Global cybersecurity challenges: Disentangling risks and opportunities in international politics - IFRI

International politics are increasingly intertwined with cyber-related issues. Cyberattacks are more and more frequent and sophisticated; their perpetrators, like their victims, may be governments or private actors.

Cyberconflict is a particularly difficult phenomenon to grasp, given the multiplicity of actors involved, the difficulty of attributing attacks to a specific actor, and the emergence of new forms of “information warfare”. Attempts to regulate cyberspace on a global scale have so far met with only limited results due to fierce international competition among cyber powers. The tremendous multiplication of connected, “smart” devices and the multifaceted expectations towards 5G networks increase the geopolitical risks. Key global powers now assert themselves with regard to the network’s infrastructure (Internet, submarine cables, telecommunications equipment), crossed by huge financial and national security stakes.

11:00-12:30 Artificial intelligence and 5G

Breakthrough technologies like artificial intelligence and 5G have clear ‘high politics’ stakes on the global stage. In this session speakers will stress that geopolitical dimension by focusing on key challenges: China’s ambitious strategies in AI and 5G and their implications for the West; the European Union’s answer(s) in these fields, and the global legal challenges posed by the dissemination of these technologies, as well as the impact of AI as a lever of development in Africa.

Chair

Alfredo Valladão, Senior Fellow, Policy Center of the New South (Rabat)

Speakers

Megan Lamberth, Research Assistant, Technology and National Security Program, Center for a New American Security (Washington DC)

Lucien Castex, Secretary-General, Internet Society France Chapter (Paris)

Jan-Peter Kleinhans, Project Director Security in the Internet of Things, Stiftung Neue Verantwortung (Berlin)

Jean-Christophe Noël, Associate Fellow, Security Studies Center, Ifri (Paris)