm our shared national and cyber security that the US opposes any form of sovereignty, requirements that are are motivated by political factors or or a protectionist interest that would any any requirements that would restrict you As companies from Cloud tenders anywhere in the world, US cloud service providers provide best in class cybersecurity. Instead of barring these firms, we encourage countries to leverage the security these providers can offer to provide a more secure and stable cyberspace. We share the EU’s concerns regarding governments that that indiscriminately and arbitrarily access sensitive information and critical data. However, we reject any cybersecurity approach that treats cloud service providers operating in rights based democracies the same as countries subject to authoritarian control and without safeguards for for government collection and handling of sensitive information. So we want to build partnerships with like minded partners around the world, and see that transatlantic partnership as critical to enhancing our shared cyber security and our economic prosperity.

Ronan Murphy
Thank you very much. I think you took just to talk about competitiveness in Europe, to talk about sovereignty, how the two of those overlap and Fiona? It’s maybe a bold question. But knowing what you know, is there a path forward technically for the European Union, or European Europe in general, that does not involve working with the large American tech firms. I know cloud is the thing that gets brought to to bear, and maybe vice versa when it comes to building secure telecoms networks in the US. Suppliers from Europe play a very, very significant role there as well. But is there a path forward without that cooperation? Fiona.

Fiona Alexander
So I think the short answer is no, I just don’t see it happening, right? And the reality is that, you know, the days of having government owned telecom operators as long. Asked, that’s how we started years ago with the ITU, with the telegraph union and the telecom union, and we had national champions, or in the US a de facto government sanctioned monopoly in the form of TNT. And the world has moved so far beyond that. So I don’t really see how we go back to that in a meaningful way, for a variety of reasons, but at the end, you know, one of the biggest reasons, though, is that all these applications and services and things that we’re talking about all rely on sort of, or use at their core, underlying, you know, internet, TCPIP standards and infrastructure, and those are open, they’re participatory, they’re voluntary, they’re bottom up. And I just don’t see the world shifting away from IP based infrastructure that all these other services are relying on. I mean, there’s really no incentive to do that. There’s no market to do that. And again, I just don’t see us sort of retrograde, going back to like a 1920s communications infrastructure with the world, and the networks being so interconnected the way that they are, that doesn’t mean that we don’t have to have hard conversations, and that’s the advantage of the transatlantic relationship and a long history of friendship, right? With friends, sometimes you can have hard conversations and be honest with each other, and maybe they’re not always so pleasant, but you have to have those conversations, and you have to be comfortable being truthful with each other to figure out how to find a path forward. And I think that’s where the transatlantic relationship actually excels more than other relationships. The US might have is you have this long history of cooperation. You have a long history of shared values. I think the ordering of those values can be different, and that introduces conflict in the US, free speech and First Amendment is like number one. And I think in Europe, for historical reasons, privacy is number one, and just that flip of ordering between one and two can cause conflict and has historically. But I do think that, again, the beauty of old friendships is that you can be honest with each other. And so I do think that there’s paths and ways for people to talk and work together.

Ronan Murphy
Thanks, Fiona, I think your your point about ordering of of priorities is well made. It’s one I’ve I’ve robbed and reused for many other people. So thanks. Thanks for that. And might come back to you on the remaining couple of months in the Polish Presidency. I know you’ve mentioned you’ve got the digital minute or the digital ambassadors together next week on the Polish coast. Did that get asked? And I know you have another, another event in Gdansk in June.

Piotr Kobielski
[unintelliginble] it’s stretching. If you remember the the speech of the church within Fulton, he was mentioning from the stretching in the north to the trees in the south we have this iron curtain. So there’s like a close reference to this, to this, to this, to this speech…

Ronan Murphy
Trying to avoid a digital iron curtain here. Boom, boom. But yes, go on.

Piotr Kobielski
Yeah. I mean in terms of of our events, I mean couple of ideas we were like exploring for the very first time as the ministry of digital affairs, not necessarily each member state of the European of the European Union has a separate Ministry of digital affairs. We are very lucky. We have a separate one in in our competence. We have a very broad scope of issues, from from the cyber security, into the E government, into the AI, and so on and so forth. Because of it, because of it, we had this free hand in exploring a couple of new venues during the during the Polish Presidency, for instance, we joined the forces with the other institutions, and we said the AI house in Davos. So we were like exploring and sharing our ideas and our AI projects, where to be in Davos in January. And on the other hand, we are going to wrap up the Polish Presidency by the so called Digital summit in Gdansk, this time in Gdansk, once again, it is a northern part of Poland by the sea, a beautiful place, the consisting of actually three, three towns. We call it like a tree city. The main one is Gdansk, with a very long history of international cooperation from the Middle Ages until I until just just recently. And we are going to wrap up, and we are going to conclude on the initiatives, as you also mentioned, that were already announced by the European Commission. There were, like a couple of those, especially on the AI continent, but also on the quantum technologies. European Union is very strong in the quantum technologies and the supercomputers. We have a couple of companies also of both polish and other European member state origin. Iqm, for instance, or Isai, the satellite company that is also providing the services to the Ukraine right now was set up by the Polish engineers and is helping the Ukraine in this effort. And that is a satellite company, a very strong one at this very moment. But so in ignites during the digital summit we are going to wrap up and conclude on those issues. The E commerce is another venue we are going to explore in terms of our not only competitiveness, but in terms of our security, the security of each customer in the European Union when we have the so called low value packages being important into the European Union from certain other outside countries in the world. It’s, it’s just like a tsunami wave that is, that is, that was being moved in the European Union. And because of this, the the the digital companies, they face tremendous problems and and, and the fuse competence towards those foreign companies. We also treat this as a, as a technological and digital security so there are, like various, various ideas, various initiatives coming out of the European Commission. We, as a presidency, we support this. We provide, we provide the space to discuss it and maybe to decide certain issues. And the main point of it would be the digital summit in the very end of our presidency. That is the June 17 and 18th. June, 17 and 18th. We are working on the streaming of this conference, maybe to give the the possibility to our friends from abroad, from from outside of the European Union. But we still want to have those experts, ministers for digital affairs, commissioners, writing dice, writing in this, in this, in this place to discuss, on spot, on spot, those very important issues for us.

