An initiative led by the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center in partnership with the US Department of State continues to focus on facilitating greater constructive exchange among multisectoral thought leaders and government leaders as they work to implement commitments made at the ninth Summit of the Americas. This readout was informed by a private, information-gathering roundtable and several one-on-one conversations with leading experts in the digital space.

Executive summary

At the ninth Summit of the Americas, regional leaders agreed on the adoption of a Regional Agenda for Digital Transformation that reaffirmed the need for a dynamic and resilient digital ecosystem that promotes digital inclusion for all peoples. The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated the digital divide globally, but these gaps were shown to be deeper in developing countries, disproportionately affecting women, children, persons with disabilities, and other vulnerable and/or marginalized individuals. Through this agenda, inclusive workforce development remains a key theme as an avenue to help bridge the digital divide and skills gap across the Americas.

As part of the Atlantic Council’s consultative process, thought leaders and practitioners evaluated progress made in the implementation of the Regional Agenda for Digital Transformation agreed on at the Summit of Americas, resulting in three concrete recommendations: (1) leverage regional alliances and intraregional cooperation mechanisms to accelerate implementation of the agenda; (2) strengthen public-private partnerships and multisectoral coordination to ensure adequate financing for tailored capacity-building programs, the expansion of digital infrastructure, and internet access; and (3) prioritize the involvement of local youth groups and civil society organizations, given their on-the-ground knowledge and role as critical indicators of implementation.

Recommendations for advancing digitalization and workforce development in the Americas:

Report

May 31, 2024

PACC 2030 objectives: The road to implementation

By Wazim Mowla, Charlene Aguilera

The Atlantic Council organized a PACC 2030 Working Group and worked closely with governments, the business community, and civil society organizations to support the implementation of PACC 2030’s objectives.

Caribbean Climate Change & Climate Action

Report

Apr 16, 2024

Advancing health and resilience policies in Latin America and the Caribbean

By Isabel Chiriboga, Martin Cassinelli, Diego Area

During an off-the-record private roundtable, thought leaders and practitioners from across the Americas discussed how to further enhance access to and finance for health services and products in the region.

Coronavirus Latin America

Summit of the Americas

Amid global uncertainties and new challenges, the ninth Summit of the Americas is a renewed opportunity to bring about hemispheric cooperation and consensus to reach regional prosperity and security.

Staff

Isabel Chiriboga

Assistant Director

Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center

Colombia Corruption

Staff

Maite Gonzalez Latorre

Program Assistant

Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center

Americas Education

Staff

Diego Area

Deputy Director, Strategic Development

Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center

Crisis Management Democratic Transitions

The Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center broadens understanding of regional transformations and delivers constructive, results-oriented solutions to inform how the public and private sectors can advance hemispheric prosperity.

Learn more

The post The future of digital transformation and workforce development in Latin America and the Caribbean appeared first on Atlantic Council.

One of the first German words they taught me was “fleissig,” which means diligent, industrious, assiduous, and hard-working—all wrapped up into one word.

They would be shocked to learn that Germany today has the shortest average working hours of any advanced economy in the world, per Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development statistics for 2022. The average number of hours worked by Germans has fallen by 30 percent in the last half century, and it is a full 25 percent below US levels.

That has become a serious enough drag on the German economy that the country’s government is cobbling together tax breaks on overtime hours, reports the Financial Times, and an overhaul on jobless benefits to shift incentives toward those that favor hard work. This “growth plan” could be unveiled as soon as next month.

The context is a concerning one: Germany was once the growth engine of Europe, but it’s currently the world’s weakest major economy, with negative growth last year of 0.2 percent and only 0.2 percent positive growth in the first quarter of this year. Germany is Europe’s biggest economy, accounting for a quarter of the European Union’s eighteen-trillion-dollar gross domestic product (GDP). So, how Germany goes, so goes Europe.

“Germany is struggling,” Kevin Fletcher, Harri Kemp, and Galen Sher, all economists in the International Monetary Fund’s Europe Department, wrote in late March. “It was the only G7 economy to shrink last year and is set to be the group’s slowest growing economy again this year, according to our latest projections.”

They call for ambitious reforms to take on what they consider German economic challenges that don’t get enough attention: aging, labor and skills shortages, underinvestment, and too much red tape. Less important, they argue, are areas getting more attention: higher energy prices and concerns about deindustrialization, which the economists call “overstated.”

Christian Lindner, the country’s finance minister, has stressed reforms aimed at restoring longer working hours as a crucial part of the picture. “In Italy, France, and elsewhere, there is significantly more work done than here,” the Financial Times quoted Lindner as saying at recent IMF-World Bank meetings in Washington.

My parents might well question whether state incentives will solve the problem. We may soon find out, as the federal government is engineering policies aimed at increasing economic dynamism.

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter: @FredKempe.

This edition is part of Frederick Kempe’s Inflection Points Today newsletter, a column of quick-hit insights on a world in transition. To receive this newsletter throughout the week, sign up here.

The post ‘Auf Wiedersehen’ to hard-working Germany? appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On Thursday, April 25, the Atlantic Council’s WIn Fellowship hosted a panel discussion on the vital role Arab women ambassadors play in shaping the field of diplomacy, both in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, and globally.

The conversation was moderated by Lynn Monzer, Deputy Director of the Atlantic Council’s WIn Fellowship and featured H.E. Sheikha Al-Zain Al-Sabah, Ambassador of the State of Kuwait to the United States of America; H.E. Hanene Tajouri Bessassi, Ambassador of the Republic of Tunisia to the United States of America; and H.E. Amal Mudallali, former Ambassador to the Permanent Mission of Lebanon to the United Nations (UN).  

Deciding on diplomacy

H.E. Sheikha Al-Zain Al-Sabah initiated the conversation by sharing insights from her background in journalism, where she encountered diverse mindsets through storytelling. This experience highlighted her natural diplomatic skills, as navigating complex systems and creating sustainable solutions in business mirrored key aspects of diplomacy. These experiences and insights logically paved the way for her career in diplomacy.

Similarly, H.E. Hanene Tajouri Bessassi transitioned from an initial aspiration to become a physician to recognizing the diplomatic field as another form of healing. In her view, diplomacy involves listening to those in distress, diagnosing societal issues, and crafting viable solutions, thus paralleling the healing processes in medicine.

Like Al-Sabah, H.E. Amal Mudallali started in journalism, with ambitions centered on reporting at the UN. After achieving this, she ventured deeper into politics, eventually serving under two Lebanese prime ministers and later as the Ambassador of Lebanon to the UN. She emphasized the critical role of male allies in politics, where men predominantly hold power but greatly benefit from women’s collaborative and problem-solving skills.

In addition to winding career paths, all three diplomats agreed on the importance of a robust support system for success in diplomacy. Bessassi thanked her parents and husband specifically for the strength, independence, and commitment necessary to work in the diplomatic field. Echoing the sentiment on support systems, Mudallali highlighted her grandmother’s empowering role during her upbringing. She also stressed the crucial need for political backing, citing the potential difficulties and injustices faced without such support. Al-Sabah, similarly, underscored the significance of a nurturing ecosystem for achieving success. For her, the focus is on contributing back to this ecosystem and the broader community, often through mentoring other women, providing support, advice, and honest guidance on their professional journeys.

Navigating the field’s challenges

Bessassi then turned to the challenges facing women in diplomacy. She noted that despite Tunisia’s rich history of influential women leaders, gender parity remains elusive. This disparity is underscored by prevailing gender stereotypes that still hinder women’s effectiveness in all fields, including diplomacy. Bessassi argued against the perception that empathy—a trait often associated with women—is a weakness. Instead, she illustrated how empathy enhances diplomatic efforts by fostering consensus and compromise, bringing more people into the fold while working toward peace and cooperation.

The underrepresentation of women in global diplomacy was further addressed by Al-Sabah, who pointed out that women make up only 21 percent of ambassadors worldwide. She emphasized the importance of improving representation and noted that the participation of women on the panel, along with other women ambassadors in the United States from Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Mauritania, represents significant progress in altering public perceptions about women in diplomacy.

Mudallali echoed these concerns with specific examples from the United Nations, where women’s representation has been backsliding; the number of women UN representatives decreased from 52 in 2020 to 46 today. She linked this trend to a global phenomenon such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as countries have become more brazen in rejecting previously held norms such as equal gender representation. She also noted the decrease in women’s participation in peace negotiations. In 2020, women represented 23 percent of negotiators in active peace processes, dropping to 16 percent in 2023. Based on analysis of real-world peace processes, agreements between negotiators are much more likely to be reached when women have a strong influence on the negotiations.

Al-Sabah added that 2023 saw a 50 percent increase in war-induced violence against women, reinforcing the necessity for women’s voices in peace negotiations. This backslide in gender representation, Mudallali argued, demands urgent attention and action in line with UN Security Council Resolution 1325, which focuses on women, peace, and security.

Bessassi acknowledged these recent challenges nut also emphasized the power of collective effort among women ambassadors, which has the potential to catalyze global change. Mudallali shared this sentiment,expressing her feeling of responsibility to do everything possible to elevate women, believing that these challenges require structured, codified solutions. Al-Sabah concluded by underscoring the importance of integrating advocacy into diplomacy to empower women effectively. In Kuwait, for instance, the government established the Department of Human Rights within the country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs in part to address women’s empowerment. Internationally, too, organizations with similar aims must work together to implement Resolution 1325 to ensure countries adhere to international principles of women’s empowerment. For young women in the MENA region and beyond, seeing women in these roles not only offers a glimpse of what is possible but also instills hope and inspiration.

The future of diplomacy

Building on the theme of hope, Al-Sabah discussed a significant shift toward civic diplomacy following Israel’s invasion of Gaza, with women taking on an increased role in this space. She highlighted the courageous efforts of journalists like Shireen Abu Akleh, Plestia Alaqad, and Hind Khoudary who have used their personal cameras and cellphones to broadcast their voices are around the world. Al-Sabah stressed the urgent need for greater protection of journalists in Gaza and around the world, who face harassment and life-threatening dangers in their line of work.

Continuing the conversation, Bessassi emphasized the increasing importance of multilateralism now more than ever in addressing global challenges. She called for consistency in the international community’s approach, as the international community’s engagement on issues like the war in Gaza must avoid “double standards” to effectively address challenges in diplomacy.

Mudallali echoed the sentiments of her colleagues, concluding the panel with a call for strong advocacy for peace. She pointed out that recent global tensions have shifted the focus from collaboration to competition. By supporting women in diplomatic roles, Mudallali argued, societies will not only lift but also enhance their prospects for achieving lasting peace.

The way forward

Over a century since the first appointment of a women ambassador in 1920, women remain severely underrepresented in the predominantly male diplomacy sector. As of 2023, women account for only 20.54 percent of ambassadors worldwide, a decrease from 23 percent in 2020. The disparity is even more pronounced in the MENA region, where women make up just 10 percent of ambassadors, the lowest regional rate globally, highlighting a significant challenge for women in MENA diplomacy.

Despite these daunting numbers in MENA, there have been some encouraging signs of progress. The United Arab Emirates, for instance, has increased its proportion of women ambassadors by 5.5 percent between 2018 and 2023, reaching 12.5 percent. Additionally, a recent Arab Barometer report has shown a marked decrease throughout the MENA region over the past decade in the belief that men are better political leaders than women, suggesting growing acceptance of women in political and diplomatic roles.

However, effectively capitalizing on these openings requires systematic and sustained support. Algeria serves as a cautionary tale where a 2011 gender quota led to increased opposition to women in political leadership due to the absence of systemic improvements or societal readiness for such changes. Conversely, Tunisia witnessed an increase in openness toward women political leadership after the implementation of a similar quota and was further bolstered by President Kais Saied’s appointment of Najla Bouden Romdhane as the first female prime minister in the MENA region. These moves demonstrate that political backing and continued support of women is a crucial component to increasing women’s representation at both the political and diplomatic levels.

In addition to national efforts, international initiatives are crucial. UN Security Council Resolution 1325, which calls for women’s equal participation in preventing violent conflicts, is particularly significant. Supporting this resolution could significantly legitimize women’s roles in conflict mediation. This is supported by data showing that peace negotiations involving women are 35 percent more likely to last for at least fifteen years. Therefore, in the midst of shifting attitudes, a global drive for greater women participation in diplomacy, and the myriad conflicts necessitating peace negotiations, reform toward gender parity in diplomacy is as pressing and timely as ever for the MENA region.

Charles Johnson is a Young Global professional in the Atlantic Council’s Middle East programs

Jun 14, 2023

The WIn Fellowship 2023-2024 cohort

Building on the success of its inaugural cohort, the Women Innovators Fellowship (WIn) is expanding to Bahrain and the UAE, in addition to Saudi Arabia, as it continues to empower more women entrepreneurs from the Middle East. The program is thrilled to announce this year’s eighty-six recipients of its 2023 WIn Fellowship. The participants will receive a year-long program of executive education, mentoring, and networking opportunities in collaboration with Georgetown McDonough School of Business and with the support of the United States embassies in the three target countries and PepsiCo.

May 3, 2024

2024 WIn Fellowship Roadshow

WIn Fellows participate in a fully sponsored trip to the United States for leadership training at Georgetown and meetings with US business and government leaders.

Feb 24, 2023

2023 WIn Fellowship Roadshow

The WIn Fellowship roadshow is led by the Atlantic Council’s empowerME Initiative in cooperation with Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business with support from US Embassy Riyadh, UPS, and PepsiCo. The WIn Fellowship Roadshow participants, chosen from a highly competitive cohort of more than thirty applicants, receive a fully sponsored trip to the United States for leadership training at Georgetown and meetings with US business and government leaders.

Event Recap Jul 31, 2023

Empowering the future: The rising women workforce in Saudi Arabia’s private sector

By Lynn Monzer, Nibras Basitkey

Event recap on the empowering future of the workplace in Saudi Arabia and its impact on the private sector.

Economy & Business Future of Work

Event Recap Jul 24, 2023

Bridging the gender gap in venture capital

By Lynn Monzer, Nibras Basitkey

Event recap on the significance of venture funding for women entrepreneurs in the UAE.

Economy & Business Middle East

Event Recap Jul 18, 2023

An overview of gender parity in Bahrain: Progress, challenges, and the path forward

By Lynn Monzer, Nibras Basitkey

A recap of the First Workshop in Bahrain

Economy & Business Inclusive Growth

empowerME

empowerME at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East is shaping solutions to empower entrepreneurs, women, and youth and building coalitions of public and private partnerships to drive regional economic integration, prosperity, and job creation.

Explore the initiative

The post Gender parity in MENA diplomacy and its impact on peace appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On April 25^th, the Atlantic Council’s WIn Fellowship held a panel discussion exploring the projected impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on the global business landscape, highlighting how AI-driven strategies are revolutionizing industries worldwide.

The panel, which was moderated by Stefanie Falconi, Emerging Technologies Advisor at USAID, featured four experts working at the forefront of artificial intelligence integration in their respective fields. Speakers included Xiuzhu Lin, Director of Global Business Advisory, AI, at Marriott International; Geoffrey Schaefer, Head of Responsible AI, Chief AI Ethics Advisor at Booz Allen Hamilton; Wafa Ben-Hassine, Principal, Responsible Technology at Omidyar Network; and Aisha Saaka, Data & AI Manager at Accenture Federal Services.

The conversation ranged widely, with the speakers leveraging their expertise on the technology across sectors to touch on best practices for AI integration in companies, AI’s role in addressing social challenges, and responsible development and deployment.

Main Takeaways

Wafa Ben-Hassine kicked off the panel by explaining that society should guide the development and deployment of AI in order to harness its transformative power for good. Generative AI is one of the most promising technologies to emerge since the industrial revolution, and humanity should adopt a holistic approach for managing its growth. She proposed the implementation of guardrails developed by both civil society and technical experts to help mitigate AI’s risks.

Building on this theme, Xiuzhu Lin shifted the focus to the practical aspects of AI in business, discussing the conditions necessary for companies to effectively utilize AI. She pointed out that a business’s maturity often facilitates successful AI integration, exemplified by banks like Chase that have long employed machine learning and data science experts. Businesses adopting AI must often complete necessary pre-work, such as cleaning up their datasets. Lin advised those hoping to embrace AI to consider whether the technology aligns with their industry and if their companies have reached the maturity needed to take full advantage of it.

Geoffrey Schaefer then critiqued the top-down approach to managing generative AI, suggesting it hinders its transformative potential. He advocated for a more decentralized approach, allowing employees to tailor AI tools to their specific needs, which he argued could significantly boost productivity. Centralized dictums and protocol on how to use the technology could be less effective than simply putting it in as many hands as possible and allowing employees to adapt it to the idiosyncrasies of their individual work. The thinking goes that employees will find the most efficient ways to integrate AI tools into their own workflows, supercharging productivity from the bottom up. However, Schaefer also acknowledged the necessity of implementing strict guardrails to prevent issues such as the leakage of proprietary information.

Echoing the importance of a mature approach to AI, Aisha Saaka agreed with her co-panelists on the need for decentralization. Speaking on the public sector, she noted that end users want both trust and accountability to be integral to AI. One challenge that could arise when working with public sector partners is the inability to train their models through exposure to the wider internet. Saaka underscored the public’s desire for trust and accountability in AI applications, particularly in sensitive areas.

Further exploring AI’s broader implications, Xiuzhu Lin responded affirmatively to the role of AI in addressing significant policy issues, like sustainability modeling. Sustainability modeling, for instance, is an area where AI’s strengths in passing through large data sets, finding patterns, and modeling scenarios could be well leveraged. She nonetheless wondered whether humans will adequately utilize the capabilities and insights that AI will deliver. Schaefer added that AI is the greatest public policy tool ever invented. Counterintuitively, biased data may have useful implications for improving policy; he pointed to the discovery of the link between zip codes and race in America as a revealed bias that could be positively utilized. Thinkers should grapple with how AI can make society more perfect without expecting perfection from AI.

Towards the conclusion of the discussion, Wafa Ben-Hassine revisited the theme of AI’s speed and connectivity, suggesting it could revolutionize public policy engagement. She projected an opportunity to leverage its connective abilities in public policy spaces by helping citizens engage more efficiently with their governments, improving upon inefficient bureaucracies. However, she warned against deploying AI in high-stake areas without adequate safeguards. Governments such as France (which recently declared it would use AI to improve its public services) against deploying AI in contexts where failure creates measurable harm, such as on issues of criminal justice or social security.

Aisha Saaka shared her positive outlook, reflecting on how AI facilitated syndromic surveillance during the COVID-19 pandemic. She caveated her excitement by noting the prevailing need for local context to identify social and public health interventions.

Ben-Hassine argued for diverse participation within tech companies and public bodies and provided three frameworks for promoting inclusion: inclusivity from the outside-in, wherein communities are brought to developers and  share their experience; inside-out, wherein a diverse staff of employees can understands possible harms, issues, and needs; and the feedback loop between the two previous frameworks, given that the evolution of technology changes the scope of impact on different communities.

Meanwhile, Geoffrey Schaefer posited that AI could mend national social cohesion by improving interactions between Americans and their government. The rise in populism, anger, and dissatisfaction in the United States should be not surprising given that the touchpoint between many Americans and their government are frustrations like potholes, the Department of Motor Vehicles, and the Internal Revenue Service. Schaefer pointed out that by using AI to meet people’s needs more efficiently on the national level, trust can be restored in government and the degradation of the American social fabric can be halted.

In closing, Aisha Saaka highlighted a gap in technology education in the U.S., advocating for an educational campaign to better inform the public about AI. The average person probably does not fully understand how AI works, and an education campaign around the technology would be valuable. Xiuzhu Lin wrapped up by pointing to the practices of Anthropic, a company focused on ethically aligning AI with human values, underscoring the ongoing discourse on AI’s role in society.

The Way Forward

AI’s rapid evolution is a game-changer for businesses, altering operational frameworks and setting new benchmarks for efficiency and innovation. By automating routine tasks and analyzing vast datasets for actionable insights, AI is proving to be a crucial driver for growth, decision-making enhancement, and competitive edge in a dynamic market environment. However, the widespread adoption of the technology also brings both known and unknown risks and raises questions over ethical governance and implementation of AI.

Recent studies indicate that sectors like manufacturing, information technology, and healthcare are at the forefront of AI adoption, seamlessly integrating AI solutions into their core operations. Companies experienced in machine learning and data management are particularly well-equipped to capitalize on AI’s potential. Nevertheless, any business can advance by decentralizing AI usage and empowering employees to determine how best to implement AI in their specific roles. To navigate these changes, multi-stakeholder guardrails involving civil society, technical experts, and policymakers are essential to ensure that AI development aligns with societal values and needs. Businesses should assess their readiness for AI, customizing tools to meet operational demands and boost productivity, while the public sector should focus on AI applications that enhance efficiency without compromising safety. Moreover, continuous education across all societal levels is vital, coupled with public awareness campaigns that elucidate AI’s capabilities and limitations.

In terms of policy and social impact, AI should be utilized to analyze data for informed policymaking. Proactively addressing and leveraging biases in data can lead to societal improvements. Inclusion of diverse groups in the AI design and development process is critical to avoid marginalizing vulnerable communities, and regular evaluations are necessary to ensure AI technologies evolve in response to societal needs. By adopting this comprehensive approach, we can leverage AI’s advantages responsibly and ethically, fostering societal well-being and stimulating economic growth through proactive governance and inclusive practices.

JP Reppeto  is a Young Global professional in the Atlantic Council’s Middle East programs

Jun 14, 2023

The WIn Fellowship 2023-2024 cohort

Building on the success of its inaugural cohort, the Women Innovators Fellowship (WIn) is expanding to Bahrain and the UAE, in addition to Saudi Arabia, as it continues to empower more women entrepreneurs from the Middle East. The program is thrilled to announce this year’s eighty-six recipients of its 2023 WIn Fellowship. The participants will receive a year-long program of executive education, mentoring, and networking opportunities in collaboration with Georgetown McDonough School of Business and with the support of the United States embassies in the three target countries and PepsiCo.

May 3, 2024

2024 WIn Fellowship Roadshow

WIn Fellows participate in a fully sponsored trip to the United States for leadership training at Georgetown and meetings with US business and government leaders.

Feb 24, 2023

2023 WIn Fellowship Roadshow

The WIn Fellowship roadshow is led by the Atlantic Council’s empowerME Initiative in cooperation with Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business with support from US Embassy Riyadh, UPS, and PepsiCo. The WIn Fellowship Roadshow participants, chosen from a highly competitive cohort of more than thirty applicants, receive a fully sponsored trip to the United States for leadership training at Georgetown and meetings with US business and government leaders.

Event Recap Jul 31, 2023

Empowering the future: The rising women workforce in Saudi Arabia’s private sector

By Lynn Monzer, Nibras Basitkey

Event recap on the empowering future of the workplace in Saudi Arabia and its impact on the private sector.

Economy & Business Future of Work

Event Recap Jul 24, 2023

Bridging the gender gap in venture capital

By Lynn Monzer, Nibras Basitkey

Event recap on the significance of venture funding for women entrepreneurs in the UAE.

Economy & Business Middle East

Event Recap Jul 18, 2023

An overview of gender parity in Bahrain: Progress, challenges, and the path forward

By Lynn Monzer, Nibras Basitkey

A recap of the First Workshop in Bahrain

Economy & Business Inclusive Growth

empowerME

empowerME at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East is shaping solutions to empower entrepreneurs, women, and youth and building coalitions of public and private partnerships to drive regional economic integration, prosperity, and job creation.

Explore the initiative

The post How AI is reshaping the global business arena appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On May 7, Forward Defense Nonresident Senior Fellow LTG Charles W. Hooper spoke at the 18th DLA Piper Global Real Estate Summit in Chicago. The summit discussed the state of world markets and resources and identify ways the ever-changing real estate industry can continue to rebound and thrive. 