Ronan Murphy
Thank you very much. Thanks for I think we’ve we sold, we sold the Baltic coast of Poland quite well there. So well done. And maybe, maybe there’s chance for further engagements and with with some of the people on this call there, we’ll talk about that again. But Steve, to come to you maybe for your concluding remarks. We’ve got the we’ve got the polling presidency wrapping up in a couple of months and but the agenda probably isn’t going to, isn’t expected to dramatically change. Coming out of Europe, we somehow made it this far without mentioning China specifically. But China is that looming threat that may may gallop ahead in certain areas that I think people that’s that’s some of the reason for some of the the AO diffusion rules and other things happening. How do you see, or is there any, is there any scope for progress in agreements, as maybe, like Fiona suggests, on narrow areas you’ve mentioned the cyber dialog with the EU in the coming weeks and months, as you see it, then what would you like to progress there? If possible?

Steve Lang
Well, you covered a lot of territory in that question. First of all, I I guess I’ll note that I thought Fiona’s comments on the same values in different ordering was was very informative. And I think in terms of competition with China and its role in the tech competition, the global tech environment. I think it’s important for us to remind ourselves that the differences in our values between the United States and the EU are not as great as the differences that we have, that we both have with the values of the Chinese Communist Party and its approach to tech governance. And I think that does mean that there is the opportunity for collaboration and cooperation and to find agreements, especially on more technical issues as Fiona, as Fiona highlighted, because cyber and digital diplomacy are about shaping the future and the rules of the road before our adversaries do, and if we don’t set the global standards, they will. Trans Atlantic cooperation supports countering our adversaries in cyberspace to limit their malicious activities in the ICT ecosystem and the United States remains committed to working with like minded partners to ensure that the digital tools remain a force for liberty and innovation, not oppression and the information freedom. Prevails over information control and manipulation. But I think at the same time, it’s important to remember that we do have differences, and we the United States remains concerned about some European approaches to technology, security and digital regulation. But again, as Fiona mentioned, this is why we need to have the tough conversations with our friends across the Atlanta.

Ronan Murphy
Thank you very much. And Fiona, is there anything specific that [unintelligible] is a good starting point? You may not have one, but is there an area you’d like to see immediate cooperation? You mentioned TCPIP and I know we’ve discussed before, internet governance in general, internet freedom, which it goes beyond the US, EU relationship, specifically. But is that perhaps an area to start?

Fiona Alexander
Yeah, I think, look, I mean, it’s always useful to look at what’s on the global stage and the agenda for this year. And this year is a big conversation about the renewal of Internet Governance Forum and the 20th anniversary of the World Summit on the Information Society. And I think in both of these issue sets, the US and Europe are very much aligned again, I think that there’s some shifts in US positions on broader un funding and broader potentially and broader un issues that can complicate that if the conversation doesn’t stay a little bit more narrow so, but I do think that you know, looking at what’s on our agenda for this year, figuring out how to make sure that the processes that are ongoing, whether it’s the list is plus 20 review or the upcoming IGF, or conversations around what seems to me to be efforts in New York to consolidate AI policy making in a way that I’m not sure makes sense, but finding ways to work together on specific challenges that are in front of us this year, I think, is a good place to start, in addition to the conversation that Ambassador Lang laid out about how to, how to, how do people and countries with shared values and shared histories figure out how to deal with the challenges of the the approach that China and other authoritarian regimes, you know, take on these issues, which are definitely markedly, very different from the US and the Europe. So continuing to work on those issues as I think helps

Ronan Murphy
Well. Thank you very much Fiona. And I think, I think it’s, it’s a nice way for us, maybe, to wrap up that we have, we have more in common than we than we don’t it. I pretty sure I’m misquoting, badly, quoting President Clinton there, but he, he is also, of course, responsible for what is a seminal now moment in tech policy. He delivered a speech in the mid 90s on on freedom of the internet. And it’d be difficult to argue that that hasn’t that wasn’t a good decision for the United States, in particular, when you look at the competitiveness and the comparable productivity and everything that went with it since. But listen. Thank you very much to all three of our contributors today. First of all, I’d like to thank, of course, the Embassy of the Republic opponents the United States for for their assistance and support in in preparing and helping us get this conversation on EU us tech security policy together. So thank you to you Piotr for that. Thank you, Ambassador Steve Lang, for contributing, and to our Senior fellow, Fiona Alexander, this is a, is a is going to be available on the CEPA website. We encourage everybody to look at our content. We mentioned the D9+, I hear digital resilience mentioned there regards to security. We’ve got a great report coming out very soon on just that topic within NATO regarding the cloud, and we continue to publish many articles on other areas that we discussed on the call today, and so thank you very much to all of you for contributing, and we hope to talk to you soon.