Fellow

Charles W. Hooper

Nonresident Senior Fellow

Forward Defense Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

China Security Partnerships

Forward Defense, housed within the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, generates ideas and connects stakeholders in the defense ecosystem to promote an enduring military advantage for the United States, its allies, and partners. Our work identifies the defense strategies, capabilities, and resources the United States needs to deter and, if necessary, prevail in future conflict.

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The post Hooper spoke at the 18th DLA Piper Global Real Estate Summit in Chicago appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Without proactive changes to how we invest in and develop our current staff and attract new talent, we are undercutting our country’s ability to cultivate the innovation that drives our economy and defends our national security. We cannot expect to compete on the world stage without equipping the US civil service with the skills and experience needed to understand and harness the technological trends that will define the future.

The first problem is we do not create enough opportunities for current national security officials to become more proficient in novel technologies. Rotations and educational opportunities away from headquarters—while broadening and essential experiences for well-rounded officers—often delay promotions. As a result, the incentive structure dissuades current government officials from taking time off to learn. But there are steps that can shift this dynamic:

• Institutionalize knowledge exchange between the US government and the private sector in critical industries. Create career-enhancing formal externships, rotational opportunities, and other short-term learning experiences that give civil servants the ability to work directly in private industry and develop practical experience with innovative technologies like blockchain, artificial intelligence, and quantum computing. The national security community’s venture and innovation arms, like In-Q-Tel, DIU, and AFWERX, can play a key role in this effort, identifying promising US companies in which to embed government employees. These opportunities could also help fight attrition within the civil service by allowing more fluidity between the public and private sectors, rather than forcing people to “go private” if they want outside experience.
• Establish advisory councils and encourage working-level staff to consult with these councils regularly on policy matters. Give agencies and departments the ability to convene advisory councils made up of industry stakeholders and empower both senior officials and career staff to engage with these councils to inform and develop policy on new technologies.
• Create more connectivity between agencies and departments centered around defense and national security on the one hand (the intelligence community and Department of Defense), and economics and trade (the Department of Commerce, the Department of the Treasury, etc.) on the other. Although the Office of the National Cyber Director advises the President specifically on US cybersecurity policy and strategy, expertise on a broader set of emerging technology issues is distributed across a constellation of federal departments and agencies in different disciplines. Standing up informal and formal channels, such as working groups or even a centralized umbrella organization, would encourage more cross-pollination among interagency players. The last thing the government needs is more bureaucracy, but other countries, including Israel, Singapore, Ukraine, and the United Arab Emirates, have created dedicated entities to coordinate policy on specific emerging technology trends—a strategy that has paid dividends in different ways.

The second impediment is that we are not proactive enough in attracting the right talent to government service. The problem set is complex. In some instances, there aren’t enough open spots. In other cases, it takes far too long to select and onboard the best candidates. Yet a series of targeted recruitment and hiring measures—some of which Congress could incorporate into legislation—would have a profound impact on human capital development in the civil service:

• Require a minimum level of technical expertise on staff. Obligate entities with examination, rulemaking, and supervisory authorities to ensure that at least 10 percent of full-time staff have a background in a relevant technical field, such as engineering, computer science, or software development.
• Expedite the hiring process. Allow US government agencies and departments to use excepted service hiring authority—which allows them to bypass traditional hiring processes—to accelerate hiring of individuals with technical skills and backgrounds.
• Modernize ethics restrictions. Existing ethics rules prevent civil servants from directly engaging with some innovative technologies. For example, current ethics guidance at many regulatory agencies categorically prohibits employees who own cryptocurrency from working on issues related to digital assets. Just as career staff with bank accounts and stock market investments are not precluded from working on financial policy and regulation, nor should individuals who own cryptocurrency be restricted from working in this space.
• Expand short-term opportunities for tech talent. Develop new fellowship programs and enhance existing ones, like those that came out of the Biden Administration’s National Cyber Workforce and Education Strategy, to give experts at big tech companies, startups, and academia the ability to work in the US government for a limited period—six to 24 months. This approach would institutionalize a pipeline of tech talent to send into government to gain first-hand exposure to the policymaking process and bring their experience in-house to drive product development. The CIA in 2022 announced a program that does just this: it allows those in the tech sector to take on short-term roles in public service. And if the CIA can make this program work, there’s no reason the rest of the US government can’t follow suit.

Our final point is philosophical. The mission of government is a powerful pull. But that alone is not always enough. As many of us have seen, there are ways to serve the public interest that don’t require a .gov email address. If we want our best and brightest—our most ambitious and innovative—women and men to pursue federal service, we have to do a better job of proactively making the case why. And one way is showing that the US government is a place where creativity and dynamism can thrive, and where cutting-edge talent isn’t just sought after, it’s celebrated.

Lesley Chavkin is a Nonresident Senior Fellow with the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center. She is currently Global Head of Public Policy at Paxos, and previously served in senior roles within the US Department of the Treasury, including financial attaché to Qatar and Kuwait

Eitan Danon is Manager of International Investigations and Special Programs, and previously served as Senior Policy Advisor in the US Department of the Treasury

Sigal Mandelker is Co-Chair of the CNAS Task Force on FinTech, Crypto, and National Security, and joined Ribbit Capital in 2020. She previously served as Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence and as Acting Deputy Secretary at the US Department of the Treasury

At the intersection of economics, finance, and foreign policy, the GeoEconomics Center is a translation hub with the goal of helping shape a better global economic future.

Learn more

The post How to improve the technical skill of the US national security workforce appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Economic targets for 2024

The 2024 Government Work Report sets this year’s economic targets, which are virtually identical to those made in 2023. GDP growth is planned to be “around 5 percent”, with a central government budget deficit of 3 percent of GDP in continuation of a proactive fiscal policy and a prudent monetary policy. In particular, China plans to issue one trillion yuan of ultra-long special government bonds to support the budget; and to raise the special local government bond quota to 3.9 trillion yuan from 3.8 trillion yuan in 2023. The urban unemployment rate is set at around 5.5 percent with twelve million new jobs to be created.

More interesting than the targets are the government‘s priorities as reflected in the increases in spending. Total central government expenditure is projected to increase by 3.8 percent to 28.5 trillion yuan (almost $4 trillion), with debt interest payments topping the list rising by 11.9 percent; followed by science and technology at 10 percent; stockpiling of grains, edible oils, and other necessities at 8.1 percent; national defense at 7.2 percent (same as last year); diplomatic activities at 6.6 percent; and education at 5 percent.

The planned fiscal deficit at 3 percent of GDP—declining from the realized deficit of 3.8 percent in 2023—along side the commitment to“prudent” monetary policy have disappointed many analysts and financial market participants who had hoped for a “big bazooka” stimulus plan to kick start the lackluster economy. Furthermore, they point out that this year will not benefit from the base effect resulting from earlier slow growth due to Covid-19. As a consequence, most analysts are keeping their estimates for 2024 growth below 5 percent, with the IMF expecting 4.6 percent.

The key factor in this year’s growth prospects is whether the property sector starts to stabilize, having been in a sharp decline over the past three years. In particular, after suffering the worst price fall in nine years—a drop in investment of 9.6 percent and in new construction starts of 20.4 percent in 2023—home sales and prices have increased modestly in recent months. If this trend gains traction, it would set the stage for the series of moderate support measures implemented so far to show some positive results. In this context, it is interesting to note that Rhodium Group, which had estimated actual 2023 growth to be 1.5 percent instead of the official 5.2 percent, has expected a cyclical recovery to 3.5 percent in 2024.

Developing the “New Three” for high-quality growth

In any event, more important than the exact GDP growth estimates is the NPC’s endorsement of the decisions made earlier by the CCP Politburo. These decisions reflect Xi Jinping’s emphasis on developing new quality productive forces, through strengthening capability in science and technology to form the foundation for high-quality growth. This has emerged as Xi’s main strategy to develop a new engine of growth for China. It is also a way to stay competitive with the West in science and technology, not the least to sustain the modernization of the Chinese military.

New quality productive forces refer to new clean energy technologies and products—dubbed the “New Three” by the Energy Intelligence Group. These include electric vehicles (EVs), lithium ion batteries, and renewable energy products such as solar panels, wind turbines, storage facilities and other infrastructures—all together accounting for 11 percent of China’s GDP. These sectors were targeted in the 2015 “Made in China” plan as well as the 14th Five Year Plan adopted in 2021. Last year, with state guidance and support, the New Three sectors have experienced a surge in investment of 6.3 trillion yuan ($890 billion)—40 percent higher year-on-year. According to Finland’s Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), without that investment, China’s growth in 2023 might have been 3 percent instead of 5.2 percent. The Energy Intelligence Group has estimated that the new clean energy sectors will continue to grow, accounting for 18 percent of China’s GDP by 2027—in contrast to the property sector shrinking to a smaller but more sustainable 15 percent from its former peak of 25 percent of GDP.

Overcapacity problems

The problem with this approach is that it has created substantial overcapacity in those sectors, leading to a surge in export at low prices to Europe, the United States, and the rest of the world.

For example, China accounts for 75 to 96 percent of the global production of various components of solar panels but demands only 36.4 percent of the output. The rest has to be exported. And China’s export of EVs has increased by 1,500 percent in the past three years, helping China replace Japan as the largest exporter of automobiles. All together, exports of New Three products increased by almost 30 percent in 2023, exceeding one trillion yuan ($139 billion) for the first time.

Alarmed at the prospects of their markets being swamped with Chinese green energy products enjoying state support, the EU has started an anti-dumping investigation into EV imports with a possibility of imposing countervailing duties. The United States has opened an investigation into the data security risks of Chinese vehicles using “connected car technology”. China has reacted strongly to such moves, threatening retaliation. And China will try to export those products to countries in the Global South, many of which having no domestic manufacturing and would welcome competitively priced goods for their climate transition efforts.

In short, one of the biggest implications of the Government Work Report is that the development of clean energy industries has been identified as a strategic focus to promote high-quality growth—a new Xi catchword. The chosen strategy serves China’s strategic and economic interests but has created serious overcapacity problems, distorting world markets and raising trade tensions with the West. This adds another dimension to the geopolitical rivalry between China and the United States, making it more intractable and difficult to diffuse.

Hung Tran is a nonresident senior at the Atlantic Council’s Geoeconomics Center; a former executive managing director at the Institute of International Finance and former deputy director at the International Monetary Fund

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On February 21st, the Atlantic Council’s WIn Fellowship, in collaboration with United States Embassy to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and ADGM, held a workshop exploring how women entrepreneurs in the UAE can integrate innovations in artificial intelligence (AI) to their small and medium enterprises (SMEs).  

The panel, which was moderated by Sarah Saddouk, Director of Innovation at Entrepreneur Middle East IMPACT, featured three successful executives with backgrounds in finance, healthcare, and tech; all have harnessed cutting-edge AI and digital advances to drive their companies forward. Speakers included Abir Habbal, Chief Data and AI Officer at Accenture Middle East; Amnah Ajmal, Executive Vice President for market development for EEMEA at Mastercard; and Salim Chemlal, Director of Product at AI71. Tanya Cole, Senior Commercial Officer at the United States Embassy to the UAE, provided the opening remarks. 

Tanya Cole opened the event with welcome remarks, noting that partnerships like the WIn Fellowship encourage innovation and sustainable growth and undergird the rich commercial exchange between the United States and UAE. She observed that one of AI’s principal benefits for SMEs is enhancing operational efficiency, allowing small teams to allocate time and resources to higher-level work like business strategy. Cole acknowledged initiatives by the United States government to promote greater global representation of women in tech but noted that stronger efforts were needed to promote gender equality in the AI sector. She concluded by encouraging the audience to continue breaking down barriers to women in STEM fields and ensuring that women continue to steer and benefit from the growth of AI. 

The panelists leveraged their experience working with AI to cover several areas of concern for entrepreneurs, such as risk, regulation, scalability, and equity. They identified key trends in its uses across the private sector and provided guidance for SMEs hoping to improve their workflow with AI. The speakers also emphasized the need for women to shape the future of the field. 

Main Takeaways

Amnah Ajmal pushed back on skepticism that recent advances in AI are overestimated, asserting that the increasing accessibility and efficiency of computing power make the technology commercially viable. She highlighted the relevant challenge posed by AI adoption in the private sector: the burden of unlearning and relearning technologies as they evolve and integrate into new fields. Ajmal spotlighted two trends in AI usage she observed among SMEs: risk management centered on combatting scams and fraud, and personalized marketing communications. She stated that the critical edge provided by AI is best understood in terms of scalability and speed, freeing up human capital for other tasks.  

Abir Habbal explained that by keeping abreast of AI advances and integration, actors can actively shape the future of policy and governance around the technology. She distinguished between “narrow AI” capable of single tasks versus “generative AI” capable of multiple tasks at once. The latter is expected to be heavily disruptive; research conducted by her firm indicated that most professions can expect 40 percent of their working hours to be affected by AI. Habbal added that financial services have particularly high potential for AI automation, but opportunities exist in every sector. 

Salim Chemlal mentioned that AI innovation should be propelled forward alongside regulation, rather than waiting for regulation before research continues, as experts have proposed. However, he also advocated for stronger international coordination to ensure AI safety, with a special emphasis on adaptability given the many variables in the field. Amnah Ajmal also offered her thoughts on regulation, proposing that businesses should gather industry stakeholders and experts, define the problem they wish to solve, and build the regulation themselves rather than waiting for a regulator to act. She added that regulators perform a service to society and governments will often embrace the suggested frameworks. Ajmal concluded by noting that traditional financial institutions have failed to uplift SMEs and women entrepreneurs, with all-women teams receiving a maximum of 2.7 percent of global VC funding. 

Abir Habbal turned to the risks of AI and how regulation can help mitigate them. She explained that risks in the field include both structural issues, such as systemic biases and inaccurate results, as well as intentional misuses. With fast-evolving technologies such as AI, regulation may stifle innovation, creating a need for “sandboxes” for advanced testing. The industry’s appetite for regulation stems from a desire to effectively govern AI to manage these risks— and fear of financial and reputational harm if they are not mitigated. Salim Chemlal added that different societies should have their own AI systems, arguing that AI deployed outside of the context it was trained in (such as Western products now used in the Middle East) lack context to adequately serve their current users.  

Amnah Ajmal emphasized that women must challenge the status quo in the AI field. She suggested that women are sometimes apprehensive about engaging deeply with new technologies, and she consequently urges other women in the field to be confident in their abilities. AI is trained on old data, which inherently introduces biases against women. Ajmal gave the example of office thermostats, which when adopted in the 1960s were calibrated for men; women, who radiate 35 percent less body heat, are now often left—literally—in the cold. Women should feel empowered to confidently steer the future of AI to prevent further inequity. Abir Habbal highlighted the coalescence of different skillsets in the AI field, which requires expertise in data science, engineering, business, and design. AI democratization is also on the rise, allowing users from outside the field to access and experiment with AI tools. Ajmal urged novices to utilize publicly available tools to experiment and learn more about AI.  

The Way Forward

There has never been a better time for entrepreneurs in the Emirates to integrate AI into their businesses, owing to the UAE’s growing role as a global hub for AI and the country’s booming SME sector. AI adoption will remain a powerful force in the national economy in the near future, with some forecasts expecting close to 14 percent of Emirati GDP to stem from AI by 2030. Meanwhile, government initiatives continue to promote the growth of small and medium enterprises, with a set target of 1 million SMEs in the country by 2030.  

AI has huge transformational power across sectors, particularly in facilitating speed and scalability. Technology may best serve entrepreneurs by freeing up human input otherwise spent on labor-intensive tasks, such as customer service or targeted marketing. However, adopters should ensure that they have defined a problem that AI can solve, as not all facets of business require automation. The risks inherent to AI, such as biases, malfunctions, and privacy concerns should also be evaluated when considering integration.  

Large scale adoption of AI could worsen global gaps in digital skills between men and women, creating an imperative for women to steer the future of the technology in their country and abroad. Currently only 25 percent of AI specialists and 14 percent of cloud computing specialists are women, demonstrating that much work remains to be done to create a more inclusive field. However, the democratization of AI and the UAE’s SME boom represent an opportunity for women entrepreneurs to both capitalize on the business potential of AI and gain expertise that could positively shape the field. Since AI reflects the input and biases of its maker, better systems will require both diverse architects and inclusive design principles. Women at the helm of successful AI-augmented enterprises will be well positioned to advocate for these changes, resulting in a more equitable future for all.  

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Table of contents

Evolution of freedom

Aggregate freedom in Kenya has increased substantially and constantly since 1995, but the data correctly show a marked structural change in 2010. This was a crucial year in the recent politico-economic history of the country as it marked the inauguration of the new constitution, which has been the driving force behind many of the trends shown in the Freedom Index and subindexes. The 2010 Constitution reformed Kenya’s highly centralized institutional architecture, creating a devolved and highly decentralized system. This ensured that lower levels of government (regions and counties) receive much higher levels of funding, that can be better allocated according to the needs of local populations.

The economic freedom subindex clearly presents a jump around 2010, mainly attributable to a significant increase in women’s economic freedom. Legal changes that accompanied the constitutional reform had important effects on women’s empowerment and freedom. The endorsement of the 2010 Constitution established vital rights and encouraged additional reforms towards greater legal gender equality, including reserving seats for women’s political participation and encouraging nondiscrimination and equality. For example, the constitution outlined new principles relating to land policy, including the elimination of gender discrimination in law, customs, and practices related to land. Financial inclusion of women is an important area of improvement, and the Central Bank data—based on various FinAccess Surveys—clearly show that women are becoming much more economically included and empowered. Also, when you look at the disaggregated data for different regions of the country, you find that the gender gap in financial access is actually declining in many counties in Kenya. The growing economic empowerment of women is also evidenced by increasing employment rates of women and a reduction in the gender wage gap in many professions. Legislative changes have allowed women to hold and manage property, and placed them on a more equal legal footing with men in matters relating to property. For example, the passage of the Land Act and Land Registration Act in 2012 increased women’s rights over marital property. Regarding access to education, the gender gap is closing very fast. For example, in many university courses, the proportion of women and men enrolling is now much more equal than was the case a decade ago. The new decentralized constitutional framework has been crucial in creating the conditions in which women’s freedoms can improve. The situation of women is significantly worse in rural areas, but now local and regional governments have the autonomy and resources to provide and generate economic opportunities for women at a devolved level.

The economic freedom subindex also shows a sustained increase in property rights protection, which seems to reflect the judicial reforms that have been introduced since the 1990s. In the last three decades, there has been a significant improvement in the speed of judicial processes, and in the reliability of the guarantees given to domestic and foreign owners. For example, since the inauguration of the new constitution in 2010, parliament has enacted four major land laws aimed at improving land property rights: the Land Act of 2012, the Land Registration Act of 2012, the National Land Commission Act of 2012, and the Community Land Act of 2016. The World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business Index also undoubtedly incentivized Kenyan governments in this period to improve the institutional architecture of the country in order to facilitate economic activity. For example, the move towards “e-government”—the myriad reforms aimed at digitalizing interactions between citizens and government agencies—received a big push in order to improve Kenya’s position in the Doing Business ranking. This was, in fact, achieved in several successive years. The recent digitization of land records in Kenya is a means to improving security, by requiring a landowner to approve all applications relating to a specific property. Digitized records will also reduce the cost and time of land transactions. Section 9 of the Land Registration Act of 2012 facilitated the coming wave of digitalization and e-government by providing the Registrar of Lands with the right to maintain relevant documents in a secure and accessible format, including in electronic files.

Political freedom shows a substantial increase during the 1990s, which captures the movement from a one-party political system to a multiparty system. This was a generalized change in Sub-Saharan Africa, with levels of political freedom increasing in several countries. But such changes are always complicated, because it is easy to introduce political competition on paper, but always difficult in practice. This was a period of great political agitation in Kenya, reflecting broader political liberalization across Africa, with a very intense push for constitutional reform from civil society, resulting in significant achievements. External pressures to liberalize the political space were also crucial.

Kenya is probably one of the countries in Africa with the highest levels of civil and political liberties. However, the data show a significantly lower score for civil liberties than for the rest of the indicators of political freedom. It is likely that this relates to the protests, campaigning, and activism before and after electoral periods, which reached a peak with the serious electoral violence of 2007–08. But in general, Kenya is a society in which civil and political freedom is high, where citizens can express freely their political views, with a vibrant opposition in evidence. Electoral results have been challenged various times in recent years, accompanied by judicial reviews of the electoral results after several recent elections.

The large increase in legal freedom observed in 2010 is single-handedly driven by improved judicial independence and effectiveness, and this again is a product of the new constitution. The judicial system has proven to be very independent from political pressures; the challenges to—and judicial reviews of—the electoral results are a clear sign of this. The clarity of the law also improved significantly during the constitutional reform discussions that crystalized in 2010, and that is also evident in the data. In 2015, the judiciary adopted a nationwide case-tracking tool which enhanced the level of judicial accountability. There has been an attempt to standardize and speed up the handling of cases.

But the decentralization of power brought about by the new constitution has also had a negative side, at least in the short term. This is because now there is an additional level of government, the regional level, which necessarily increases the bureaucracy in the country. Moreover, three levels of government means a significant effort of coordination is required in order to efficiently provide the public services that were concentrated in the central government. These difficulties explain why bureaucracy quality does not show a significant change after 2010. Also, more bureaucracy opens the door for more corruption, especially with such a large structural change in the institutional framework. In recent years, there has been a clear aim to improve bureaucratic quality—for example, with the push for e-government—but Kenya has still a lot of room for progress.

From freedom to prosperity

The rapid growth in income in Kenya starts in 2002, a critical year for the country. In 2002 the country experienced a major political transition when the president, who had run the country for twenty-five years, stepped down. The new leadership was very keen on detailed government planning. They introduced a long-term development plan, called Vision 2030, with the objective of making Kenya an upper middle-income country by the year 2030. It was based on some crucial pillars, one of them being innovation. Kenya has led the region in some critical sectors thanks to this forward-thinking approach. Today, approximately 54 percent of Kenya’s gross domestic product (GDP) is generated by the services sector, parts of which are particularly vibrant and innovative, like tourism and financial services. The latter is a great example. Thanks to the innovative tool of mobile money, financial inclusion increased from 25 percent of the population in 2006 to about 84 percent in 2021, according to the 2021 FinAccess Survey, one of the highest levels in the whole Sub-Saharan Africa region. Mobile money in Kenya, which gained local popularity through the M-PESA application, allows users to deposit, withdraw, transfer money, make payments for goods and services, and access credit through cell phones. Mobile money products have evolved considerably since their introduction to Kenya in 2007, with a considerable range of innovative products and mobile service providers emerging. The agricultural sector, even though it is still very important in terms of employment, has been declining in terms of its contribution to GDP in Kenya and in several Sub-Saharan African countries. For several decades it represented about 30 percent of GDP in Kenya, but this has declined to about 20 percent—a fact reflected in the country’s debasing of GDP, which was carried out in 2021. Kenya is also trying to diversify its exporting industries towards nontraditional sectors. Today, 40 percent of Kenya’s exports are within the region, and these are mostly manufactured goods. With a strong base in manufacturing, Kenya is uniquely placed to benefit from the recently launched African Continental Free Trade Area.

Regarding inequality, the country clearly benefited from the constitutional change of 2010, because the devolved system of government significantly reduced regional disparities. Historically, the northern part of the country, for example, has lagged behind in terms of development because of its severe (semi-desert) climatic conditions. With the new system, funds are more easily transferred and more effectively administered by the regional and local governments, and inequality between rural and urban areas has clearly been reduced. The process of financial inclusion mentioned above, which was given major impetus by the introduction of mobile money in 2007, has been a second driver of reduced inequality. Segments of the population at the lower end of the income distribution have benefited most from this process, because it has opened the door to financing opportunities to start businesses, increase human capital, and so on.

Minority rights are also better protected with the decentralized system of government. The 2010 Constitution enables the state to put in place affirmative action programs to protect minorities and marginalized groups. Communities and ethnic groups that were somewhat marginalized before have been empowered in different regions. Even at a political level, it is clear that there is an effort to include previously silenced communities. The work carried out by civil society organizations has also been crucial on this point, in terms of creating an awareness about minority rights and demands in different parts of the country. This was demonstrated by the broad-based civic education carried out during the constitutional review process that culminated in the 2010 Constitution.

One of the primary goals of the political leadership that took power after 2002 was to improve the level and quality of education in the country. The aim was to reach 100 percent enrollment in primary education, and to increase significantly the enrollment levels in secondary and university education. However, the starting point was very low, so there is still a long way to go, particularly in secondary and tertiary enrollment. According to UNICEF, before the COVID-19 pandemic, nationwide enrollment in primary education in Kenya was at 93 percent while secondary school enrollment was only at 53 percent. Another important aspect is that increasing enrollment at a very fast pace requires vast resources to ensure that the quality of the education pupils receive is high. And this is not always the case in Kenya, even though education forms a very large part of the government budget. Some educational indicators, like the number of teachers, have not kept up with the levels of enrollment. The pupil-to-teacher ratio remains very high in some Kenyan counties. For example, in Turkana County in northern Kenya, it is at 77:1 according to UNICEF. So, the big challenge for the country at present is to improve both quality and quantity.

Once again, the 2010 Constitution will have major effects on life expectancy, and health more generally, but these are probably going to take longer to materialize in the data. Moreover, the slowing of progress on the health indicator in the decade before the COVID-19 pandemic may be explained by the same reason. The implementation of healthcare is now decentralized and run by the regional governments, even though healthcare policy is still in the hands of the central government. It is not easy to start running a regional health service from scratch, and there is obviously a learning period when indicators may even deteriorate. Inadequate resources provided by the national government to the counties and understaffed health facilities in many areas remain critical challenges. But in the medium and long run, once the implementation constraints begin to ease, it seems likely that healthcare services will be delivered more efficiently, and health statistics will show the results.

The future ahead

One of the critical issues that Kenya faces now is how to keep improving productivity. I see manufacturing as an obvious area for improvement, and this should include growing its share of GDP. Today, it is slightly below 10 percent, and Kenya should almost double that. I think we have a big opportunity in Africa with the implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area. It would create tremendous opportunities for countries like Kenya that have some manufacturing base. Kenya is competing with manufactured goods from Asia and other places that have major cost advantages. Bigger markets, such as those that will become available through the African Continental Free Trade Area, can generate productivity improvements through export competition and also provide economies of scale benefits.

An important challenge for Kenya relates to the large share of informal employment. Moving part of these workers and firms towards formalization will ensure that economic opportunity and development are more stable. And, obviously, higher levels of formal employment and production generate larger and more stable sources of government revenue, as tax compliance is easier with formal sector firms. This will help the already firm path of fiscal consolidation that Kenya has followed in recent years. The current account deficit has also been declining, partly because of reduced imports, but also due to stronger and more competitive exports. This is a very promising path for Kenya, and the country now needs to take advantage not only of regional value chains, but also global value chains, particularly in areas like tourism where Kenya has long-standing experience and a diversity of tourist attractions.

But economic reform and development needs to be accompanied by continued institutional reform and transformation. Further pushing the inclusivity of institutions is the only way to ensure that increasing prosperity in Kenya is based on solid foundations and is therefore sustainable in the long run.

Robert Mudida is currently the director of the Research Department of the Central Bank of Kenya. He was a full-time academic for seventeen years, having taught and carried out extensive research at two leading universities in Africa: the University of Nairobi and Strathmore University. At Strathmore University he was full professor of political economy. He has published four books and numerous articles in top international peer-reviewed journals in the areas of political economy, financial economics, macroeconomics, and industrial organization.

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The indexes rank 164 countries around the world according to their levels of freedom and prosperity. Use our site to explore twenty-eight years of data, compare countries and regions, and examine the sub-indexes and indicators that comprise our indexes.

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Some of the factors in China follow the youth unemployment story we continue to see around the world, including inadequate private sector job creation and skills mismatches. In China, the number of new graduates entering the labor market is also rising—to nearly 12 million in 2024, and there aren’t enough jobs to keep pace, especially as regulatory burdens are dampening growth in industries most likely to employ young people such as technology.

But the youth labor market in China has a few unique characteristics as well. The cultural demands on young Chinese workers are high—they are routinely expected to work “9-9-6”—from 9 am to 9 pm, six days a week. The resulting burnout is a key contributor to the elevated and stubborn youth unemployment. The general economic downturn and collapse of the property and housing market in particular has led to a hiring slowdown, with jobs that might be most suitable to new labor market entrants continuing to be among the hardest hit. Meanwhile, in the face of grueling hours for low pay, young people in China are opting out, choosing instead to “lie flat”—remain idle and not work or engage in any economic activities—or become “professional children,” paid by their parents or grandparents to live with and care for them.

At the same time, with higher deaths and fewer births (even with the end of the one-child policy nearly a decade ago to in part to help mitigate the aging population) younger Chinese women face further constraints to getting or keeping a job as society and employers are averse to hiring them and instead discourage them from joining the workforce versus staying home to have and raise children.

Failing at first to acknowledge the extent or damage of the crisis, the response from the government has been slow. Enforcing labor laws and financial incentives to hire youth and efforts to smooth the school to work transition (especially from university) can help, but macroeconomic risks as well as longer-term structural or societal challenges—including relevance of education, rapid urbanization, and emotional mental health—demand attention with a youth lens, too.

The implications of the situation are stark not only as a drag on Chinese productivity and growth but, given the outsized role of China in the global economy, its weakening has the potential to impact youth labor markets worldwide. That’s especially true in countries—in Africa and Latin America for example—where Chinese development finance, investment, and trade are critical to their own dynamism and job creation amid debt distress.

Nicole Goldin is a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center.

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On January 29, Transatlantic Security Initiative senior fellow Elisabeth Braw wrote an opinion piece in Foreign Policy discussing the Swedish strikes against Tesla.   

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Since it was launched in 2020, the Ukrainian government’s Diia ecosystem has been at the heart of the country’s digital infrastructure. The core Diia app now has more than 19 million users, and is updated with new services on an almost weekly basis in order to keep pace with rapidly evolving wartime demands. In May 2023, an updated and upgraded version of the Diia.Education digital platform was unveiled that aims to address the considerable vocational training and recruitment challenges created by the war.

As the world watches the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfold, UkraineAlert delivers the best Atlantic Council expert insight and analysis on Ukraine twice a week directly to your inbox.

The Diia.Digital educational platform was originally launched in 2020 as a portal offering free edutainment content to help close the digital gap in Ukrainian society and enable individual Ukrainians to develop the skills they need in order to thrive in an increasingly digital environment. The platform proved popular, attracting 1.5 million users during the first year. However, the onset of Russia’s full-scale invasion in early 2022 made it necessary to rethink the focus of the initiative.

The Russian invasion has caused some of the most dramatic social disruption witnessed in Europe since World War II, with millions of Ukrainians becoming refugees or internally displaced persons during the first few weeks of hostilities alone. Many have also lost their homes and jobs. According to the United Nations, nearly 60% of Ukrainian IDPs are of working age, but finding a job in unfamiliar regions can often be a daunting task. One possible solution to this problem is retraining and acquiring the digital skills that employers are looking for.

While the wartime job market in Ukraine has been marked by high levels of disruption, it is also possible to identify evidence of global recruitment trends toward digitalization. Even in the wartime climate, there are rising numbers of tech-related entry-level vacancies for positions such as data analyst, digital marketeer, video editor, and chat specialist. Training for these kinds of vacancies was an obvious focus for the Diia.Education upgrade.

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There have been growing indications in 2023 that the Ukrainian economy is regaining some of its earlier buoyancy. Despite the physical and psychological horrors of the ongoing Russian invasion, Ukrainians continue to open new businesses. In the first half of 2023, more than 130,000 Ukrainians registered as private entrepreneurs. The monthly registration figure for June was the highest in three years.

This rapidly evolving employment landscape is creating a critical need for effective training strategies to help Ukrainians remain competitive. The updated and upgraded version of Diia.Education is supported by Google and the East Europe Foundation. It offers a unique range of functions that allow users to create personalized learning trajectories and tailored educational courses focusing on their specific interests and objectives.

Users can also take career-oriented tests along with standardized national digital literacy tests. There are more than 50 different job-specific educational series to choose from, covering jobs ranging from SMM specialist to baker. Additional training tools focus on digital literacy, entrepreneurship, creativity, and more. Crucially, the upgraded platform now also features a job search function.

The Russian invasion has had devastating consequences for almost every aspect of Ukrainian daily life, but Ukrainians have refused to be beaten. Instead, there has been a determination throughout society to keep going at all costs. The challenge now in terms of employment is to provide displaced Ukrainians in particular with the necessary tools to get back on their feet and contribute to the country’s recovery. This requires a balanced approach that recognizes the immediate needs of the wartime job market while also keeping in mind the changes taking place in the global economy and the skills that will be in demand in the years to come.

Ukraine was experiencing rapid digitalization for a number of years before Russia’s full-scale invasion. The past eighteen months of wartime upheaval have accelerated existing digital adoption processes and significantly strengthened the various tech segments of the Ukrainian economy. Looking ahead, it will be vital to make sure there are enough Ukrainians with the requisite skills to fill vacancies in the expanding tech sector. Providing easily accessible educational tools is a step in the right direction.

Valeriya Ionan is Ukraine’s Deputy Minister for Eurointegration at the Ministry of Digital Transformation.

Further reading

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The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.

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The post Ukraine upgrades digital education efforts appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On July 25th, the Atlantic Council’s empowerME Initiative, in collaboration with the US Embassy in Riyadh and PepsiCo, held the first workshop in a series of four events for the second cohort of the WIn Fellowship launched in Saudi Arabia. The workshop took place on Tuesday, July 25th, from 12:00-1:00 pm ET/7:00-8:00 pm KSA Time and took place both in-person at The Garage in Riyadh and virtually, focusing on the recent labor market shifts in Saudi Arabia that have facilitated increased women’s participation in the workforce, especially in the private sector.

The event commenced with opening remarks from empowerME’s chairman, Amjad Ahmad. This was followed by keynote speeches from H.R.H. Princess Reema Bint Bandar Al Saud, Ambassador of the Embassy of Saudi Arabia to the United States, and Michael Ratney, Ambassador of the Embassy of the United States to Saudi Arabia.

A panel discussion followed, featuring a line-up of esteemed speakers: Dena Elkhatib, the General Counsel at Riyadh Air, Hattan Ahmed, Entrepreneurship Director at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Wael Ismail, the Vice President Corporate Affairs – MENA and South East Asia at PepsiCo. The conversation was skillfully moderated by Hanaa Almoaibed, the Vice President for Research at The Arab Institute for Women’s Empowerment.

During the panel discussion, various aspects related to the rising female workforce in Saudi Arabia and its implications for the private sector were explored. The panelists delved into the challenges and opportunities facing women in the workforce, the role of government policy in promoting female employment, and the importance of diversity and inclusion in the workplace. Meaningful insights were shared, shedding light on the transformative impact of women’s increasing presence in the labor force and the positive changes it brings to the private sector.

Key discussion points

The event commenced with inspiring opening remarks by Amjad Ahmad, who shared the fellowship’s vision to significantly increase women’s economic participation in entrepreneurial and leadership roles, ultimately contributing to the region’s overall economic prosperity.

Ahmad highlighted the transformative socio-economic changes underway in Saudi Arabia, driven by its Vision 2030 agenda, with a strong emphasis on women’s empowerment. Over the past five years, the labor force participation rate of Saudi women has risen by an impressive 67 percent, from 21 percent in 2017 to 35 percent in 2022, signaling a supportive shift in government policies.

H.R.H. Princess Reema Bint Bandar Al Saud acknowledged the existing gender disparity in leadership positions, business ownership, and management. Emphasizing the need for change, she stated, “When women succeed, we all succeed.” Her vision includes more women leadership roles, business ownership, mentorship programs, and investment in women-led startups.

The Kingdom’s inclusive Vision 2030 aims to diversify and strengthen the nation’s economy, leading to Saudi Arabia being ranked number one in terms of economic and social progress for women out of 190 economies. This progress is evident in the increasing number of women  receiving advanced degrees, enrolling in STEM fields, and owning 40 percent of small and medium-sized startups.

Ambassador Michael Ratney praised the Saudi fellows for embracing entrepreneurship and taking bold steps towards shaping their own future. He emphasized that the fundamental changes driven by Vision 2030 provide opportunities for talents of the Saudi forkforce, especially women, to thrive.

The panelists further discussed the transformation brought about by increased women’s participation in the Saudi Arabian private sector. Dena Elkhatib commented on the remarkable increase of females in the workforce, leading to a shift in workplace dynamics and fostering growth in the private sector.

Hattan Ahmed highlighted the significant impact of female participation on the private sector, evidenced by empirical data. He expressed his excitement for witnessing greater corporate engagement and deployment of women in various areas and industries.

Wael Ismail echoed the ambassador’s remarks, noting the increased access to opportunities for women due to enhanced investment in their education and empowerment.

Ismail elaborated on the benefits of having a diverse workforce in the food and beverage sector, asserting that “the male perspective alone will not allow us to assess how consumers are engaging with foods and beverages.” Therefore, a balanced and inclusive workforce is beneficial, whether in marketing or R&D. Hattan Ahmad added that the concentration of women in STEM at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) is around 39 percent, above the global average, and how they passionately address global challenges like climate change and water issues.

Challenges facing women in Saudi Arabia

During the workshop, Hanaa Almoaibed raised the crucial question of the obstacles women need to overcome in order to sustain the progress achieved. Elkhatib emphasized the importance of women supporting and empowering one another, fostering an environment where different perspectives are valued and heard, promoting collaboration rather than competition.

Wael Ismail built on Elkhatib’s idea, stressing out the importance of creating opportunities and fcultivating a supportive environment for both women and men. While this may pose challenges for some managers, it is vital for fostering a truly inclusive workplace.

Hattan Ahmad shed light on existing disparity in funding, referring to a report from the Boston Consulting Group (BCG). The report revealed that female-founded companies raise an average of a million dollars in funding, significantly less than the two million dollars raised by male-founded companies. However, female-founded companies generate 10% more cumulative revenue their male-founded counterparts, showcasing their capital efficiency and potential for higher return on investment for their investors.

Concluding Notes

In conclusion, the workshop elucidated three central points regarding the future of female empowerment and involvement in Saudi Arabia’s labor force. First, the remarkable surge in women’s labor force participation has sparked catalyzing change within the private sector, leading to creative and efficient work environments without increased unemployment. This success underscores the transformative power of gender inclusion, inspiring further progress.

Second, it is imperative to actively address the disparity in funding and opportunities provided to female entrepreneurs. While the rate of established business ownership among women in Saudi Arabia has increased significantly, reaching 3.7 percent of the female population in Saudi Arabia, compared to just 1.6 percent in 2016, they still face fundraising challenges. A collective effort is needed to encourage more investments into female-founded companies, empowering them to thrive and contribute to the nation’s economic growth.

Lastly, the workplace emphasized the need for greater support and resources for women in the workplace.  Research by McKinsey revealed that businesses that fell within the top 25 percent for gender diversity among their executive teams had a 25 percent higher likelihood of outperforming in terms of profitability compared to those in the bottom 25 percent. Female leaders champion flexibility, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) but often face subtle discrimination and biases. By cultivating environments that emplace growth and enacting policies for equal opportunities, we can accelerate progress and foster a more includive and prosperous society, concluded the panelists.

The participants agreed that to sustain the momentum of the progress in Saudi Arabia, continued dialogue and efforts are vital to eliminate remaining obstacles. By shaping a future founded on equality and diversity, Saudi Arabia’s labor force can achieve unparalleled socio-economic growth, with both men and women playing key roles in its success.

Lynn Monzer is the Associate Director with the Atlantic Council’s empowerME initiative at the Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East.

Nibras Basitkey is the Program Assistant with Atlantic Council’s empowerME initiative at the Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East.

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Building on the success of its inaugural cohort, the Women Innovators Fellowship (WIn) is expanding to Bahrain and the UAE, in addition to Saudi Arabia, as it continues to empower more women entrepreneurs from the Middle East. The program is thrilled to announce this year’s eighty-six recipients of its 2023 WIn Fellowship. The participants will receive a year-long program of executive education, mentoring, and networking opportunities in collaboration with Georgetown McDonough School of Business and with the support of the United States embassies in the three target countries and PepsiCo.

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2023 WIn Fellowship Roadshow

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WIn Fellowship 2023-2024 KSA

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empowerME

empowerME at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East is shaping solutions to empower entrepreneurs, women, and youth and building coalitions of public and private partnerships to drive regional economic integration, prosperity, and job creation.

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The post Empowering the future: The rising women workforce in Saudi Arabia’s private sector appeared first on Atlantic Council.

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• How the Iraq war changed…
• What Iraq needs now
• What the United States can do now

Twenty years on from the US invasion of the country, Iraq has fallen off the policymaking agenda in Washington, DC—cast aside in part as a result of the bitter experience of the war, the enormous human toll it exacted, and the passage of time. But looking forward twenty years and beyond, Iraqis need a great deal from their own leaders and those of their erstwhile liberators. A national reconciliation commission, a new constitution, and an economy less dependent on oil revenue are just some of the areas the experts at the Atlantic Council’s Iraq Initiative highlight in this collection of reflections marking two decades since the US invasion.

What else will it take to transform Iraq into a prosperous, productive regional player? What can the United States do now, with twenty years’ worth of hindsight? And just how far-reaching were the effects of the war? Twenty-one experts from across the Atlantic Council take on these questions in a series of short essays and video interviews below.

Oula Kadhum on what March 20, 2003 was like for a young Iraqi

How the Iraq war changed…

The cause of democracy in the region

When the United States invaded Iraq two decades ago, one of the public justifications for the war was that it would help spread democracy throughout the Middle East. The invasion, of course, had the opposite effect: it unleashed a bloody sectarian conflict in Iraq, badly undermining the reputation of democracy in the region and America’s credibility in promoting it.

Yet the frictions between rulers and ruled that helped precipitate the US invasion of Iraq persist. The citizens of the region, increasingly educated and connected to the rest of the world, have twenty-first-century political aspirations, but continue to be ruled by unaccountable nineteenth-century-style autocrats. Absent a change, these frictions will continue to shape political developments in the region, often in cataclysmic fashion, over the next two decades.

The George W. Bush administration’s failures in Iraq severely set back the cause of democracy in the region. In the perceptions of Arab publics, democratization became synonymous with the exercise of American military power. Meanwhile, Iraq’s chaos strengthened the hand of the region’s autocrats: as inept or heavy-handed as their own rule might be, it paled in comparison to the breakdown of order and human slaughter in Iraq. 

Citizens’ frustrations with their political leaders finally erupted in the Arab Spring of 2010 and 2011, but their protests failed to end autocracy in the region. Gulf monarchs were able to throw money at the problem, first to shore up their own rule and then other autocracies in the region. The Egyptian experiment with democracy proved short-lived; Tunisia’s endured far longer but also appears over. More broadly, the region has seen democratic backsliding in Lebanon and Israel as well.

The yawning gap between what citizens want and what they get from their governments remains. The World Bank’s Worldwide Governance Indicators show that, on aggregate, states in the region are no more politically stable, effectively governed, accountable, or participatory than two decades ago. Unless political leaders address that gap, further Arab Spring-like protests—or even social revolution—are probable. 

Having apparently gotten out of the business of invasion and occupation following the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States could play a new and constructive role here. It could both cajole and assist the region’s political leaders to improve governance for their citizens. 

The United States exacerbated political tensions in the region two decades ago; now it has an opportunity to help ameliorate them.

—Stephen R. Grand is the author of Understanding Tahrir Square: What Transitions Elsewhere Can Teach Us About the Prospects for Arab Democracy. He is a nonresident senior fellow with the Council’s Middle East programs.

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State sovereignty

Since the seventeenth century, more or less, world order has been based on the concept of state sovereignty: states are deemed to hold the monopoly of force within mutually recognized territories, and they are generally prohibited from intervening in one another’s domestic affairs. The invasion of Iraq challenged this standard in three important ways. 

First, the fact of the war represented a direct attack on the sovereignty of the Iraqi state, which undermined the ban on aggressive war. While the Bush administration cast the invasion as a case of preemptive self-defense, it was widely seen as a preventive war of choice against a state that did not pose a clear and present danger. Moreover, the main exceptions to sovereignty that have developed over time, such as ongoing mass atrocities or United Nations authority, were not applicable in Iraq. Thus, the United States dealt a major blow to the rules-based international system of which it was one of the chief architects. This may have made more imaginable later crimes of aggression by other states. 

Second, the means of the war, and especially the occupation, powered the reemergence of the private military industry. Driven by the need to sustain two long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US armed forces became dependent on military contractors, which sometimes involved authorizing paid civilians to kill. The US effort to (re)privatize warfare brought back into fashion the use of private military force, generating a multibillion-dollar industry that is here to stay. Over time the spread of private military companies could unspool the state’s exclusive claim to violence and hammer the foundations of the current international system.

Third, the consequences of the war led to the spectacular empowerment of armed nonstate actors in the region and beyond, who launched a full-frontal assault on the sovereignty of many states. The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, of course, emerged amid the brutal contestation of power in post-invasion Iraq and pursued its “caliphate” as an alternative (Sunni) political institution to rival the nation-state. While the threat has been contained, for now, in the Middle East, it is only beginning to gather force on the African continent. In addition, because Iran effectively won the war in Iraq, it was able to sponsor a deep bench of Shia nonstate groups which have eroded state sovereignty in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Iraq itself. 

The US invasion of Iraq left us a world with less respect for state sovereignty, more guns for hire, and a dizzying array of well-armed and determined nonstate groups. 

—Alia Brahimi is a nonresident senior fellow of the Atlantic Council’s Middle East programs and host of the Guns for Hire podcast. 

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Abbas Kadhim on the opportunities missed

US-Turkish ties

By launching a war on Turkey’s border, against Turkish advice, in a manner that prejudiced Turkish interests, the United States in 2003 upended a strategic understanding that had dominated bilateral relations for five decades. 

During and immediately after the Cold War, Turkey and the United States shared a strategic vision centered on containing the Soviet Union and its proxies. In exchange for strategic cooperation, Washington provided aid, modulated criticisms of Turkish politics, and deferred to Ankara’s sensitivities regarding its geopolitical neighborhood. With notable exceptions (e.g., Turkish opposition to the Vietnam War and US opposition to Turkey’s 1974 Cyprus operation), consensus was the norm and aspiration of both sides. After close collaboration in the Balkans, Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan from 1991 to 2001, though, Ankara became increasingly alarmed about the prospect of a new war in Iraq.

Bilateral relations deteriorated sharply after the Turkish parliament voted against allowing the United States to launch combat operations from Turkish soil. The war was longer, bloodier, and costlier than its planners had anticipated. The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (known as the PKK and designated by the United States as a terrorist organization in 1997) ended a cease-fire in place since the 1999 capture of its founder, Abdullah Öcalan, and gained broad new freedom of movement and action in northern Iraq. US military aid to Turkey ended, while defense industrial cooperation and military-to-military contacts dropped. In July 2003 US soldiers detained and hooded a Turkish special forces team in Sulaymaniyah, Iraq, on suspicions that they were colluding with insurgents. This event, coupled with Turkish anger over the bitter conduct and conclusion of the prewar negotiations, helped fuel a sustained rise in negative views about the United States among the Turkish public.

Sanctions and the war in Iraq damaged Turkish economic interests, though these would rebound from 2005 onward. The relationship of the US military to the PKK—first as tacit tolerance of PKK attacks into Turkey from northern Iraq despite the US presence, and later with employment of the PKK affiliate in Syria as a proxy force against the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS)—rendered the frictions of 2003 permanent. That US forces train, equip, and operate with a PKK-linked militia along Turkey’s border today is fruit of the Iraq war, because US-PKK contacts were brokered in northern Iraq, and US indifference to Turkish security redlines traces back to 2003.

The story of US-Turkish estrangement can be told from other perspectives: that Ankara sought strategic independence for reasons broader than Iraq, that President Erdoğan’s anti-Westernism drove divergence, that the countries have fewer shared interests now. There may be truth in these arguments, though they are based largely on speculation and imputed motives. Yet they, too, cannot be viewed except through the lens of the 2003 Iraq War, which came as Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party was assuming power and greatly influenced his subsequent decision-making.

Many effects of the Iraq War have faded, but the strategic alienation of Turkey and the United States has not.

—Rich Outzen, a retired colonel, is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council IN TURKEY and a geopolitical analyst and consultant currently serving private-sector clients as Dragoman LLC.

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China’s rise

As George W. Bush took office in 2001, managing the US-China relationship was regarded as a top foreign policy concern. The administration’s focus shifted with 9/11 and a wartime footing—which in turn altered Beijing’s foreign policy and engagement in the Middle East. 

A high point in US-China tension came in April with the Hainan Island Incident. The collision of a US signals intelligence aircraft and a Chinese interceptor jet resulted in one dead Chinese pilot and the detention of twenty-four US crew members, whose release followed US Ambassador Joseph Prueher’s delivery of the “letter of the two sorries.” 

But after the September 11 attacks, the United States launched the global war on terrorism, and the ensuing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq became the all-encompassing focal points. While that relieved pressure on China, the US decision to invade Iraq raised serious concerns in Beijing and elsewhere about the direction of global order under US leadership. 

American willingness to attack a sovereign government with the stated goal of changing its regime set a worrisome precedent for authoritarian governments. Worries transformed into something else following the global financial crisis in 2008. Chinese leaders became even more wary of US leadership, with former Vice Premier Wang Qishan telling then-Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson after the financial crisis, “Look at your system, Hank. We aren’t sure we should be learning from you anymore.”

The war in Iraq was especially troubling for Chinese leaders. Few believed that the United States would engage in such a disastrous war over something as idealistic as democracy promotion in the Middle East. The dominant assumption was that the war was about maintaining control of global oil—and using that dominance to prevent China from rising to a peer competitor status. The so-called “Malacca Dilemma” became a feature of analysis in China’s strategic landscape: the idea that any power that could control the Strait of Malacca could control oil shipping to China, and therefore its economy. Since then, China has developed the world’s largest navy and invested in ports across the Indian Ocean region through its Maritime Silk Road Initiative. Its defense spending has increased fivefold this century, from $50 billion in 2001 to $270 billion in 2021, making it the second-largest defense spender in the Indo-Pacific region after Japan, and higher than the next thirteen Indo-Pacific countries combined. 

Since the Iraq war, the Middle East has become a much greater focus in Chinese foreign policy. In addition to building up its own military, China began discussing security and strategic affairs with Middle East energy suppliers, conducting joint exercises, selling more varied weapons systems, and pursuing a regional presence that increasingly diverges or competes with US preferences. 

Would China’s growing presence in the Middle East have followed the same trajectory had the United States not invaded Iraq? Possibly, although one could argue that the same sense of urgency would not have animated decision makers in the People’s Republic of China.

—Jonathan Fulton is a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council and host of the China-MENA podcast. He is also an assistant professor of political science at Zayed University in Abu Dhabi. Follow him on Twitter: @jonathandfulton.

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The country’s readiness to meet climate challenges

Over the course of the last two decades, Iraq has become one of the five most vulnerable countries in the world to climate change. It has been affected by rising temperatures, insufficient and diminishing rainfall, intensified droughts that reduce access to water, sand and dust storms, and flooding. Iraq’s environmental ministry warns that the country may face dust storms for more than 270 days per year in the next twenty years. 

While not the sole cause of environmental mismanagement in Iraq, the muhasasa system of power sharing has exacerbated and contributed to a culture of corruption and political patronage that has undermined efforts to protect the environment and to sustainably manage Iraq’s natural resources. Muhasasa is an official system that allocates Iraqi government positions and resources based on ethnic and sectarian identity. It may have been a good temporary compromise to promote stability in the early 2000s, but today it is widely viewed as a harmful legacy of the post-invasion occupation period.

In the context of protecting the environment, the muhasasa system has led to a situation where some government officials are appointed to their respective positions without the necessary skills or qualifications to manage resources efficiently or effectively. Forced ethnosectarian balancing has encouraged natural resource misuse for political or personal gain to the immediate detriment of average Iraqis. While muhasasa was intended to promote political stability and prevent marginalization of minority groups, in practice it has contributed to a culture of corruption and nepotism, and undermined efforts to promote good governance and sustainable development. 

To address its acute climate challenges, Iraq needs to move away from the sectarian-based power sharing and toward a more inclusive, merit-based system of governance. It must strengthen its environmental regulations, commit itself to sustainable development, and better manage its natural resources for the country and as part of the global effort to mitigate climate change. The international community has a role to play here through supporting technical assistance, capacity building, and providing financial resources to help address these concerns along the way. 

—Masoud Mostajabi is an associate director of the Middle East programs at the Atlantic Council. 

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Iran’s regional footprint

From the outset of the invasion of Iraq, the United States’ decision was built on several dubious premises that the administration masterfully overhyped to build support for its aspirations of removing Saddam Hussein by force. The last two decades have tragically shown the consequences of this decision—with high costs of blood and treasure and a serious blow to American credibility. But from a strategic standpoint, one particular miscalculation continues to create blowbacks to US regional security interests: top US policymakers willfully ignored the need for an adequate nation-rebuilding strategy, leaving a power vacuum that an expansionist Iran could fill.

With the removal of the Baathist regime, Iran finally saw the defeat of a rival it could not best after eight years of one of the region’s bloodiest wars. This cleared the path to influence Iraqi Shia leaders who had long relied on the Islamic theocracy next door for support. Even as some Shia learning centers in Najaf and Karbala challenged (once again) Qom, new opportunities of influence that never existed before opened up for Iran. 

By infiltrating Iraq’s political institutions through appointed officials submissive to its regime’s wishes, Iran succeeded in two goals: deterring future threats of Iraqi hostilities and preventing the United States from using Iraqi territories as a platform to invade Iran. Through its Islamic Revolution Guards Corps Qods Force, Iran trained and supplied several militia groups that later officially penetrated Iraq’s security architecture through forces called Popular Mobilization Units, which have repeatedly carried out anti-American attacks. Nevertheless, those groups would eventually prove valuable to the United States in the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS)—yet even then Iran succeeded in appearing as the protector of Iraq’s sovereignty by immediately equipping the Popular Mobilization Units, unlike the delayed US response that arrived months later. 

Regionally, Iran’s military leverage and political allies inside Iraq provided it with a strategic ground link to its network in Syria and Lebanon, where the Qods Force ultimately shifted the political power dynamics to Iran’s advantage, especially as they crucially strengthened engagement in recruiting volunteers to support Bashar al-Assad’s fighters in Syria. Through the land bridge that connects Iran to the Bekaa Valley, Iran has helped spread its weapons-trafficking and money-laundering capabilities while reinforcing an abusive dictatorship in Syria and a crippled state in Lebanon.

Twenty years ago, the United States went to liberate Iraq from its oppressive dictatorship. What it left behind is a void in governance and an alternative system that fell far short of what the United States wanted for Iraq. Meanwhile, the Iranian regime continues to base its identity on anti-Americanism while it gets closer to its political and ideological ambitions. With US sanctions having so far failed to halt Iran’s network of militia training and smuggling—and the attempt to revive the nuclear deal stalled, despite being the main focus of US Iran policy—the question remains: How long will the United States tolerate Iran’s regional ascendancy before it intensifies its efforts toward restraining it? 

—Nour Dabboussi is a program assistant to the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center and Middle East programs.

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How governments counter terrorist financing 

Without the experience of the war in Iraq, US and transatlantic economic statecraft would be less agile and less able to prevent terrorist financing. However, more work and continued international commitment is needed to ensure Iraq and its neighbors are able to strengthen and enforce their anti-money-laundering regimes to protect their economies from corruption and deny terrorists and other illicit actors from abusing the global financial system to raise, use, and move funds for their operations.

The tools of economic statecraft, including but not limited to sanctions, export controls, and controlling access to currency, became critical to US national security in the wake of 9/11 and the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Sanctions and other forms of economic pressure had been applied against the government of Iraq and illicit actors prior to 2003. However, economic pressure and the use of financial intelligence to combat terrorist financing became increasingly sophisticated as the war progressed. Since 2001, the State Department and Treasury have designated more than 500 individuals and entities for financially supporting terrorism in Iraq. Following the money and figuring out how terrorist networks raised, used, and moved funds was a critical aspect in understanding how they operated in Iraq and across the region. Information on terrorist financial networks and facilitators helped identify vulnerabilities for disruption, limiting their ability to fund and carry out terrorist attacks, procure weapons, pay salaries for fighters, and recruit. 

Sanctioning the terrorist groups and financial facilitators operating in Iraq and across the region disrupted the groups’ financial flows and operational capabilities while protecting the US and global financial systems from abuse. Targets included al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group, among others. For example, the US Treasury recently sanctioned an Iraqi bank moving millions of dollars from the Revolutionary Guard Corps to Hezbollah, preventing terrorists from abusing the international financial system. 

Notably, the fight against terrorist financing set in motion the expansion of the Department of the Treasury’s sanctions programs and helped the US government refine its sanctions framework and enforcement authorities and their broad application. 

Equally important, the US government’s efforts and experience in countering the financing of terrorism increased engagement and coordination with foreign partners to protect the global financial system from abuse by illicit actors. The Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the inter-governmental body responsible for setting international anti-money-laundering and counter-terrorist financing standards, strengthened and revised its standards, recommendations, and red flags to account for what the international community learned from the experience of combatting terrorist financing in Iraq. The United States and partner nations provided, and continue to provide, training and resources to build Iraq’s and its neighbors’ capabilities to meet FATF standards and address terrorist financing and money laundering issues domestically. 

—Kim Donovan is the director of the Economic Statecraft Initiative within the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center. 

—Maia Nikoladze is an assistant director at the Economic Statecraft Initiative within the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center. 

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The United States

Perhaps no event since the end of the Cold War shaped American politics more than the invasion of Iraq. It is fair to say that without the Iraq war neither Donald Trump nor Barack Obama would likely have been president.      

Weirdly, the invasion of Iraq in 2003 is still almost a forbidden topic in GOP foreign policy circles. After the Bush years, a kind of collective-guilt omerta about the Iraq war took hold among Republicans. It was as if US-Iraqi history had started in 2005, or 2006, with Democrats and a few Republicans baying for a needed defeat. It never came. The 2007 surge, as David Petraeus’s counterinsurgency strategy came to be known, was the gutsiest political call by an American leader in my lifetime.      

It happened also to be right when very little else about the war was: There were, of course, no weapons of mass destruction found. Iran did expand its power, massively. Iraq did not offer an example of democracy to the region: rather, it horrified the region. It became linked to al-Qaeda only after the invasion. The White House refused to take the insurgency seriously until it was very serious. Iraq pulled attention away from Afghanistan. And of course there were 4,431 Americans killed.

By 2016, the narrative favored by Republicans had become that the execution of the war was flawed. Paul Bremer, head of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad, was the villain in this story: But for Bremer’s incomprehensible decision to disband the Iraqi army and institute de-Baathification in early 2003, so the story went, the Iraq war could have succeeded. But in retrospect these decisions were defendable. Bremer was erring on the side of satiating the Shia majority, not the Sunni minority, and trying to reassure them that a decade after they were abandoned in 1991 the United States would deliver them political power. And the one real success of the Iraq war, beginning to end, is that the United States never faced a generalized Shia insurgency.

The other villain was Barack Obama, who played in the sequel. (Obama largely owed his electoral victory to the Iraq war, brilliantly using Hillary Clinton’s vote for the invasion to invalidate her experience and judgment and thus the main argument for her candidacy.) In this version of events, Obama’s precipitous decision to withdraw troops from Iraq in 2011 contributed to the country’s near-collapse three years later under the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS). This was basically accurate. The withdrawal of US forces eliminated a key political counterweight from Iraq, and the main incentive for then-Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to hedge his sectarianism and friendliness with Iran. This accelerated political support for Sunni rejectionist movements like ISIS.

Both the Bremer narrative and the Obama narrative allowed George Bush’s Republican party to avoid revisiting the core questions of American power: intervention, exceptionalism, and its limits—precisely the same questions that had featured prominently in the 2006 and 2008 elections.

This was the broken market that Donald Trump exploited: that Republican voters’ views on Iraq after 2008 looked much like Democratic voters’, but the Republican establishment’s views did not. And it was no accident, in the 2016 presidential primaries, that the two candidates most willing to criticize the interventionism of the 2000s, Trump and Ted Cruz, were the ones who did best.      

This debate remains critical. More than any other decision, Bush’s war created the contemporary Middle East. Above all that includes the unprecedented regional dominance of Iran, the power of the Arab Shia, and the constraints on American power in buttressing its traditional allies. That imbalance, combined with a decade-long sense that America is leaving the region and wants no more conflict, has led Sunni Arab states to look for their security in other places.

Especially in the wake of Russia’s war against Ukraine, which if anything has sharpened foreign policy divisions, the Republican party and the United States need a dialectic, not a purge; a discussion, not a proscription; and a reasonable synthesis of the lessons of Iraq. People want to vote for restraint and realism, as much as or more than they want to vote and pay for interventionism and idealism. Was the Iraq War a mistake? Let us start this debate there, and produce something better.

—Andrew L. Peek is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Programs. He was previously the senior director for European and Russian affairs at the National Security Council and the deputy assistant secretary for Iran and Iraq at the US Department of State’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs.

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Andrew Peek on the historical context of the 2003 invasion

US foreign policy

The US decision to invade Iraq twenty years ago was, to use the words of Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand, a wily French statesman and diplomat of the Napoleonic era, “worse than a crime; it’s a mistake.” 

While Saddam Hussein was a monster, and had ignored numerous United Nation-mandated commitments, the US-led effort in 2003 to topple him as president of Iraq was strategically unnecessary. It became the center of a failed mission in nation-building—one that has proved disastrous for US interests in the greater Middle East and beyond. 

Iraq was at the center, but it was only one of four failed American interventions in the region.  The others were Afghanistan, Libya, and, to a lesser extent, Syria.  The operation to take down the Taliban was fast and efficient, but consolidation of a post-Taliban Afghanistan never occurred. Part of the reason for that was the United States’ war of choice in Iraq, which began less than eighteen months after Afghanistan. That sucked up most of the resources and attention for the rest of that decade. But the other reason for US failure in Afghanistan was that we were beguiled by the same siren song that misled us in Iraq: that we could overcome centuries of history and culture and create a stable society at least somewhat closer to US values. Failure on such a scale is not good for the prestige and influence of a superpower.

But that is not the end of it. There is also the domestic side. The misadventures in the greater Middle East were a failure not just of the US government but of the US foreign policy elite. It was a bipartisan affair. Neoconservative thinking dominated the Republican Party throughout the aughts, while liberal interventionism prevailed in the Democratic Party. They were all in for the utopian policies in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria. 

While the failures in the greater Middle East were widely understood even before the unnecessarily embarrassing 2021 departure from Afghanistan, there has never been a public reckoning. There was nothing like the Church Committee, which in the mid-1970s shined a very harsh light on US failures in Southeast Asia. Few prominent thinkers or officials have publicly acknowledged their failed policy choices. And the same figures who led us into those debacles are still widely quoted on all major foreign policy matters.   

This has had the consequence in the United States of providing ground for the growth of neoisolationist thinking. In running for the presidency in 2016, Donald Trump was not wrong in pointing out the failures of elites in both parties in conducting foreign policy in the greater Middle East. Since then, populists on the right have used this insight to undermine the credibility of foreign policy experts. And like generals fighting the last war, they have applied their “insight” from the Middle East to the latest challenges to US interests, such as Moscow’s war on Ukraine.  

In this reading, US support for Ukraine is comparable to US interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan and will result in failure. There is no analysis—simply dismissal—of the dangers that Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine poses to US security and economic prosperity. No recognition that, as Putin has stated numerous times, he wants to restore Kremlin political control over all the states that used to make up the Soviet Union—which includes NATO and European Union (EU) member states. In other words, he seeks to undermine NATO and the EU. 

Furthermore, there’s no understanding that despite the presence of American troops, the United States’ local allies in Iraq and Afghanistan could not win—but without one NATO soldier on the battlefield, Ukraine is fighting Russia to a standstill. Indeed, Ukraine has destroyed between 30 percent and 50 percent of Moscow’s conventional military capability. These analogies with the Iraq war ignore the reality that if Putin takes control of Ukraine, the United States will likely spend far more in financial resources and perhaps American lives in defending its NATO allies.

These failures of understanding are not simply or mainly a consequence of US errors in the Middle East. Utopian thinking in the United States and especially Europe was a natural consequence of the absence of great-power war since 1945. Especially since the fall of the Soviet Union, people on both sides of the Atlantic got comfortable with the notion that Russia was no longer an adversary. And isolationism also has a long pedigree in US society. So it would be vastly oversimplifying to blame the confusion of today’s neoisolationists exclusively on US failures in the Middle East. But the strong US response to the challenge of a hostile Soviet Union was possible because a bipartisan approach on containment was endorsed by leaders of both parties. After the United States’ misadventures in Iraq, such endorsements carry less weight today. In US foreign policy as elsewhere, we still do not know what the ultimate impact of the decision to invade Iraq will be. 

—John Herbst’s 31-year career in the US Foreign Service included time as US ambassador to Uzbekistan, other service in and with post-Soviet states, and his appointment as US ambassador to Ukraine from 2003 to 2006.

What Iraq needs now

William F. Wechsler on the future of Iraq

A reconciliation commission to rebuild national unity

One of the most devastating shortcomings of the 2003 Iraq invasion was the dismantlement of state institutions and the weakening of the Baghdad central government. That structural vacuum of power and services forced Iraqis back into tribal, religious, and ethnic allegiances, contributing to the nation-state’s fragmentation and exacerbating divisive sectarian discourses and intercommunity tensions. A quota-based constitutional system only served to institutionalize and legitimize the ethnosectarian distribution of power.   

Conflicting groups grew further apart over the past two decades and became more motivated by accumulating political positions, hefty oil incomes, and territorial and symbolic gains rather than collectively seeking to rebuild their balkanized nation. Iraqi youth, on the other hand—who campaigned in the name of “We Want a Homeland” [نريد_وطن#] during the 2019 Tishreen (October) protests—seem to have understood what political elites might be missing: the necessity for national reconciliation and memorialization. 

The bombing of the al-Askari shrine in Samarra in 2006 unleashed the chaos trapped inside Pandora’s box and resulted in violent Sunni-Shia confrontations, which pushed the country to the brink of civil war. Today, political elites, aware of the fragility and precariousness of the political consensus, pretend the time of friction is over. My firsthand work in Iraqi prisons and camps, and the research projects I led in the country’s conflict zones off the beaten path, such as west of the Euphrates, in Zubair, and in rural areas in the Makhoul Basin, prove the absolute contrary. 

A flagrant example of the sectarian ticking bomb that persists in Iraq is the mismanagement of the Sunni populations in the aftermath of the war against the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS). Many pretended that ISIS fighters came from some fictional foreign entity and refused to face the fact that most of them, including their leader, were Iraqi-born and raised, which I observed as an eyewitness working with the International Committee of the Red Cross during the ISIS war in Nineveh and Salahuddin. Many people who were accomplices of the atrocities even engaged in rewriting the narrative altogether after 2017 in the name of national unity. 

A number of Sunni populations in Iraq were mystified by their sudden loss of power with the toppling of Saddam Hussein and were in disbelief that the Shia they stigmatized as shrouguis—literally, “easterners,” a derogatory reference used by Sunni elites to refer to Shia Iraqis from the southeast—became the new lords of the land. Instead of engaging in meaningful mediation and reconciliation to work through these social changes, the majority parties preferred to bury their heads in the sand. This tendency led them to allow militia groups to displace and isolate the Sunni inhabitants of a key city like Samarra, to submerge under water the citizens of northern Kirkuk and Salaheddin, or to conceal the evidence incriminating Tikrit Sunnis during the Speicher massacre, in which ISIS fighters killed more than a thousand Iraqi military cadets, most of them Shia. 

These are not isolated examples in a chaotic political and constitutional system in which many communities feel persistently misunderstood, including Kurds, Assyrians, Mandaeans, Baha’is, Afro-Iraqis, Turkmen—and even the Shia themselves. The only possible and plausible pathway for the country to be one again in the next twenty years is to engage in an excruciating but indispensable reconciliation process, through which responsibilities are determined, dignity is restored, and justice is served. 

—Sarah Zaaimi is the deputy director for communications at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center & Middle East programs.

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A new constitution

Iraq needs a new constitution. A good constitution spells out the framework and structure of government. It provides essential checks and balances to prevent dictators from coming to power. It helps protect the people’s rights. It has measures to prevent gridlock or the collapse of a functioning government.

Judged by these standards, the 2005 Iraqi constitution is only a partial success.

However, complaints have built up since 2005: over the muhasasa system under which the established political parties divide up ministerial appointments; over the failure of Iraq’s government or other institutions to deliver basic services like electricity and water; over perceptions of excessive Iranian meddling in Iraq’s politics; and over the inability of the government to provide meaningful employment for millions of young Iraqis—or to foster a private sector capable of doing so. These grievances came to a head in the 2019 Tishreen protests in which more than 600 Iraqis died.

The United States invaded Iraq in 2003 in part to bring democracy to Iraq, so it is ironic that Iraq’s 2005 constitution was the product of mostly Iraqi political forces unleashed by the failure of the United States to ensure a democratic transition. It was expected that the Kurdish political parties, which had worked closely with the United States for years, would insist upon a federal republic to ensure their autonomy from a central government whose long-term character and leanings in 2005 were far from settled. Beyond this, however, the small number of Americans actually involved in advising the key Iraqi players in the constitutional process—in the room where it happened—actually had relatively little experience in constitutional mechanics or modern comparative constitutional practice. The American sins of commission during the first two years after Iraq’s liberation were replaced by sins of omission during the crucial months of negotiation of the 2005 constitution.

Genuine constitutional reform in Iraq is not likely to be accomplished directly through the parliament, given the interests of Iraq’s political parties and the parliament’s need to focus on legislative responsibilities. Instead, Iraqi civil society—including scholars, lawyers, religious and business leaders, and retired government officials and jurists—should initiate serious discussions about constitutional reform. Many of these voices were not heard when the 2005 constitution was adopted. Their effort can be far more open and transparent than the process was in 2005.

Foreign governments should have a minimal role, limited to supporting and encouraging Iraqi-led efforts, without trying to broker a particular outcome. International foundations, institutes, universities, and think tanks can offer outside expertise, particularly in comparative constitutional law and other kinds of technical assistance. But the overall effort needs to be Iraqi-led, with input from a broad spectrum of Iraqi voices.

While civil society discussions in Iraq could begin with considering amendments to the 2005 constitution, US experience may be relevant. The US Constitutional Convention convened in May 1787 to consider amendments to the Articles of Confederation decided to completely redesign the government, resulting in a Constitution that, with amendments, has been in force in the United States for more than 230 years. Sometimes it’s better to start over.

Iraq’s path to constitutional reform is not clear today, but there is a path nevertheless. Incremental reform is possible, but reform on a larger scale may achieve a more lasting result. The more promising outcome could be for a slate of candidates to run for office with the elements of the new constitution as their platform. A reform slate is not likely to gain an absolute majority, but if its base of support is broad enough, it may be able to gain support in a new parliament needed to send a revised constitution to the Iraqi people for their approval. A new constitution, done right, could propel Iraq towards a better future.

—Thomas S. Warrick led the State Department’s “Future of Iraq” project from 2002 to 2003, served in both Baghdad and Washington, and was director (acting) for Iraq political affairs from July 2006 to July 2007. He is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.

Thomas S. Warrick on the need for Iraqi-led constitutional reform

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An economy diversified away from oil

The post-2003 political order, based on the muhasasa system of sectarian apportionment, came with the promise of a complete break with the past. The 2005 constitution, drafted by the new order, promised: “The State shall guarantee the reform of the Iraqi economy in accordance with modern economic principles to insure the full investment of its resources, diversification of its sources, and the encouragement and development of the private sector.” 

As with other bold promises made, the economic promise was broken as soon as the constitution came into effect, as the political order pursued a decentralized and multiheaded evolution of the prior economic model, and persistently expanded the patrimonial role of the state as a redistributor of the country’s oil wealth in exchange for social acquiescence to its rule. 

Over the last twenty years the economy developed significant structural imbalances, and was increasingly bedeviled by fundamental contradictions. Essentially, it was dependent on government spending directly through its provisioning of goods and services as well as public services, and indirectly on the spending of public-sector employees. However, this spending was almost entirely dependent on volatile oil revenues that the government had no control over; yet the spending was premised on ever-increasing oil prices.

The political order had the opportunity to correct course and honor the original promise during three major economic and financial crises, each more severe than the last and all a consequence of an oil-price crash: in 2007 to 2009, due to the global financial crisis; in 2014 to 2017, due to the conflict with the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham; and in 2020, due to the emergence of COVID-19. Yet, paradoxically, the political order doubled down on the policies that led to these crises as soon as oil prices recovered.

On the eve of the twentieth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, the political order—buoyed by the bounty of high, yet unsustainable, oil prices—is planning a budget that is expected to be the largest ever since 2003, to seek legitimacy from an increasingly alienated public. These plans will only deepen the economy’s structural imbalance and its fundamental contradictions, and as such could likely lead to even greater public alienation if an oil-price crash triggers yet another economic and financial crisis. Even if oil prices were to stay high, however, the country’s demographic pressures will in time create the conditions for a deeper rolling crisis. 

—Ahmed Tabaqchali is a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Middle East programs. An experienced capital markets professional, he is chief strategist of the AFC Iraq Fund.

Andrew Peek on the current state of Iraq and the US-Iraq relationship

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An inclusive vision, representative of all its people

One of the enduring legacies of the 2003 invasion has been its deleterious effect on the many diverse ethnic and religious minority communities that make up the social fabric of Iraq. Yet it is that diversity and rich heritage that could now unlock a brighter future for the nation, if the political system can recognize and represent it. 

Marginalized by an institutionally inscribed political system and few representative seats in parliament, Iraq’s minority communities have found themselves peripheralized by the state—and in the imaginations of the country’s future. Many have emigrated and now reside in diaspora, changing the ethnic and religious heterogeneity of Iraq. 

Calculating the cultural toll of war goes beyond the destruction of shrines and artifacts, and the looting of museums and buildings: One of the biggest social and cultural losses for Iraq has been the exclusion of minority communities from the nation-building processes. This is a tragic state of affairs for Iraq, whose uniqueness, strength, and richness stems from its ancient histories and cultures, its religious, artistic, and musical traditions, and the languages that have contributed to its heritage and development. That heritage deserves to be protected and celebrated. 

Until the day the muhasasa system is dismantled, and a new Iraq built on meritocracy can thrive, minority communities must be safeguarded and included in Iraq’s future. Yet, this can only be achieved through the protection of minorities’ rights in Iraq’s political life, and genuine and concerted effort to increase parliamentary seats and legal representation of minorities. Investment in areas destroyed by terrorism and conflict, more reparations for communities whose livelihoods and homes have been ruined, and more boots on the ground to protect communities and religious shrines should be a priority. 

Twenty years of destruction, corruption, violence, and the subsequent emigration of many communities cannot be erased. Yet the twentieth anniversary of Iraq’s occupation ought to serve as a point of reflection for the kind of Iraq that Iraqis want now. There is certainly much hope in a new generation of Iraqis calling for new national visions, an end to muhasasa, more civil rights, and expanding economic opportunities. 

Yet all of Iraq’s communities must be part of this conversation. A more inclusive Iraq that applauds its diversity and takes pride in difference could be the driving force needed to unify the nation. 

—Oula Kadhum, a former nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, is a postdoctoral research fellow at Lunds University in Sweden and a fellow of international migration at the London School of Economics and Political Science in the United Kingdom. 

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Oula Kadhum on the reforms needed to reposition Iraq in the next twenty years

A new US Iraq policy focused on youth and education

As the global community reflects on the twentieth anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq and looks to the future, it is time for foreign policy toward Iraq to move beyond its traditional, security-heavy approach. 

While security threats persist, including a potential resurgence of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), and should be a priority, US aid to Iraq has historically been ineffective and financially irresponsible. Humanitarian assistance, meanwhile, tends to focus on short-term issues like the response to COVID-19 and assisting displaced individuals. And while such aid can be beneficial, continuing with the traditional avenues of support is not a sustainable solution to rebuild Iraq. The United States and the international community must begin to focus on long-term solutions that address human security, development, infrastructure, education, and the economy. At the center of all these issues are two key variables that must be the focal point of policy: education and the youth population.

A 2019 UNICEF report estimates that a staggering 60 percent of Iraq’s population is under the age of twenty-five. Learning levels and access to education in Iraq remain among the lowest in the region. The great challenges these two facts pose can also be seen as a unique opportunity: to place its large youth population at the epicenter of Iraq’s future through policy that increases the number of educators and trains them, ensures sanitary and competent learning conditions, and increases access to education.

The benefits of a long-term investment in Iraq’s education system and youth population go beyond simply educating its citizens: It would be the first step in unlocking the human potential of Iraq. More education means more qualified professionals; more doctors would increase the quality and access to healthcare, an increase in engineers will ensure that the country’s infrastructure continues to develop, and additional business leaders and entrepreneurs will assist in growing the economy. 

To truly rebuild Iraq, the United States and the international community can no longer view the country as only a security issue. Rather, this moment must be seen as an opportunity to empower bright Iraqi youths, who hope to lead in rebuilding their own country—providing them with a fair shot of again being a cradle of civilization. 

—Hezha Barzani is a program assistant with the Atlantic Council’s empowerME initiative. Follow him on Twitter @HezhaFB.

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Iraq’s Deputy Prime Minister Fuad Hussein reflects on the twentieth anniversary of the invasion

What the United States can do now

Recommit to the cause of Iraqi freedom

It’s hard to believe that it has been twenty years since the US invasion of Iraq. As I sat waiting to launch my first mission on March 20, the war’s historical significance was not my primary thought. How I found myself flying on the first night of the war in Afghanistan and Iraq was. That thought was accompanied by the tightness in the pit of my stomach that I always got before launching into the unknown. 

We didn’t debate the case for the war among ourselves. It has been discussed thoroughly since, and I don’t claim to have any new insight to offer on that topic. We were focused on not letting down our fellow Marines and accomplishing our mission: to remove Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship and replace it with a democracy that would give the people of Iraq the freedom that people everywhere deserve as their birthright. 

Did we succeed? We certainly succeeded in rapidly destroying the Baathist regime and its military, the third largest in the world. The answer to the second question is less clear. On my second and third tours in Iraq, I saw the chaos from the al-Qaeda-fueled insurgency in 2005 and 2006 and the dramatic turnaround following the al-Anbar “Sunni Awakening” in 2006-2007. From afar, I watched the horrors that the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham inflicted on its people after US troops withdrew without a status-of-forces agreement. 

Today, Iraq is rated “not free,” scoring twenty-nine out of one hundred in Freedom House’s Freedom in the World 2022 report. Although not up to Western liberal democracy standards, this is an improvement over 2002, when it received the lowest score possible and was listed as one of the eleven most repressive countries in the world. Moreover, Iraq’s 2022 score is vastly better than most of its neighbors: Iran scored fourteen, Syria scored one, and Afghanistan scored ten. 

Despite Afghanistan being widely seen as “the good war” of the two post-9/11 conflicts, where the casus belli was clear, today it is Iraq, and not Afghanistan, that gives me hope that twenty years from now, on the fortieth anniversary, we will see our efforts to promote democracy in Iraq come entirely to fruition. We owe it to the 36,425 Americans killed and wounded there, the thousands of veterans who took their own lives, and the many more still struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder to stay engaged in Iraq and the region to try and make sure that they do.

—Col. John B. Barranco was the 2021-22 Senior US Marine Corps Fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. These views are his own and do not represent those of the Department of Defense or Department of the Navy. 

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Balance confidence and humility

I officially swore into the military at Fort Hamilton, Brooklyn, on April 4, 2003, during the early stages of the US “shock and awe” campaign in Iraq. Having decided to join the Air Force following 9/11, the lengthy administrative process I’d endured to get to this point had been agonizing. I recall going through the in-processing line at Officer Training School on April 9, when an instructor whispered to us: “Coalition forces have taken Baghdad, stay motivated.” The thought that immediately went through my mind was: “I’m going to miss the wars.”

I had made the choice to pursue special operations and still had two years of training ahead of me. At the time, the war in Afghanistan seemed like it was nearing completion, and the swift overthrow of Saddam Hussein in Iraq had me convinced that, by the time I was ready to deploy, there would be no fighting left. Little did I know that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, along with their expansions across the Middle East and Africa, would end up consuming a large majority of my twenty years of service, take the lives of many of my special operations teammates, and impact the health and well-being of a generation of US service members and their families.

It’s impossible to know how the war in Iraq shaped other US endeavors in the region. Did it take our focus from Afghanistan and put us on a path of increased escalation and investment there? Did it set conditions for the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham to take root many years later, setting off another expansive counterterrorism campaign? 

More broadly, did it allow adversaries the time and space to study US capabilities and ultimately inform their strategies for malign influence? I often think of this today when I’m asked about what’s going to happen with the Russian war in Ukraine, or how prepared the United States is to defend Taiwan. 

The United States needs the confidence to confront global challenges to peace and prosperity, but also the humility to know we get things wrong, and mistakes involving direct military intervention can be catastrophic. Given the escalatory risks associated with the security challenges in the world today, our pursuit of a balance of confidence and humility has never been more important.

—Lt. Col. Justin M. Conelli is the 2022-23 Senior US Air Force fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.

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William F. Wechsler on the current political discourse around Iraq

Recognize the successes as well as the failures

“Was the invasion of Iraq worth it?”

I’ve spent a great deal of my military and postmilitary career answering questions about Iraq, but this one—from a brigadier general in the audience—caught me off guard. It was 2018, seven years after the formal withdrawal of US forces from Iraq, and I found myself in front of a roomful of Army officers giving a talk on the future of US-Iraq security cooperation. By that time, such talks had become a little frustrating. The fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (aka the Islamic State group) demonstrated that Iraqi forces could rise to the immediate challenge; however, the conditions that led to their unceremonious collapse in 2014 had not much changed. As a result, there remained many questions about the best way to continue the security partnership to prevent future catastrophe. 

The question I got that day, however, had little to do with how to partner with Iraqi forces. A co-presenter from Kurdistan jumped in immediately to answer the brigadier general’s question: the US invasion had removed Iraqi Kurdistan’s most significant threat—Saddam Hussein—and had provided opportunities for economic and political development it would not have had otherwise. Sensing a trap, I nonetheless walked right into it. While Iraqi Kurdistan was certainly in a better position, I pointed out that was not consistently so for the rest of Iraq. The US invasion had unleashed a sectarian free-for-all that allowed Sunni extremists, Shia militias, and their Iranian sponsors to fill the vacuum of oppression Saddam’s departure had left. Moreover, this vacuum had empowered Iran to challenge the United States and its partners regionally. So my answer was no, toppling Saddam likely did not outweigh the costs.

In previous years, the questions had been more policy-focused. For example, when I arrived at the Pentagon’s Iraq Intelligence Working Group in August 2002, the first question asked was how Iraq’s diverse ethnic and confessional demographics would affect military operations and enable—or impede—victory. By early 2003, the questions were about the larger effort to construct a new political order. Before long, we were asking how the confluence of Islamist terrorism, sectarian rivalries, and external intervention drove resistance to efforts to reconstruct Iraq. 

In 2012, I became the US defense attaché in Baghdad, just after the last US service members withdrew. At first, the question I heard in this capacity was how to continue the reconstruction project with a limited military and civilian presence whose movement was often severely restricted in a sovereign, sometimes uncooperative, Iraq with frequent interference from Iran. Before I left, al-Qaeda had metastasized into the Islamic State group and the question became how to cooperate to prevent the group’s further expansion and liberate the territory it had seized. Meanwhile, Iran’s influence with the Iraqi government continued to grow. 

In retrospect, the conditions I described in 2018 were accurate (and still largely hold today), but I wish I had given a more considered response. What I wish I had said was that a better question than “was it worth it” is: what have we learned about past failures to assess future opportunities? A prosperous Iraq that contributes to regional stability was not possible under Saddam. Now Iraq is an effective partner against Islamist extremists, and the Iraqi people, if not always their government, are in a position to push back on Iran in their own way, exposing Tehran for the despotic government it is. Moreover, Iraq’s hosting of discussions between Saudi Arabia and Iran was a catalyst to their recent normalization of relations. 

The point is not to rationalize failure. Rather, the question now is: what have we learned from those failures to effectively capitalize on the success we have had, and how can we take advantage of the opportunities the current situation presents?

—C. Anthony Pfaff, PhD, is a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Iraq Initiative and a research professor for strategy, the military profession, and ethic at the Strategic Studies Institute of the US Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

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Tony Pfaff on the future of US-Iraq relations

Remember the price of hubris

For me, the memories of those first days and weeks in Iraq remain quite clear. I remember calling my family from a satellite phone on the tarmac of Baghdad International Airport to let them know I was alive, late night meetings with Iraqi agents in safe houses, wrapping up Iraqi high-value targets, the fear amid firefights and the carnage on streets strewn with dead and mutilated bodies, and a confused Iraqi population that at the time did not know what to make of US forces who claimed to be liberating them from the regime of Saddam Hussein. 

Upon arrival in Baghdad in early April, there were few signs of the resistance that would haunt the United States for decades to come. Yes, there were still combat operations underway, but that was against Iraqi military and paramilitary units. So, as we tracked down Iraqi regime targets one by one—members of the famed “deck of fifty-five cards” that US Central Command had dreamed up and distributed like we were trading baseball cards—we saw this as part of a new beginning.

Yet soon after, the wheels began to fall off. Orders came from Washington policy officials with absolutely zero substantive Middle East experience both to disband the Iraqi military and purge the future government of Baath party officials, which immediately put tens of thousands of hardened military officers, conscripts, and officials out of work and on the street. The CIA presence on the ground protested, but to no avail. I had never seen Charlie, my station chief, so angry, including face-to-face confrontations with senior figures in the Coalition Provisional Authority. Charlie—the most accomplished Arabist in the CIA’s history—sadly predicted the insurgency that was about to come. If only Washington had listened.

I rarely think of Iraq in terms of big-picture strategy. As a CIA operations officer, I was a surgical instrument of the US government, and I gladly answered the bell when called upon to do so. I am proud to have served with other CIA officers and special operations personnel who performed valiantly. I suppose I can defend the invasion on human rights grounds. It seems we forget that Saddam was one of the great war criminals in history, and Iraq has been freed from his depravity. Yet two numbers are haunting: 4,431, and 31,994. Those are the number of Americans killed and wounded in action, per official Department of Defense statistics. 

War is a nasty business, and many times a terrible price is paid for hubris. The casualty figures noted above paint a stark picture of the historic intelligence failure that the analytic assessment that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction was. The CIA in particular suffered a credibility hit that has taken decades to recover from.

—Marc Polymeropoulos, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, served for twenty-six years at the CIA before retiring in 2019. 

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Thomas S. Warrick on the lessons to learn from the Iraq War

The post How the war in Iraq changed the world—and what change could come next appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The WIn (Women Innovators) Fellowship, led by the Atlantic Council’s empowerME Initiative recently held a roadshow for its first cohort of Saudi women entrepreneurs. The February 26th to March 3rd 2023 Roadshow marked the culmination of a year-long fellowship aimed at helping entrepreneurs improve their leadership skills and scale their start-ups.

The roadshow included five outstanding Saudi women entrepreneurs:

• Meyce Alauddin, Founder and CEO, The Giveaway Co,
• Dr. Rawan Al-Kharboosh, Founder and CEO, AtPoint tx
• Renad Al-Jefri, CEO, Ad Astra
• Sumayah Alzamil, Co-Founder and CEO, Nugttah
• Sara Binladen, CTO, Quantum

The WIn (Women Innovators) Fellowship was launched by the empowerME initiative of the Rafik Hariri Center and Middle East Programs in March 2022 to support women entrepreneurs in building leadership and executive capacity and scaling their startups to new heights. The goals of the fellowship are to (1) accelerate the leadership and executive skills of women entrepreneurs and provide them with an unparalleled network of mentors, business executives, and policymakers, (2) expose US policymakers, scholars, and the business community to a unique and direct perspective on women’s opportunities and challenges in the select countries, and (3) develop a top-tier network of WIn fellows across the Middle East region who can support one another and be ambassadors for women’s economic participation. The unique collaboration between the Atlantic Council and Georgetown University delivers a year-long program that includes a tailored executive education program by Georgetown University, mentoring, and networking opportunities with leading US and MENA experts and business executives, and workshops with leading experts to advance government and business policies that increase women’s economic participation. The program includes a fully sponsored trip to the United States for selected participants for leadership training at Georgetown and meetings with US businesses and government leaders.

The inaugural program was launched in Saudi Arabia with support from US Embassy in Riyadh, PepsiCo, and UPS as well as the American Chamber of Commerce Saudi Arabia’s Women in Business Committee, which served as the in-person event partner. The inaugural program included thirty Saudi women entrepreneurs and thirty five mentors from companies including Careem, Mastercard, Pepsi, Majid El Futtaim, Mumzworld, and Boeing, among others.

Meetings with U.S. Officials and Businesses Leaders in Washington, DC

The US trip for the five selected fellows includes numerous opportunities for them to learn new skills to grow their businesses. Their week began at Georgetown University McDonough School of Business in Washington DC attending Entrepreneurial Leadership courses where they connected with professors, venture capitalists, and other entrepreneurs.

After two intensive days, the fellows met with representatives from various US government agencies, think-tanks, corporate stakeholders, and other supporters of women’s entrepreneurship programs.

The five entrepreneurs visited the US Department of Commerce where they notably met with Camille Richardson, the Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Middle East and Africa at the International Trade Administration to exchange ideas and discuss potential collaborations. Then they headed to the US Department of State where they met with US government officials. Their discussions with these representatives focused on the conditions of women entrepreneurs in Saudi Arabia and how they could contribute to the country’s economy.   

Then they met with senior executives from UPS, one of the program sponsors, for a private luncheon that included  Saudi and US government officials. During this meeting, they discussed import-export conditions in Saudi Arabia and ways they could support women entrepreneurs. UPS also invited female entrepreneurs from Mexico to the gathering, which was a great opportunity for the fellows to compare notes, share details about their businesses, and explore ways of collaborating and supporting each other.

That evening, the fellows attended a dinner hosted by The National US Arab Chamber of Commerce which was attended by Saudi and US government officials, business executives, and several former US Ambassadors to Middle Eastern countries. During the dinner, the fellows had the opportunity to hear inspiring stories from the assembled business leaders.

Saudi Arabia’s New Economic Force: Women Entrepreneurs

On March 2nd, the Atlantic Council held a graduation ceremony for the five Fellows at its Washington, DC headquarters. The ceremony included several speakers from the US government, the Saudi government, and Georgetown University. The speakers affirmed the important role women in Saudi Arabia play in advancing the economy and in destigmatizing the perception of female entrepreneurship in the region.

During the graduation ceremony, the WIn Fellows shared inspiring stories about their journeys as female entrepreneurs, including how they overcame challenges and how their businesses are impacting their communities. They also highlighted the tremendous potential for women in the Middle East and North Africa and the critical role Saudi women are playing in developing new sectors in their country.

PepsiCo later hosted a dinner for the graduates where they discussed the business environment in Saudi Arabia and which included US and Saudi officials.

Last Stop: New York City

The final stop for the Fellows was New York City, where ABANA and MasterCard hosted a private lunch with the WIn fellows with senior finance and business. They then attended a meeting at Goldman Sachs headquarters with several of the firms leading women executives. They also met with the leaders of several programs supporting underrepresented founders and small-and-medium-sized businesses including 10,000 women, 10,000 Small Businesses, and Launch with GS.

Future Perspectives

Female entrepreneurs in the Middle East have made remarkable strides in recent years despite many socio-economic and cultural obstacles. They continue to drive innovation and economic growth. For instance, in the region, women lead a greater proportion of tech companies compared to Silicon Valley, with one out of every three companies having a female leader.

Their potential is significant, yet it remains underutilized due to several legal, financial, and social barriers. Supporting and promoting entrepreneurship among women can create more job opportunities, boost economies, and help reduce poverty. For instance, it is estimated that the MENA region is losing about $575 billion annually due to the legal and social obstacles women encounter when attempting to pursue economic opportunities.

Increasing female entrepreneurship leads to more inclusive, prosperous, and equal societies. To fully leverage the economic and social benefits of increased female entrepreneurship, policymakers must take steps to establish an enabling environment for them to prosper and grow. Programs like the WIn Fellowship are essential to help female entrepreneurs in the region overcome barriers to their success. As one of the Fellows, Meyce Alauddin of The Giveaway Co, said: “The fellowship helped and empowered me by giving me personal, entrepreneurship, and leadership tools that I didn’t have before.”

Amira Attia was a Program Assistant with the Atlantic Council’s empowerME Initiative at the Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East.

Lynn Monzer is the Associate Director with the Atlantic Council’s empowerME initiative at the Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East.

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2023 WIn Fellowship Roadshow

The WIn Fellowship roadshow is led by the Atlantic Council’s empowerME Initiative in cooperation with Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business with support from US Embassy Riyadh, UPS, and PepsiCo. The WIn Fellowship Roadshow participants, chosen from a highly competitive cohort of more than thirty applicants, receive a fully sponsored trip to the United States for leadership training at Georgetown and meetings with US business and government leaders.

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WIn Fellowship

The WIn Fellowship, a partnership between the Atlantic Council and Georgetown University, offers a year-long, fully sponsored program for women in the Middle East and North Africa, featuring a custom executive education course from Georgetown University, mentorship, networking with top US and MENA leaders, and workshops aimed at enhancing women’s economic participation.

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IGNITING Women’s entrepreneurship and innovation in Saudi Arabia

A joint project of the Atlantic Council’s empowerME initiative, the US Mission to Saudi Arabia, the American Chamber of Commerce Saudi Arabia, and Quantum Leaps for US and Saudi entrepreneurs and business leaders

empowerME at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East is shaping solutions to empower entrepreneurs, women, and the private sector and building influential coalitions to drive regional economic integration, prosperity, and job creation.

Learn more

The post WIn Fellowship Roadshow Recap: a promising start for the inaugural fellows appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On July 19, 2022, the White House convened leaders from industry, government, and academia at its a National Cyber Workforce and Education Summit. In his remarks at the Summit, recently departed National Cyber Director Chris Inglis committed to developing a National Cyber Workforce and Education Strategy with input from relevant stakeholders to align government resources and efforts toward addressing the many challenges in this area. Among these challenges is finding sufficient talent to fill the United States’ ever-growing number of openings for cyber-related roles across all sectors of the economy. According to research from CyberSeek, US employers posted 714,548 of these job openings in the year leading up to April 2022. While many of the vacancies are oriented toward individuals who are savvy in the more technical aspects of cybersecurity, more organizations are searching for multidisciplinary talent, ranging from international affairs to project management and everything in between. 

While we await the White House’s National Cyber Workforce and Education Strategy, we brought together a group of experts to provide insights into bolstering the cyber workforces of the United States and its allies.

#1 What is one assumption about the cyber workforce that is holding the cyber community back?

Nelson Abbott, senior director, advanced program operations, NPower: 

“‘We cannot find good talent.’ This sentiment is, in my opinion, a result of companies not broadening their talent acquisition strategies. You will not meet the increasing demand for cyber talent by using the same talent pipelines that are not increasing their output to market.” 

Richard Harris, principal cybersecurity policy engineer, MITRE Corporation: 

“One problematic assumption is that the market, academia, or government alone can solve the problem of cyber workforce shortages. Developing cyber workforces at the right time, in the right quantities, and with the right skills requires purposeful and persistent public, private, and academic partnerships.” 

Ayan Islam, director, cyber workforce, Office of the National Cyber Director: 

“There is an assumption that there is a single pathway into the cyber workforce when there are many pathways to recruit cyber workforce talent. To open the job pipeline to those for whom a career in cyber or a related field would be out of reach, new pathways need to be created. We need to fully leverage the potential for community colleges to contribute to the workforce, grow work-based learning programs such as apprenticeships, and further explore non-traditional training opportunities. While some exist today, we need many more pathways to allow for more entrants and career changers into the cyber workforce and to demystify those pathways.” 

Eric Novotny, Hurst professor of international relations, emeritus, School of International Service, American University: 

“One assumption that I have noticed in employment advertising is the posting of entry-level positions in which the Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) certification is listed as necessary or desirable. This certification, as is well-known in the community, is a cybersecurity management certification that requires five years of experience in the domain. It may be that human resources representatives do not understand the levels or purpose of cybersecurity certifications. Some organizations may lose qualified job candidates if desired certifications are not aligned with job requirements.” 

Merili Soosalu, partner leader and regional coordinator for Latin America and the Caribbean, EU Cyber Resilience for Development Project (Cyber4Dev), Information System Authority of Estonia (RIA): 

“Cybersecurity as a topic is on its way to the mainstream. In the more and more digitalized world, cybersecurity is an integral aspect that cannot be overlooked. This should also be reflected in the outlooks of cyber careers that do not only mean highly experienced technical skills but rather a variety of professions and skillsets from the areas of project management and communications to the highly skilled blue- and red-team competencies.”

#2 What government or industry-led programs have had an outsized positive impact on workforce development efforts?

Abbott: “I am of the opinion that there have not been ‘outsized’ positive impacts. There are a lot of great companies and organizations doing good work (NPower, Per Scholas, etc.), but they do not have the capacity to meet the exponential growth in demand for talent. The recent cybersecurity sprint was good to develop interest in that alternative hiring model, but it is still too early to see what the measurable results are.” 

Harris: “Some of the most successful workforce development programs have been in local communities. These programs were the result of local businesses, governments, and academic institutions putting their heads together to meet cybersecurity and other technical skill needs. While these efforts help keep people in their communities, they also support workforce mobility where these same skills are in demand outside of the local community.” 

Islam: “With over seven hundred thousand (approximately 756,000 as of December 2022, per CyberSeek.org) vacancies in cybersecurity positions across the United States, these numbers constitute a national security risk and must be tackled aggressively. Therefore, it is important for government, industry, education, and training providers to all contribute to workforce development efforts, and work in tandem to address our growing needs. For example, the Office of National Cyber Director hosted a National Cyber Workforce and Education Summit at the White House last summer with government and private sector partners to discuss building the United States’ cyber workforce, increasing skill-based pathways to cyber careers, and equipping Americans to thrive in our increasingly digital society. The event resulted in many new commitments. A cybersecurity apprenticeship sprint was also announced at the Summit, which led to an increase in private-sector participation in the Department of Labor’s apprenticeship program, with 194 new registered participants and over seven thousand apprentices getting jobs.” 

Novotny: “Sponsored events to attract new talent into the field, such as Cyber 9/12, AvengerCon, and various Capture the Flag (CTF) exercises are invaluable for stimulating interest in cybersecurity and exposing students and young professionals to executives and experts in the field.” 

Soosalu: “In Estonia in recent years, many positive initiatives have been developed for different age groups. For instance, for adults looking to change their careers to information technology (IT), the Kood/Jõhvi, an international coding school, was created and top IT specialists should enter to the job market in the coming months. A private initiative called Unicorn Squad was created in 2018 to popularize technology education among girls. These initiatives, to name some, will hopefully show positive effects in the coming years. The Estonian State Systems Authority, responsible for national cybersecurity, prioritizes the knowledge development of cyber incidents of critical sectors by regularly organizing joint exercises between the national Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) and the IT teams of different critical service providers.”

#3 Are there any issues or challenges in workforce development have been overstated or immaterial?

Abbott: “‘Anyone can do cyber.’ While it is true that there is a much broader spectrum of roles in cyber than most people realize (non-technical; governance, risk management, and compliance; policy; etc.), these still require a strong working knowledge of information technology and networking concepts.” 

Harris: “Many people need to move beyond wringing their hands about cyber workforce shortages or hoping that someone else will solve the problem. Organizations can start at the grassroots level and proactively develop partnerships and plans that result in a tangible workforce development achievement at whatever level is feasible, and then build on that success.” 

Islam: “Actually, what is understated and greatly material to the issue and challenge in cyber workforce development is the lack of appropriate resourcing and C-suite appreciation with security program investments. There is still a disconnect in recognizing that cybersecurity is a foundational business risk and not a one-time, niche issue. Without proper investments on the people side of security programs, we will continue to see the same issues or challenges in tackling cybersecurity threats.” 

Novotny: “There are some misconceptions that cybersecurity is an exclusively IT-driven, technical field. That is certainly true for some roles and responsibilities, but cybersecurity solutions also embrace people and processes, as well as technology.  Professionals with highly developed technical skills will need to include management and people skills in their career development.” 

Soosalu: “Today, all studies show that the IT sector, cybersecurity in particular, lacks a qualified workforce. Therefore, all challenges are real and need to be tackled.”

More from the Cyber Statecraft Initiative:

The 5×5—Minding the cyber talent gap

Cyber 9/12 Strategy Challenge

The Cyber Moonshot

#4 How can different types of organizations better assess their cyber talent needs?

Abbott: “By 1) moving from credential-based job descriptions to competency-based job descriptions; 2) better communicating between hiring managers and talent-acquisition teams; 3) changing job descriptions to remove bias and non-negotiable requirements to encourage more candidates to apply; and 4) considering internal upskilling programs and backfilling entry-level roles with new talent.” 

Harris: “The National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education (NICE) Framework is an awesome baseline reference for understanding workforce positions and skills. Organizations, however, must do the work to understand their current and future cyber talent needs, then leverage the NICE Framework, or a similar guide, to connect those business needs with the right positions and skill paths, and build a workforce development plan.” 

Islam: “A growing number of organizations are taking advantage of skill-based and aptitude assessments to allow for diverse and multidisciplinary candidates to join the cyber workforce. However, skill-based training and hiring practices are still necessary. Any solution must be inclusive of historically untapped talent, including underserved areas and neurodivergent populations. A cybersecurity career should be within reach for any American who wishes to pursue it, and skills-based training and hiring practices enable inclusive outcomes, give workers a fair shot, and keep the economy strong.” 

Novotny: “The size of the existing IT and cybersecurity internal infrastructure plays a huge role here. Medium and small enterprises will have a more difficult time justifying a large cybersecurity staff in most cases. For these organizations, where many cybersecurity functions are outsourced, the skills shift to management and procurement, rather than technical operations, such as staffing a security operations center. In the government sector, having different standards and compliance rules than in the private sector also drives different necessary skill sets. On the other hand, I would argue that any organization that has network operations and valuable information assets to protect has similar security requirements in principle.” 

Soosalu: “For assessing needs, some forms of standards are needed. In the European Union, the new European Cybersecurity Skills Framework (ECSF) was created to become a useful tool to help identify the profiles and skills that are most needed and valued. This will help create a European framework for recognizing skills and training programs.”

#5 How have cyber workforce needs shifted in the past five years, and where do you see them going from here?

Abbott: “They have only increased, and almost doubled in 2022. More companies are taking cybersecurity seriously, and are now realizing the importance of having those individuals on their teams. I fear that the demand for cyber talent will only continue unless employers start to create new solutions instead of relying on old habits when it comes to talent acquisition.” 

Harris: “Rapid technological change like the current artificial intelligence revolution, and increasingly complex risk dynamics exemplified by greater cyber-physical convergence, require cyber workforces and individuals to embrace continuous learning throughout their careers. More attention needs to be paid to developing interesting and flexible cyber career paths and investing in more career progression training and education.” 

Islam: “We need to broaden our thinking about the importance of cyber across occupations and professions in our interconnected society. There are many occupations and professions that have not traditionally required in-depth cybersecurity knowledge or training, but whose work relies on the use of cyber technologies. Greater attention should be paid to ensuring that cybersecurity training and education are part of the professional preparation of these workers.” 

Novotny: “Several broad trends are noticeable in workforce requirements that have changed over time. First, as more sectors of the economy are identified as critical infrastructure, professionals that have industry sector experience are in higher demand.  Second, the cyber threat intelligence business—in both government and in the private sector—has opened job opportunities for young professionals with language and international relations education. Third, there is an apparent fusion of traditional cybersecurity needs with a growing concern about misinformation, social media, and privacy. A few years ago, these latter issues were largely separate from the cybersecurity domain. That is not the case today.” 

Soosalu: “Estonia was the target of one of the first ever national cyberattacks in 2007, and therefore cybersecurity as an issue is not new to our general public. However, being one of the most digitalized countries in the world, Estonia relies heavily on its digital services and needs to both create awareness and invest in being as cyber resilient as possible. The lack of a skilled workforce is clearly a vector of risk. Compared to the period of past five years, the legislation has evolved. Today, many more sectors are obliged to follow information and cybersecurity standards, hire information security officers, and invest budget into dealing with cybersecurity. The topic of cybersecurity is here to stay, and we will need to do our outmost to create interested and competent workforce for these profiles. Hopefully, the initiatives named above (Question #2) will help to contribute to this, and we see soon more women and more IT and cyber enthusiasts in the job market.” 

Simon Handler is a fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Cyber Statecraft Initiative within the Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab). He is also the editor-in-chief of The 5×5, a series on trends and themes in cyber policy. Follow him on Twitter @SimonPHandler.

The Atlantic Council’s Cyber Statecraft Initiative, under the Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab), works at the nexus of geopolitics and cybersecurity to craft strategies to help shape the conduct of statecraft and to better inform and secure users of technology.

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The post The 5×5—Strengthening the cyber workforce appeared first on Atlantic Council.

We don’t see them, but they’re out there. 

Rare, elusive, and well-camouflaged, snow leopards are exceptionally hard to spot. When sighted, these majestic cats seem to have come out of nowhere. And yet they were around us all along.  

In the discipline of global foresight, as the Atlantic Council’s Peter Engelke wrote last year, a “snow leopard” is “a known but underappreciated—perhaps even forgotten—phenomenon” that has the potential to change the world and shape its future even though appearances might suggest otherwise.  

The snow leopards discussed here are not predictions, but rather prompts for us to scrutinize overlooked phenomena. A technological breakthrough, for example, may not seem world-changing when still in development. Other phenomena might be so woven into our daily lives that they’ve become invisible to us, as with the recommendation algorithms highlighted below. The actors involved also influence how much weight we give to events and trends: If a head of state were to announce a country’s economic disengagement from China, we would sit up and pay attention, but companies deciding one by one to proceed with such “decoupling” may fly under the radar.  

Our next-generation foresight experts at the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security brought a fresh perspective to the task of spotting the hard-to-spot. Check out their list of six snow leopards to watch closely in the year ahead. 

Algorithms are everywhere yet almost invisible, serving as the silent sifters and sorters of our lives. Their influence is baked into everything from email and smartphones to GPS and government services. On search engines and social media, “recommendation algorithms” leverage user data and history to curate information for billions of people. In their simplest form, algorithms are instructions or sets of rules—often used by computers—for completing a task. At their most complex, they drive machine learning and enable artificial intelligence (AI) to grow smarter and more sophisticated by the second. 

With such sweeping capacity to shape how individuals and societies order and consume information—from the mundane recommendations of photo feeds and shopping lists to the grave amplification of extremist conspiracy theories that cause real-world terror—algorithms (and their designers) hold some responsibility for the social and political consequences of the content they propagate and the decisions they advance. 

The need for AI governance, particularly to rein in algorithms, is increasing—and policymakers have demonstrated an appetite for it. This October, the White House published an AI Bill of Rights with a blueprint for addressing “algorithmic and data-driven harms” and potential remedies. Lawmakers in the US Congress have proposed legislation to limit algorithmic promotion of extremist content by holding social-media platforms liable if certain forms of amplified content lead to offline violence, with other bills on the subject under consideration as well. China implemented a law in 2022 to reduce algorithmic influence on public opinion by enabling users to decline algorithmic recommendations on websites and apps. (The law was part of China’s pursuit of “positive energy” online, under the country’s aggressive censorship.) The EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act, the first major, still-pending regulatory framework for AI that could set global standards, strives to curb algorithmic bias. The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) also offers guidelines on when companies can and can’t use algorithmic automated processing for decision-making—for example, regarding who to offer a loan to or at what interest rate.  

Regulating algorithms is a broad and complex challenge, and pushback by the tech industry along with legal hurdles could halt even the most ambitious regulators. The public, and even policymakers, often lack the conceptual clarity to identify, define, and classify algorithms. And because it can be difficult to prove causation between algorithmic decision-making and the behavior or opinions of individuals influenced by it, accountability is hard to track. 

Further breakthroughs may happen below the national level. New York City is reviewing the use of algorithms in decision-making across its government agencies and offices. The City Council curtailed the use of AI algorithms in decisions about hiring and promotion. And these steps are just the beginning, as state houses and activists energetically join the race to shape this new frontier. 

Danielle Miller, Assistant Director, Scowcroft Strategy Initiative

Prior to joining the Atlantic Council, Miller worked in the US House of Representatives and was a research assistant at the University of California Berkeley’s Institute of European Studies.

In the days after the Kremlin launched its illegal war on Ukraine, Western companies based in Russia started fleeing the market, fearing unprecedented transatlantic sanctions, consumer backlash for continuing to do business with an invader country on an imperialist bender, and investor pressure to maintain profit margins. Now, as tensions between the West and China escalate, wary investors and multinational corporations may be starting to preemptively shift their market presence, supply chains, and investments away from China to insulate themselves from similar future impacts should the Sino-transatlantic relationship deteriorate.  

Among the most interesting early developments: Apple, which has a huge production footprint in China, has decided to shift production of its iPhone 14 model to India, while some of Google’s production for the new Pixel phone will likely be heading to Vietnam. Another space to watch is pension funds, as growing concerns about political risks are prompting discussions about potentially exiting or at least reducing exposure to the Chinese market.   

While it’s still early to call such decisions formal decoupling, these signs point to Western companies’ unease about the state of the Sino-transatlantic relationship, as well as a preemptive, corporate-led fragmentation of markets and supply chains in case tensions between China and Western countries bubble over. The private sector’s concerns about China’s restrictive zero-COVID policies, which have led to recurring lockdowns and disruptions at factories, may also be a factor in these developments, but the roots of these corporate moves can be traced back further to extensive tariffs and other economic tit-for-tat measures between China and the West—as well as nervousness about China’s own pursuit of self-sufficiency via efforts such as its “Made in China 2025” initiative. At stake in how these trends play out is nothing less than the future of globalization as we know it, along with the shape of the multipolar geoeconomic order, in which countries such as India will likely play an enhanced role.   

Anca Agachi, Associate Director, Transatlantic Security Initiative

Previously, Agachi worked for the EU’s European Defence Agency on defense capability development projects in the information security and space domains, and served as a United Nations Youth Representative for Romania, focusing extensively on the UN 2030 Agenda and sustainable development goals.

The two main reasons why consumers are reluctant to buy electric vehicles? They cost a lot and can’t get very far on a charge. But a battery that could make electric cars cheaper, more efficient, and thus more popular may be on the horizon. The next breakthrough could come not by way of an updated lithium-ion battery—the kind that powers most electric vehicles on the road today—but rather by using current battery technology in different form through structural batteries built into a car’s frame. This has the effect of reducing the car’s weight (a chassis made of battery cells isn’t as heavy as a chassis plus a separate battery) and a lighter car can travel farther on a single charge. The potential benefits go far beyond increasing range. Integrating the battery into a car’s chassis could also cut down on manufacturing costs and make cars cheaper, while strengthening the body of the car as well.  

Tesla has experimented with structural batteries in its Model Y cars and GM used them in the electric model of its Hummers, but their versions have yet to yield broader adoption. Yet technical development among automakers and other actors is ongoing and promising. Researchers at Sweden’s Chalmers University of Technology, for example, recently developed a more efficient structural battery that performs ten times better than its predecessors. Right now, electric vehicles are driven mostly by the wealthy: In the United States, for instance, 78 percent of federal electric-vehicle credits go to those with incomes over $100,000. If structural batteries can deliver on their promise, it will result in many more electric vehicles on the road around the world, democratizing ownership.  

Imran Bayoumi, Assistant Director, Scowcroft Strategy Initiative

Bayoumi graduated with his master’s degree in global affairs from the Munk School at the University of Toronto where he held a Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship. He also holds a BA from Queen’s University in political studies.

An uneven post-COVID-19 economic recovery has stoked a labor-rights movement in the United States and efforts to unionize in some of the country’s largest corporations—from Starbucks to Amazon to Trader Joe’s. Around the world, meanwhile, similar fallout from the pandemic has produced another phenomenon: Platform workers—those who work for organizations that provide services directly to consumers through an online platform—are leading efforts to create better working conditions for themselves. Strikes and other protests from Brazil to the United Kingdom to the Philippines and beyond speak to rising unrest among these workers. The causes for disputes and the types of protest vary across regions, but concerns about pay are often a primary driver of the activity.  

Such developments are significant in part because platform workers are a subset of the informal economy, which encompasses economic activities that are not monitored by the state. These activities include a wide range of work—from domestic labor to rideshare driving to market stands. More than 60 percent of the world’s adult labor force operates, at least part-time, in the informal sector, and on average that sector represents 35 percent of gross domestic product in low- and middle-income countries. In many cases, particularly in emerging markets and developing economies, platform workers are not aiming to formalize their economic activities. But their budding efforts to improve their working conditions could alter the world of work for the better, more strongly linking them with government protections and helping curb global poverty and precarious employment. 

Caroline Multerer, Deputy Director of Operations, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Prior to joining the Atlantic Council, Multerer was a program associate at Jones Group International, a global consulting firm owned by General James L. Jones.

One approach to combating climate change is geoengineering, or deliberate, large-scale, technologically based interventions in the environment to mitigate some of the effects of climate change. These include removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and reflecting the sun’s rays back into space. Futuristic though it may sound, geoengineering is already here. China and the United Arab Emirates have undertaken efforts to “seed” clouds by artificially increasing the amount of precipitation they hold and creating rain. Researchers from the UAE’s National Center of Meteorology have looked into creating an artificial mountain that would induce cloud formation and rain. Other countries, including China, India, and the United States, are making steady progress in advancing their geoengineering capabilities. The 2022 federal appropriations act, for example directed the US Office of Science and Technology Policy to develop a multi-agency group for coordinating research on solar geoengineering. This form of climate engineering, where sunlight is sent back into space, seems most likely to have the biggest impact on limiting the consequences of climate change and thus most likely to be pursued. 

But along with its promise solar geoengineering also brings numerous risks, including the potential alteration of regional weather patterns. There’s also the increasing likelihood that, given the pace of climate-driven impacts such as floods, droughts, severe storms, and heat waves, a country or multiple countries will attempt to geoengineer the planet unilaterally, before the underlying science is solidified and before adequate global governance mechanisms are in place. 

Imran Bayoumi, Assistant Director, Scowcroft Strategy Initiative

Bayoumi graduated with his master’s degree in global affairs from the Munk School at the University of Toronto where he held a Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship. He also holds a BA from Queen’s University in political studies.

Although Japan and South Korea normalized diplomatic relations in 1965, their relations have continued to be complicated by the legacy of Japan’s colonization of Korea from 1910 to 1945, memories of World War II, and disputes over how to compensate Korean women who were forced into wartime sexual slavery by the Japanese military. 

Despite this history, deeper reconciliation between the two countries, while politically difficult, is not an impossibility. In one indicator of a coming thaw, a meeting between South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on the sidelines of the 2022 United Nations General Assembly, framed as a brief, informal gathering to avoid setting off domestic opposition at home, marked the first bilateral meeting between the leaders of these nations in three years. In another sign, the Japanese and South Korean publics are coalescing around concern about China. Were such a rapprochement to occur, it would dramatically alter the geopolitical environment in Asia while delivering significant benefits to both countries. Japan and South Korea face common and acute threats from China, North Korea, and Russia. With better relations, the two countries could pursue closer bilateral military ties, reach mutual understandings of regional threats, and develop responses to crises as they emerge. South Korea, one of the world’s leading advanced economies, could get more involved in the Quad grouping of Australia, India, Japan, and the United States. The United States would be able to count on both nations to counterbalance China’s influence in the region, while the three could promote shared values throughout the Indo-Pacific. 

Imran Bayoumi, Assistant Director, Scowcroft Strategy Initiative

Bayoumi graduated with his master’s degree in global affairs from the Munk School at the University of Toronto where he held a Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship. He also holds a BA from Queen’s University in political studies.

Global Foresight 2023

In this year’s edition of Global Foresight, the Atlantic Council’s senior experts identify the top risks and opportunities for 2023. Our foresight team spots “snow leopards” that could have major unexpected impacts in 2023 and beyond. And we share findings from our survey of global strategists and foresight practitioners on how human affairs could unfold over the next decade.

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Atlantic Council Strategy Paper Series Jan 9, 2023

Welcome to 2033: What the world could look like in ten years, according to more than 160 experts

To survey the future, we polled global strategists and foresight gurus on our most burning questions about the biggest drivers of change over the next decade. Check out their forecasts on everything from the prospect of nuclear proliferation to the probability of great-power war to the potential for more global volatility.

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Atlantic Council Strategy Paper Series Jan 20, 2023

Six ‘snow leopards’ to watch for in 2023 

Atlantic Council foresight experts spot the underappreciated phenomena that could have outsize impact on the world, driving global change and shaping the future.

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Atlantic Council Strategy Paper Series Dec 23, 2022

The top 23 risks and opportunities for 2023

The war in Ukraine changed the world in 2022. How will it continue reshaping global affairs in 2023 and what else looms on the horizon? The Atlantic Council’s top experts brought their globe-spanning expertise to the task of forecasting the near future.

Africa Americas

The post Six ‘snow leopards’ to watch for in 2023  appeared first on Atlantic Council.

This was the third in a series of four events for the first cohort of the WIn (Women Innovators) Fellowship launched in Saudi Arabia. The fellowship is led by the Atlantic Council’s empowerME Initiative in cooperation with Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business with support from US Embassy Riyadh, PepsiCo, and UPS. The American Chamber of Commerce Saudi Arabia’s Women in Business Committee is the program’s in-person event partner. The yearlong program from March 2022 – March 2023 enables over thirty Saudi women entrepreneurs to enhance their networks, gain practical knowledge, and develop US-Saudi people-to-people and business ties that will help them scale their business locally, regionally, and globally.

The key points from the discussion are summarized below.

Major changes in Saudi Arabia impacting women in recent years:

• Jamila El-Dajani highlighted the changes in Saudi Arabia that allowed women to gain freedom and independence while providing new opportunities for them in terms of employment, entrepreneurship, and business leadership. She shared one example: “The kingdom just announced seven hundred new licenses for women lawyers, bringing the total to 2,000, which is a rapid shift from a decade ago.”
• Mae Saleh Almozaini highlighted women’s freedom of mobility since they’ve been permitted to drive. She noted that women’s participation in the workforce in Saudi Arabia increased from “17 percent to 36 percent,” underscoring their increased ability to make contributions to the economy over the past five years. 

Areas where change to support women’s inclusion in workplaces is needed: 

• Zina Janabi emphasized the necessity of transformational change at organizational and individual levels for women in the workplace. She highlighted the dual approach that some organizations are using to create a culture where women can thrive while providing policies and programs that allow them to move up the workforce ladder. Furthermore, Janabi explained on a personal level that it’s essential for women or any minority to support one another when experiencing barriers in their careers. 
• Bara’a Al-Khateeb said, “I don’t think what women face in terms of challenges in KSA [Saudi Arabia] is far different than what women face globally.” She added that women worldwide sometimes encounter unhelpful stereotypes. She noted that studies show that when companies promote employees to a leadership position, women are considered 15 percent less than men for these promotions due to stereotypes. Al-Khateeb contended that women have underrated social intelligence, which is a vital skill for leaders. She added that women are also often paid up to 35 percent less than males. 
• Hanaa Almoaibed highlighted that the dual burden for working mothers increased due to the pandemic’s various challenges while stating that Arab societies lack a culture of professional childcare, such as nannies. She stressed the need for women to create “better care facilities” that will provide a vital support system for working mothers.
• Al-Khateeb stressed the lack of opportunities for leadership, mentorship, and coaching for women. She added that women wish to pursue leadership roles; however, these challenges and the cultural barriers can make women’s full participation or rise to a leadership role much more difficult.
• Almoaibed stressed the need to train teachers to help students with practical 21st-century skills in schools and essentialize extracurricular activity. She suggested institutionalizing structured career guidance in schools for every student in the kingdom from an early age to build proper research and negotiation skills that will link with “realistic job training” for them in the future.
• Almozaini addressed a major concern in Arab societies: raising women to be shy and reserved, which can affect their confidence in the future. Women need to become more assertive and outspoken, Mae emphasized, adding the importance of providing a mentorship program for women to be guided throughout their career path. 
• Al-Khateeb highlighted that while adding female workers rewards companies with the flexibility of hiring employees from various nationalities, women’s presence has positively impacted dollar value and increased team collaboration. She encouraged people to raise awareness of women’s effectiveness in leadership roles and business.

Opportunities for women entrepreneurs and startups in Saudi Arabia:

• Almoaibed explained that more and more people in Saudi Arabia are starting companies; however, she pointed out that “risk is still the most significant barrier to going into an entrepreneurial adventure” and “seventy percent of people who consider forming a private business back out because they fear the project’s failure.” 
• Al-Khateeb emphasized the importance of flexibility to women; she noted that startup companies sometimes have more agility and willingness to do this. She stressed that providing employees with flexibility will help more women take on leadership roles. She shared her personal story, explaining that during her hiring interview at Foodics, the male interviewers asked what would make the role more attractive for her, and she requested to work remotely because she was pregnant with her third child. She wasn’t expecting them to agree, but they told her she would be Foodics’ first remote employee. Their willingness to provide flexibility had a significant impact on her as a working mother.
• Al-Khateeb also shared her insight as a recruiter, highlighting that women are applying to a wide range of positions in Saudi Arabia, despite the challenges that come with these roles such as traveling requirements or working long hours.
• Almozaini highlighted that the G20, which was hosted in Saudi Arabia two years ago, reported that investing in targeted training for Saudi women will generate $400 billion in return on investments to the country’s GDP by 2030. Therefore, promoting women’s inclusion in the workforce is a business necessity, not just a moral imperative.

Nour Alhajjeh is a Young Global Professional with the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East & Middle East Programs. 

The post Societal norms in Saudi Arabia clearing the way for more women to start and lead businesses appeared first on Atlantic Council.

In 1983 one in five US workers were members of a union; today roughly one in ten are. Private sector union membership in 2021 was just over 6 percent. The union membership rate temporarily increased in 2020 to 10.8 percent, but it has since fallen to pre-pandemic levels as the increase was largely due to labor force composition effects. During this time the share of national income going to labor has decreased, inequality has increased, productivity has been inconsistent, and many industries have had significant consolidation. Evidence suggests that the decline of unions during this period has been a major factor in these macroeconomic trends.

Unionization in the United States has declined in part due to long-running structural changes to the economy. Technological advancement and globalization altered supply chains and business processes, negatively impacting some workers who lost their jobs to automation or outsourcing. However, the United States has among the lowest unionization rates of advanced economies due to specific policy choices as well. “Right to Work” laws in many states, worker classification rules, and changes to the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) regulatory authority have weakened workers’ bargaining power. In addition, the present enforcement apparatus for labor law compliance does not incentivize strict adherence from firms. Violations are infrequently caught, and financial penalties are often too low to affect behavior.

Encouraging and incentivizing more unionization in the United States would have micro and macro benefits. For example, unionized workers receive higher wages. A worker represented by a union earns 10.2 percent more in wages than a peer in the same sector with comparable experience, education, and occupation. Unionized workers are also far more likely than equivalent nonunion workers to have essential benefits such as health insurance, retirement benefits, and paid sick leave. Lastly, unionized workers are likely to work in safer working environments and unions help ensure more extensive job training.

Evidence shows that unions not only benefit workers, but employers as well. Firms with unionized workers benefit from higher labor productivity and retention. Research also notes that unions do not have a negative impact on employer solvency rates.

Aside from individual unions and firms, the economic benefits of unionization have positive macro spillovers. Higher wages for union workers create competition in local labor markets, which leads nonunionized firms in the same geographic area to raise wages. Benefits such as health insurance and job training also frequently spill over to nonunion workers in local labor markets. In addition, workplace standards that unions negotiate and advocate for have often become industry norms. Unionization also helps address racial economic disparities. Finally, unionization has intergenerational effects. Union density is a strong predictor of economic mobility compared to similar non-union households. Collectively, these spillovers create a more productive labor force and equitable economy.

Although unionization rates have declined in recent decades despite clear economic benefits, the pandemic may have instigated a shift in dynamics. Some workers have changed their attitudes about which working conditions and level of pay are acceptable after enduring the pandemic and working in challenging circumstances. Union organizing has increased this year, public support for unions is the highest it’s been since 1965, and the tight US labor market has created leverage for workers. In the years to come workers may have additional leverage because there will be even fewer prime-age US workers due to aging demographics.

US policymakers have recently taken important steps to advance union efforts. For example, the Biden administration has pushed forward a variety of regulatory steps to make union organizing easier for federal workers and private-sector employees. The Department of Labor released a proposal to reclassify gig workers, and the NLRB proposed a rule that would make parent companies more legally liable for labor law violations committed by associated contractors or franchisees. The administration also included prevailing wage and apprenticeship requirements in major legislation such as the CHIPS Act and Inflation Reduction Act. While these are positive steps, Congress should pass the Protecting the Right to Organize Act as soon as possible. Innovative organizing efforts at the state level also need to be fostered. For example, California recently passed a law that would establish “sectoral bargaining,” which is more common in other advanced economies.

As stakeholders navigate the opportunity to grow union membership they should recognize the benefits of new technology and globalization, even though they also present risks. Increased unionization can help harness these benefits and manage the risks. Stakeholders must also be cognizant of the macroeconomic environment—inflation is a substantial problem and US GDP growth is slowing—and act accordingly to gain labor rights in a sustainable manner that won’t reverse should a recession occur.

Jeff Goldstein is a contributor to the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center. During the Obama administration he served as the Deputy Chief of Staff and Special Assistant to the Chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. He also worked at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Views and opinions expressed are strictly his own.

The post How the US compares to the world on unionization appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Pakistan’s startups and technology sector witnessed unprecedented growth during the COVID-19 pandemic. 2021 was a record-breaking year, with technology startups raising $350 million, while over $227 million was raised in the first half of 2022; Pakistani startups have raised $322 million in 2022 so far. Additionally, Pakistan’s information technology (IT) services sector has emerged as the largest net services exporter in the country, with IT exports more than doubling from $1.19 billion in fiscal year (FY) 2019 to $2.62 billion in FY 2022.

Another key component of the country’s technology sector is freelance work, where individuals provide technology services to global clients through platforms such as Upwork and Fiverr. This talent pool has experienced a tremendous increase in their earnings during the pandemic. While exact data for cumulative freelance earnings is not available, Pakistan is ranked as one of the largest freelance markets in the world. The national government has set a target of earning over $3 billion from this sector by 2024.

However, a tightening global macro environment coupled with increasing domestic political instability is a cause of concern for the sector, especially the domestic startup economy. To understand the risks and opportunities facing the technology ecosystem, the Atlantic Council’s Pakistan Initiative interviewed several experts within and outside Pakistan. The analysis below highlights the current state of the ecosystem and the impact of ongoing economic and political instability in Pakistan. It also outlines recommendations for key stakeholders including policymakers seeking to further globalize Pakistan’s technology sector to unlock both export earnings and foreign investment opportunities.

The South Asia Center is the hub for the Atlantic Council’s analysis of the political, social, geographical, and cultural diversity of the region. ​At the intersection of South Asia and its geopolitics, SAC cultivates dialogue to shape policy and forge ties between the region and the global community.

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Executive summary

There is widespread awareness among researchers, companies, policy makers, and the public that the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and big data raises challenges involving justice, privacy, autonomy, transparency, and accountability. Organizations are increasingly expected to address these and other ethical issues. In response, many companies, nongovernmental organizations, and governmental entities have adopted AI or data ethics frameworks and principles meant to demonstrate a commitment to addressing the challenges posed by AI and, crucially, guide organizational efforts to develop and implement AI in socially and ethically responsible ways.

However, articulating values, ethical concepts, and general principles is only the first step—and in many ways the easiest one—in addressing AI and data ethics challenges. The harder work is moving from values, concepts, and principles to substantive, practical commitments that are action-guiding and measurable. Without this, adoption of broad commitments and principles amounts to little more than platitudes and “ethics washing.” The ethically problematic development and use of AI and big data will continue, and industry will be seen by policy makers, employees, consumers, clients, and the public as failing to make good on its own stated commitments.

The next step in moving from general principles to impacts is to clearly and concretely articulate what justice, privacy, autonomy, transparency, and explainability actually involve and require in particular contexts. The primary objectives of this report are to:

• demonstrate the importance and complexity of moving from general ethical concepts and principles to action-guiding substantive content;
• provide detailed discussion of two centrally important and interconnected ethical concepts, justice and transparency; and
• indicate strategies for moving from general ethical concepts and principles to more specific substantive content and ultimately to operationalizing those concepts.

I. Introduction

Societies are increasingly being shaped by technological change, and the pace is increasing exponentially. Every day, organizations make decisions that participate in and shape this global transformation. As new technologies unlock unprecedented capabilities—and do so at scale—they also have the potential to bring about unprecedented existential risk. Organizations are being defined by their ability to manage these risks with a global perspective in mind, because the impacts of these decisions—intentional or not, direct or indirect—shape an organization’s role in the ongoing, global, digital transformation, often with societal implications. And, the intentionality with which an organization handles decision-making in this new era will be a differentiating factor in the marketplace.

As expectations shift rapidly beneath their feet, organizations have adopted a diverse set of strategies to manage these new risks. And, leaders know it is insufficient to inform decisions through legal bounds alone. Regulatory bodies in government struggle to keep up with the pace of digital change and have, thus far, failed to demonstrate a consideration of future risks in policies intended to be forward looking. As a result, existing laws and regulations easily become outdated, ineffective, and often mis-calibrated to current threats. In this context, even perfect compliance means potential exposure to existential risks—and when these are risks to the fabric of societies, action must be taken for the benefit of all. This means that to lead in this space, it’s insufficient to follow any existing compliance framework. Leaders must set new ones.

In this proposed framework, the overarching bias is to protect the continued sustainability and enrichment of the human condition. To aid in this endeavor, this paper adopts a useful framework from the 2001 Manifesto for Agile Software Development—the notion that technology practitioners guide their decision-making by applying values. These values are constructed in context-sensitive ways, with the understanding that the pathway from values, through principles, and to action is critical, making this a unique approach.

Throughout this paper, there will be “value spectrums” where one thing is valued over another. This is denoted as a greater-than sign, “>”. In practice, the spectrums are contextually relevant; here, they are used as examples for discussion. Designers, product managers, and development teams use these types of spectrums as guides for ethical decision-making. They do not prescribe any one correct answer; where any decision eventually lands on the spectrum is less important than the potentially stakeholder-rich deliberation that supports the final decision. Wherever an organization chooses to land along any one of the spectrums, the deliberate process of evaluating ethical priorities will necessarily be informed by the organization’s values. In this manner, the organization is empowered to draw clear through-lines from core values to the features in their products and services—and, ultimately, to their communications, facilitating an intentional and trusted relationship with their customers, users, and the public. This approach serves to curate a deliberate and informed company culture, and further serves to protect digital companies from the existential risks their own decisions could foster.

The overall goal of this framework is to recognize and respect the role that technology plays in the advancement of societies, while also recognizing the collective interest of societies to ensure the safety and security of individuals and groups. These spectrums are intended as a guiding tool to aid organizations attempting to walk a fine line between continuing to embrace the advancement of technology and realizing economic prosperity, without compromising their own values or their accountability to society.

II. Governance

As technology becomes as fundamental to the functioning of organizations as their boards of directors and employees, there needs to be a fundamental shift in the way responsibility and accountability are distributed.

Whether it’s a development team, an entire organization, or a nation-state, being a responsible body now includes accountabilities for all the inputs, outputs, impacts, hidden costs, and externalities of the technology tools in purview. The only way to achieve the level of insight needed is to develop a culture in which governance is so embedded and routine that it is second nature, and in which engaging with governance is commonplace. This exists today in regulated industries such as financial services, but less regulated industries can, and should, exercise this muscle too. Some spectrums to serve as a starting point might include the following.

Minimize harm > Maximize value

Risk mitigation and harm minimization are essential to any long-term value strategy.

As the Business Roundtable’s Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation advocates, “companies should be led for the benefit of all stakeholders—customers, employees, suppliers, communities, and shareholders.”¹ Above all else, technologies should respect the persons subjected to them, particularly when used covertly or without consent. When technologies are used to unfairly limit an individual’s possibilities, meaningful harm occurs. When this happens at scale, genocide can occur. It’s serious. While no decision can perfectly account for all possibilities, every reasonable effort should be made. Even ripples from small slights, at scale, can have harmonic amplification, creating tidal waves of disadvantage for inadvertently targeted segments of the population.

No money is worth that societal cost. And, if a company values its stakeholders above shareholders, then the choice to minimize harm to individuals over maximizing (short-term) revenue is always the right choice.

Value stays with data subject/discloser > Data collector/aggregator/user

Ensure a robust data ecosystem to maximize the value that stays with data disclosers.

The more value retained by those providing data, the more apt they are to continue providing data. If all of the value resides with the data collector, the incentive structures for more data disclosure begin to deteriorate. To maintain a robust data ecosystem, it’s important to ensure data disclosers retain a substantial amount of value. This breeds a generative environment for data-centric ecosystems that is in abundance, giving more opportunities for innovation to the data collectors and aggregators and, ultimately, users.

Fairness through “values transparency” > Enforcing equality

Focus on creating a level playing field and disclose the values that drive that decision-making.

Equality is when everyone gets the same, regardless of their needs or situation. Equity happens when people are given what they need to engage fairly with others. With artificial intelligence (AI), “fairness” is in demand, and the only way to understand how an organization is optimizing for its unique definition of fairness is to understand the values it cares about, and which it is prioritizing and optimizing.

Manage internalities > Externalize internalities

Minimize potential harms with robust internal governance, before harms have a chance to scale.

The greatest advantage of digital technologies is their ability to scale. Similar to cataclysmic environmental harms from bad industrial actors (e.g., rivers catching fire, Chernobyl’s meltdown), relatively small oversights in AI governance can lead to radically outsized harms to communities, and existential risk to the organizations that proliferate them. Having robust internal governance practices go far to minimize this risk, but it is still necessary to have a plan of accountability in place for when unintended harms occur.

III. Data procurement and use

The amount of investment an organization needs to place in minimizing harm is directly related to the amount of value it derives from digital products or services that are informed by data. The value of data is increasingly compromised if the methods of procurement or use fall short of local laws or stakeholder expectations.

Being thoughtful across architecture, product development, and policy design doesn’t just protect organizations by mitigating risk; it can also generate new value by improving relationships and retention with existing stakeholders, as well as attracting new ones.

These are samples of spectrums an organization might use to make data-procurement and use decisions.

Collect relevant data > Anything/everything possible

Minimizing data collection leads to better analysis and less risk.

It’s always best to first consider the questions for which the answers could, and should, be informed by data. After the questions are articulated, data maps can be created to specify the data that needs to be collected. Then, data scientists can consider data-minimization techniques to further reduce the data needed to answer the questions. Doing so minimizes the data burden—the infrastructure, processes, and personnel required to handle large volumes of data—leaving the organization in a strong strategic position with minimal data risk should a breach or leakage happen.

Informed consensual use of data > Exploratory use

Plan for how to use data, be transparent about their use, and gain consent.

The more specific and informed the consent-sourcing process, the lesser the future liability, and the stronger the trust relationship with the data provider. Data subjects hold a range of expectations about the privacy of their data and what constitutes acceptable secondary and tertiary uses. These expectations are often context dependent. Designers and data professionals should give due consideration to those expectations, and align products and services accordingly.

Data expiration > Digital perpetuity

Outdated data is a risk to model integrity, informed decision-making, and legal liability.

It might be a priority to keep data as a record or as a resource for future use; however, the longer data is kept, the more security and privacy risks increase—and, all the while, value and public perception are degraded. All data has a useful life. Leadership and design teams should consider this as part of security protocols, consent regimes, and policymaking.

IV. Artificial intelligence

As the powerful tools of autonomous systems and artificial intelligence continue to define the products and processes of daily life, it is imperative to regulate them as the fallible tools that they are, and to ensure that at every stage—from development and deployment to maintenance—humans are at the center.

Prioritize human consequence and agency > Reliance on AI

A human-centered approach is key to deciding where it is appropriate to apply AI.

Every algorithm, system, and model holds the possibility for error. Where insights derived from data could impact the human condition, the potential for harm at scale to individuals and communities should be the paramount consideration. Big data can produce compelling insights into populations, but those same insights can be used to unfairly limit an individual’s possibilities in life. There are certain specific use cases for AI that require special consideration to mitigate the realization of severe adverse outcomes. Given the severity of consequences, such as risks to public health and safety, or even the loss of personal freedom, it may be appropriate to allow for appropriate governance methods that address fundamental AI deployment questions.

Re-train (dynamic) models > Static models

Dynamic models preserve value and provide sustainability.

There needs to be consideration of how a model’s data and decision-making ability will fare with time and shifting circumstances. Without retraining, a model is not just incomplete, but ineffective as a valuable and sustainable tool for the people it aims to serve.

Be trustworthy > Transparent

Transparency is a useful reform tool, but trust is what provides stability throughout an organization.

When it’s genuine, transparency can be a critical component of an effective communications strategy, but it can also be used to distract. Being trustworthy is a higher calling. To be trustworthy means attending to establishing, building, maintaining, or repairing trust at every opportunity and through many avenues. It could be answering the phone, immediately, without long, microtargeted phone trees. Or, it could be having customer service and sales agents trained on how to respond to end-user privacy concerns. Trust manifests in myriad ways; seizing the maximum number of opportunities to reinforce trust is a strong strategy to avoid unnecessary risk.

Model an aggregate population > Model an individual

Practice “clustering” to avoid excess collection of personal information; aim to derive similar value with less risk.

Today’s marketing holy grail is to communicate with an audience of one, but this requires organizations to know a substantial amount about an individual, likely including personally identifiable information (PII). There are myriad risks involved in having such depth of information about so many people. The use of clustering can minimize the amount of information needed for any single person and make marketing operations much simpler, so everyone wins.

V. Public sector

How technology interfaces with, and has the power to impact, historically marginalized communities should be a particularly heightened concern for public-sector organizations and policymakers. Governance bodies have a duty to ensure net societal benefits while protecting the public from harm. This means that, in the face of applying novel technology, balancing the potential for profound benefit while minimizing disparate and negative impacts should be the aim. More specifically, public policy should “make sure that people are not targeted, not harassed, and not murdered because of who they are, where they come from, who they love or how they pray.”² The opportunity to model governance behaviors and practices at the highest level of accountability should also be considered.

Inclusive consideration > Utilitarianism

Protect and plan for the most valuable populations, who are often on the fringes of consideration.

In the face of potentially harmful impacts from technology, the public sector must prioritize the needs of the most vulnerable, to minimize the potential amplification of preexisting, discriminatory institutional structures. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a baseline, and its provisions should be prioritized above all else. Where other sectors and contexts fail to consider certain populations due to minority status, disenfranchised identity, cost effectiveness, or other factors, the public sector must act as an advocate and a safety net. When considering the needs of the collective, these populations must be included in the whole. Rather than placing excessive weight on the experience and utility of the majority, governments must always weigh the risk of how the most vulnerable could be disproportionately affected.

Protection of the commons > Incentives of individuals

Consider the needs of the collective over the interests of individuals.

The “Tragedy of the Commons” describes a phenomenon in which a shared resource, from which no one can be excluded, is degraded over time due to each individual’s incentive to get more out than they put in. Public organizations and services should strive, as much as possible, to protect, maintain, and bolster the public “commons.” In the context of technology’s effects on society, consider, for example, the commons of public privacy. To avoid the detrimental effects of misaligned incentives, the public sector should prioritize the collective needs of the public and serve to set both guideposts and boundary lines for private behavior, preventing the private interests of individuals or organizations from infringing on the needs of the collective. These bounds should be informed by the values and priorities of the public, especially those most vulnerable, and apply to the principles and functions of public organizations.

Proactive iterations > Reactive incrementalism

Keeping pace with technology and its effects necessitates anticipation and creativity.

The pace of technological advancement is growing exponentially, and its impacts are too large to be approached with protocols designed for a previous decade’s status quo. The public sector should lean into existing policy-experimentation initiatives and expand their remit—contemporary approaches to agile governance are focused on being responsive to stimuli, often taking the form of technological progress. This approach can have an outsized impact. One example is applying data science to long-term policy. For example, the policy on standard retirement age could be tied to median life expectancy. This creates policy that matures alongside society. Dismissing these approaches because they deviate from the norm is a missed opportunity. Governance bodies could be leveraging these capabilities to enshrine new policies that proactively iterate, while still allowing for intervention.

VI. Conclusion

Leading organizations need to be intentional about their own behavior, and hold consideration for their impact that goes beyond government-mandated requirements. In doing so, companies have an opportunity to model responsible behavior, get out in front of competitors, and establish best practices and governance that can be codified and amplified by regulators. These are the companies that will set the bar for others to aspire to achieve. Will your company set the bar or play catch-up?

VII. Contributors

Steven Tiell
Nonresident Senior Fellow, GeoTech Center
Atlantic Council

Author

Steven is an author on this issue brief He is a Nonresident Senior Fellow with the Atlantic Council’s GeoTech Center. He is an expert in data ethics and responsible innovation working at Accenture, where he helps clients to integrate responsible product development practices and executives to manage risks brought on by digital transformation and widespread use of artificial intelligence. He founded the Data Salon Series, now a program at the GeoTech Center, in 2018. Since embarking on Data Ethics research in 2013, Steven has contributed to and published more than a dozen papers and has worked with dozens of organizations in high-tech, media, telecom, financial services, public safety, public policy, government, and defense sectors. He often speaks on topics such as governance, trust, data ethics, surveillance, deepfakes, and industry trends.

Lara Pesce Ares
Responsible innovation consultant
Accenture

Author

Lara Pesce Ares is an author of the Accenture Technology Vision. She develops thought leadership that covers technology futures and responsible business practices that often consider sociological implications. She is proud that her work creates impact through business-model innovations that position organizations to disrupt existing markets and enter new ones, influencing positive change at scale. She holds a BA in public policy from New York University, where she did a senior thesis on data-driven initiatives in city governments

The post Principles to practice: Using ethical spectrums to guide decision-making appeared first on Atlantic Council.

This tech sector strength is driving the Ukrainian response to Russia’s imperial aggression. It is enabling the country to defy and in many instances defeat one of the world’s leading military superpowers. A start-up culture that owes much to Ukraine’s vibrant IT industry is providing rapid solutions to frontline challenges in ways that the more traditional top-down Russian military simply cannot match. 

The tech component of Ukraine’s battlefield success is perhaps not as surprising as it might at first appear. According to the 2022 Global Skills Report by Coursera, the country ranks among the global top ten in terms of technological skills.

This high position reflects the impressive progress made in recent years to support the growth of the country’s IT sector and to foster greater digital literacy throughout Ukrainian society. Since 2019, the Ukrainian authorities have prioritized digital skills and have sought to promote learning through the Diia.Digital Education online platform, which serves as an “educational Netflix” featuring courses conducted by experts and celebrities.

This approach appears to be working. The platform currently boasts a completion rate of 80% among those who sign up for courses. Nor has Russia’s invasion prevented Ukrainians from enhancing their IT skills. Around 60,000 Ukrainians have registered for courses since the start of the war, with the most popular topics being training for new tech sector professions, media literacy, and cyber hygiene.

As the world watches the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfold, UkraineAlert delivers the best Atlantic Council expert insight and analysis on Ukraine twice a week directly to your inbox.

Ukraine’s emphasis on digital innovation was shaping the country long before Putin launched his full-scale invasion on February 24. In 2021, Ukraine became the first country in the world to give digital passports the same legal status as physical passports for domestic use. Ukraine was the fourth European country to introduce digital driving licenses and also developed the world’s fastest online business registration service. 

Efforts to promote greater digitization continue despite today’s wartime conditions. This is recognized as important for the war effort and is also seen as an essential ingredient for Ukraine’s post-war recovery. I am convinced that tech-focused educational initiatives must remain a strategic priority for the country. By 2025, 85% of all occupations will require digital skills.

The Ukrainian authorities are currently supporting a project to train 5,000 internally displaced women for new careers in the creative and tech industries. There is clearly huge demand for such tech-related retraining opportunities, with the application process for the first phase of this initiative attracting around 36,000 candidates.

A pilot project to reform computer studies within the Ukrainian school system is also proceeding against the backdrop of the ongoing Russian invasion. The first stage will begin in September and will feature 50 secondary schools, before being scaled up to the entire country next year. Thanks to this project, an estimated four million Ukrainian schoolchildren will gain access to a state-of-the-art digital education.

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Ukraine’s advance in Kursk: What’s next and implications

Conflict Russia Security & Defense Ukraine

Ukraine’s broader transformation into a genuinely digital state is continuing despite the disruption of the war. This progress is perhaps most visible in terms of the Diia.City project. Two weeks before the Russian invasion, Ukraine launched this special economic initiative offering some of the most attractive taxation terms in the world for tech companies. Ukrainian and international IT companies have continued to sign up to the Diia.City project since the outbreak of hostilities, with a total of 260 companies now registered. Clearly, they believe in Ukrainian victory and are confident about the country’s future development as a digital powerhouse.

Digital services have been launched to support those in the combat zone, allowing them to apply online for financial assistance. Likewise, the Diia mobile app allows anyone to financially support the Ukrainian military via a few clicks. Ukrainians can use the country’s digital platforms to report news of Russian military deployments in their localities and can submit digital reports detailing property damage.

The team at the Ministry of Digital Transformation is currently working with thousands of volunteers to wage a digital war against Russia on the information and cyber fronts. The ministry has initiated the creation of Ukraine’s very own IT army, which brings together specialists from Ukraine and other countries around the world. Today, this army consists of more than 250,000 IT volunteers participating in what is widely recognized as the world’s first cyber war.

Ukraine’s innovative use of technology is allowing the country to punch above its weight and defend itself against a much larger enemy. This experience will be studied for years to come as an example of how digital literacy and tech excellence can cancel out the traditional advantages of conventional military strength and transform the modern battlefield. The future of the world will be shaped by technology and today’s Ukraine is leading the way. 

Valeriya Ionan is Ukraine’s Deputy Minister for Eurointegration at the Ministry of Digital Transformation

Further reading

UkraineAlert Jun 30, 2022

Goodwill gestures and de-Nazification: Decoding Putin’s Ukraine War lexicon

By Peter Dickinson

From “goodwill gestures” to “de-Nazification” and “reclaiming Russian lands,” the Atlantic Council’s Peter Dickinson decodes some of the key phrases from the lexicon of Putin’s Ukraine War into plain English.

Central Asia Conflict

UkraineAlert Jul 20, 2022

Ukraine can win

By Richard D. Hooker, Jr.

If the West takes active measures to ensure Ukraine can’t defeat Putin’s Russia, it won’t. But if it commits to supplying the range of capabilities required for modern, high intensity warfare, Ukraine can win, and it will win.

Conflict European Union

UkraineAlert Jul 25, 2022

Ukrainian footballers prepare to defy Putin with wartime premier league

By Andrew Todos

The Ukrainian Premier League is preparing to begin the 2022-23 season in August despite Russia’s ongoing invasion of the country as Ukrainians turn to football to demonstrate their determination to defy the Kremlin.

Central Europe Conflict

The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.

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Starting with the Trump administration, Washington has unequivocally viewed Beijing as its most serious challenger and sought to mobilize resources from around the world to counter China. Despite the differences in wording and approach, US President Joseph R. Biden, Jr., has largely retained his predecessor’s framework of great-power competition. However, the retrenchment of the United States in the Greater Middle East, in particular the hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, gave the world a clear signal that there is only a small chance that the United States will fully intervene in crises outside the Indo-Pacific. As a result, Moscow perceived that this could be the right time to hit Kyiv hard, enlarging its buffer zone with the West, and pushing back NATO’s eastward expansion to a certain extent.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has forced Washington to refocus most of its recent attention on Eastern Europe. Top US officials claim that the West has forged an unprecedentedly strong alliance against Russian President Vladimir Putin, and that Moscow now faces a global campaign of sanctions and condemnation. In reality, however, the core of such a united front is still limited to NATO members and a small number of traditional US allies in the West and South Pacific. Many other countries, including most Middle Eastern ones, obviously have little enthusiasm for participating in the firm and vigilant containment of Russia at their own cost. The refusal of Gulf leaders to take calls from the White House amid the Ukraine conflict is just another example of the fading unipolar moment in the world in general and in the Middle East in particular.

The major reason for the decrease in US authority over Middle Eastern countries is not the decline of absolute power but the lack of political commitment and predictability. A country’s reputation for competence and credibility, as argued by Stephen Walt, a professor of international affairs at Harvard University, could be its “critical force multiplier,” and the global influence of a hegemonic power inevitably erodes when others doubt its wisdom and ability to act persistently and effectively. While the Democrats in Washington detest former US President Donald J. Trump’s erratic narrative pendulum, which swung between bellicosity and disengagement regarding the Middle East, for now Biden is also caught between reviving the Iran nuclear deal and reassuring regional allies. Therefore, attempts by the United States to induce Middle Eastern countries to contribute comprehensively and directly to the plan of “decoupling” from China are likely to come to naught. Against the background of regional countries betting on multiple sides among major powers, China, Russia, and some European countries all have significantly expanded their strategic space in the Middle East.

Beijing’s involvement in the Middle East is mainly concentrated in infrastructure and trade, but in recent years it has also gradually extended to the domains of security and social governance. In 2021, China continued to be the largest trading partner of Middle Eastern countries, with the trade volume close to $400 billion. Nineteen countries in the region have had their development plans, including Vision 2030 of a couple of Arab states and Turkey’s Middle Corridor, strategically synergized with China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

In the energy sector, the share of Middle Eastern oil and gas in the Asian market, including in China, has largely expanded in the last decade, while US and European companies have withdrawn a large part of their investment from the Middle Eastern energy industry for years before the Ukraine war. In addition, in the fields of clean energy, such as solar and wind, which is a growing concern for oil dependent Middle Eastern states, China is also in a leading position as it has the largest renewable energy equipment production capacity in the world. In the realm of arms trading, Chinese-made military drones all but dominate the Middle Eastern market, with the United States unwilling to supply such advanced armaments to its Arab allies.

It should be pointed out, however, that China remains hesitant to march on the Middle East in an all-round way due to a number of difficulties and dilemmas. The Middle East is still arguably the most volatile region in the world, and will continue to be beset by sectarian violence, ethno-religious conflict, and political uncertainty for the foreseeable future. Chinese officials, such as Foreign Minister Wang Yi, openly and repeatedly describe the region as “the lowland of global security,” and China has good reason to doubt that its investment and cooperative projects in the region could survive and thrive as the world economic recovery faces even more severe challenges. In addition, policy makers in Beijing also face a seemingly insoluble dilemma when formulating their Middle East policy. A rapid increase of China’s footprint in the Middle East could divert some of the pressure from the United States in East Asia, but such a move would require substantial investment in political, economic, and military resources and would likely lead to unwelcome regional entanglements.

In the early days of the Cold War, Chinese Communist Party leader Mao Zedong proposed the concept of “intermediate zone” to depict the vast area between the United States and the Soviet Union, in which China would have great potential on its way back to the world’s center stage. In the current digital age that follows a period of US unipolarity, intermediate zones have not just returned but become much more complex as the number of issues affecting transnational relations drastically increase. In the United States’ asymmetric competition with China, Russia, and Iran, many countries in different regions of the world may cooperate with Washington on specific targets or issues, but more often they would largely remain neutral or adopt a strategy of hedging.

It is necessary and ideal, for example, for the Arabs and the Israelis to seek US support to cope with the threat from Iran, but amid the confrontation between Washington on one end and Beijing or Moscow on the other, they would maintain strategic dialogue with both sides to avoid damaging actual interests. In this sense, the rise of complex intermediate zones is hard to reverse and, in fact, makes the strategic balance between the United States and its global rivals more stable. This is why Beijing understands that it is unwise to make replacing the United States the fundamental goal of its Middle East policy, but claims to support Middle Eastern countries resolve regional security issues “through unity and cooperation” and the people of the Middle East “independently explore their own development paths.”

The war in Ukraine has provided an opportunity to observe the rise of complex intermediate zones, and subsequent developments on the battlefield will continue to influence the course of global affairs. As Russia failed to quickly topple the Ukrainian government, Washington adjusted its policy, shifting from preventing the conflict to prolonging it. This seems like a “smart” move to continuously weaken the Russian army without losing a single US soldier, but it is not beneficial for Washington’s role as world leader. The longer the war drags on, the worse the results will be for many developing countries, as food crises, economic difficulties, and political turmoil might arise.

Nevertheless, the interests of the Global South are not a priority in Washington right now. The United States is focused on how to bleed Russia, and preferably smear or pressure China as well in the process. On the issue of pursuing stability and development in the Middle East, countries including China, the United States, and also many European ones share common interests and could have cooperated accordingly to solve practical problems in the lives of local people, such as contributing to connectivity through infrastructure construction, providing the energy transition with funds and technology, and protecting the natural environment. But under the current circumstances, every extra-regional major power is individually exploring new ways of dealing with the Middle East. While Washington debates how to strike a balance between Ukraine and the Indo-Pacific, China is striving to navigate and gain more influence in many other parts of the world, including the Middle East, in particular by learning how to provide regional public goods without getting into unnecessary trouble.

She Gangzheng is an associate professor of international relations at Tsinghua University in Beijing.

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In-Depth Research & Reports

Jul 12, 2022

Evolving MENA power balances: What is next for US engagement in the region?

By Karim Mezran, Valeria Talbot, Jonathan Panikoff, Sanam Vakil, Maha Yahya, Mark N. Katz, Gangzheng She, and Julien Barnes-Dacey

US President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s upcoming visit to the Middle East provides an opportunity to assess what role the United States will play in the Middle East and North Africa in the future. With the war in Ukraine further diverting US attention from the region, the big question is whether the region is entering a ‘post-US’ era.

Energy & Environment Middle East

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On June 7, an article co-authored by Mathew Burrows was published by the Wilson Center’s New Security Beat, which discussed the dangers of a growing cohort of youth who feel disillusioned by political failures.

“Failing to examine youth engagement trends may be a serious blind spot— and thus a threat to democracy. It is a question that merits closer examination. When youth disengage, they are often saying they don’t have a high level of confidence or trust in existing economic, political, or social entities,” said Burrows and his co-author, Steven Gale of the US Agency for International Development’s Bureau for Policy, Planning and Learning.

“They may also want to “opt out” because they perceive that their generation is not being heard or treated fairly. Whatever their reasons, youth disengagement will ultimately have negative impacts beyond democratic engagement with potential shockwaves on social stability, the well-being and mental health of individuals (youth and their families), and individual and country-level economic productivity and quality of life.”

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Juan lives in Bogota and has been a construction worker for twenty-five years. His brother Pedro, also a construction worker, lives in Los Angeles, California. To Pedro’s surprise, when he compared the results of their respective jobs, he realized he produced much more than his brother in Colombia in the same amount of time. In other words, his productivity far outpaced Juan’s, and thus, his income was much higher.

This efficiency in using time, characteristic of the United States, is not a product of chance. High labor productivity—five times higher than Colombia’s—is the result of technology, training of the labor force, and adequate regulation for business development, among other factors.

This high productivity also explains, in large part, the enormous gap between the per capita income of the United States and Colombia. World Bank estimates¹ show that close to 50 percent of the differences between the countries’ per capita incomes can be explained by disparities in productivity. In other words, the main barrier to convergence with developed countries’ income levels is lagging productivity.

Colombia urgently needs to grow at high and sustained rates to increase economic and social development and, above all, become a more inclusive society. The current levels of monetary poverty of 42.5 percent and extreme poverty of 15.2 percent, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, are unacceptable, as are the figures for business and labor informality. The latter is close to 63 percent and is mostly concentrated among women.²

Pivotal to achieving this transformation is improving productivity, the most critical determinant of per capita income growth in the long term and, therefore, poverty reduction. Without productivity, there is no growth, no sustainability, no equality, and no inclusion.

A bilateral agenda based on productivity

Undoubtedly, Colombia’s primary objective in increasing productivity is to improve the welfare of its population in a sustainable and sustained manner. Achieving this would have very positive external repercussions well worth considering. For example, for the United States, a more efficient and sophisticated Colombian productive apparatus would provide a reliable and long-term commercial partner with high-quality standards and reasonable prices, in addition to the valuable advantage of geographical proximity.

In recognition of the positive impact on both countries, the bilateral agenda should also focus on working together to improve Colombia’s productivity. What better occasion to do so than the bicentennial of bilateral relations?

There is no such initiative, but scaling up existing programs such as the Productive Factories Program of Colombia Productiva of the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Tourism or replicating them in different sectors or regions could provide a solution.

According to international evidence, policies to increase productivity should focus on three fronts: productivity gains within firms, efficient real- location of resources from low-productivity to high-productivity businesses, and free entry of high-productivity enterprises and the exit of low-productivity ones.³

In Colombia, despite the importance of these three factors, the first— productivity increases within companies—is the most relevant, according to an analysis of the evolution of productivity in several companies.⁴ Around 65 percent of productivity increases are due to improvements in production processes and better product positioning.

Therefore, the most advisable work within companies would be techno- logical extension and technical assistance programs, such as the previously mentioned Productive Factories Program, which has had positive results and became the star program of President Iván Duque’s effort to increase productivity at the firm’s level. It most definitely is a program that should be continued and strengthened by incoming governments.

Productive factories

The Productive Factories Program is a solid example of cooperation between Colombia and the United States. The Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) and the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Tourism united to increase business productivity and competitiveness by applying new technologies. The program was created in 2019, inspired by the technology extension model (Manufacturing Extension Partnership [MEP] and Georgia Tech MEP). It emerged from an initiative involving the public and private sectors in 2017 to transfer methodologies to Colombia and train in technology extension methods. Georgia Tech’s EI2 Business Innovation Institute supported its design and implementation.⁵

The program’s first phase involved training and certifying 150 Colombian extensionists at Georgia Tech, who then returned to the country to work together with twenty-five Georgia Tech EI2 professionals in a pilot program in forty companies and four cities, transferring their knowledge.

Based on these lessons learned, the program was extended to all regions of the country, with very positive results, precisely because of its ability to reach the heart of companies with specialized services through coordinated work with chambers of commerce and public-private partners.

According to Colombia Productiva, the program has 850 productivity experts in quality management, digital transformation, logistics, energy efficiency, productivity, and commercial management. It has served more than 4,000 companies of all sizes, improving their productivity indicators by more than 31 percent, above the initial 8 percent goal.⁶

In evaluations conducted by Fedesarrollo and UT Econometría-SEI, the program was well-rated, with its high design standards and a positive perception of quality highlighted. However, both evaluations drew attention to the program’s limited scope in terms of economic and human resources to reach the bulk of the business sector.

Scaling up

To visualize the magnitude of the productivity challenge, it is mandatory to characterize the Colombian business world. Unfortunately, limited information is available since an economic and business census has not been conducted since 1991 due to a lack of resources. Contributing resources to carry out this census is fundamental and a possible front for bilateral collaboration.

According to the National Administrative Department of Statistics (DANE), Clombia has few large companies and many informal micro-busi- nesses (ten million).⁷ These are not very productive and employ almost half of the country’s workers, accounting for the high level of labor informality. Medium-sized companies, on the other hand, are practically nonexistent.

According to the Single Business Registry, there were about 1,643,000 registered companies in 2019, of which 20,000 had more than fifty workers. By August 2021, the number of registered companies fell by 18 percent due to the COVID-19 pandemic.⁸

Technology adoption in Colombia, an essential determinant of productivity, lags far behind. Although most companies have computers, internet access, and a webpage, the use given to these tools is basic: sending e-mails, searching for information, or accessing electronic banking.

Perhaps the most critical for business transformation and where the greatest challenge lies is in the quality of management. According to surveys conducted by the Colombian National Planning Department (DNP), the level of management practices in Colombian companies is lower than in developed countries. As seen in the following graph, a company in Colombia obtains half the management practices score as that obtained by a com- parable US company. In Colombia, the average is 0.38 percent; in the United States, it is 0.62 percent. This lack of management quality also explains why Colombian companies are less innovative.

Distribution of managerial skills in Colombia and the United States, 2018

Poor training at the managerial level is a major impediment to business transformation since those in charge are unable to ask the right questions regarding human capital requirements, technological change, and innovation, for example. As the President of Georgia Tech, Ángel Cabrera, said at the recent meeting of the Productive Factories Program, “transforming an economy requires business leaders who turn talent into ideas in the twenty-first century.”¹⁰

Thus, to improve the productivity of the Colombian economy for the benefit of both countries, it is necessary to concentrate efforts on developing managerial capabilities through technological extension and technical assistance by scaling up the Productive Factories Program or developing similar programs.

Given that Productive Factories originated in the United States and its design and methodology have proven successful, the best way forward is to scale up this program by accessing financial resources or scholarships for training extension workers on various productivity fronts. This is undoubtedly the most efficient way to address the needs of companies and improve their capabilities. The training could be done in the United States, as was the case of the extensionists trained at Georgia Tech, or the methodology for training could be transferred to Colombia.

What is clear is that knowledge must be multiplied to transform the country.

The challenge, although ambitious, is well known, and there is a proven way to meet it. Joint work between Colombia and the United States would make it possible to achieve the desired impact—a more developed and inclusive country for the benefit of Colombians, which would also benefit the United States. And more importantly, it would reduce the gap between Pedro’s and Juan’s income, allowing both brothers to finally enjoy a similar quality of life.

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Diversify the bilateral agenda

By Maria Claudia Lacouture

Overcoming Colombia’s security challenges will require investment, job creation, and a strong social agenda. The United States should play a key role in this endeavor.

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Invest in peace

By Howard G. Buffett

Colombia is poised to prove to the world that it will be known for the peace it has brokered at home rather than the conflict endured for fifty years. This requires an enormous investment in development and close coordination among all stakeholders to ensure these commitments meet the needs of the people most affected.

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Make bold bets

By Luis Alberto Moreno

Colombia and the United States are uniquely positioned to enjoy an exceptional commercial partnership. Achieving this will require a level of ambition, coordination, and commitment comparable to what enabled Plan Colombia.

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A roadmap for a new type of engagement

This moment opens the door for a reimagined US partnership with Colombia based on a shared vision for a more prosperous, inclusive, and sustainable future.

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May 26, 2022

Allies: Twenty-seven bold ideas to reimagine the US-Colombia relationship

As the United States and Colombia celebrate 200 years of diplomatic relations, it is time to think boldly and creatively about the future of this strategic partnership.

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The Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center broadens understanding of regional transformations and delivers constructive, results-oriented solutions to inform how the public and private sectors can advance hemispheric prosperity.

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^[1] IMF Working Paper Research Department and Strategy, Policy and Review Department COVID-19 “She-Cession: The Employment Penalty of Taking Care of Young Children.” Prepared by Stefania Fabrizio, Diego B. P. Gomes, Marina M. Tavares1 Authorized for distribution by Romain Duval and Johannes Wiegand March 2021

^[2] On Italy: D´Alessio, G. (2018): Gender wealth gap in Italy. Banca D´Italia Occasional Papers, No 433.

^[3] Interestingly enough, marriage might empower wealth creation for men: the data from Estonia reveals that ‘married men have more wealth than single men do, while women’s wealth does not differ with their marital status.’

^[4] Recent data from the US housing market also indicates that women receive lower returns on owning residential real estate. See ‘The Gender gap in housing returns.’ NBER Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham Kelly Shue Working Paper 26914. http://www.nber.org/papers/w26914

Alexis Crow is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center and the global head of the Geopolitical Investing practice at PricewaterhouseCoopers.

At the intersection of economics, finance, and foreign policy, the GeoEconomics Center is a translation hub with the goal of helping shape a better global economic future.

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In the words of Secretary Yellen, not raising the debt ceiling and a subsequent U.S. government default would mean that “in a matter of days, millions of Americans could be strapped for cash…Nearly 50 million seniors could stop receiving Social Security checks for a time. Troops could go unpaid. Millions of families who rely on the monthly child tax credit could see delays. America, in short, would default on its obligations…A default could trigger a spike in interest rates, a steep drop in stock prices and other financial turmoil,” and economic chaos at the global level.

Raising the debt ceiling will undoubtedly be good news for more than 64 million recipients of Social Security payments, who will continue receiving their checks on time for another year. However, raising the debt ceiling year-after-year will not effectively address the increasing challenges facing the Social Security System. The future looks grim for retirees, disabled seniors, and their families. The Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI) program, commonly known as Social Security, is facing financial troubles, and is estimated to run out of reserves in just 12 years.

Social Security is facing a financing crisis

The Social Security system’s cash flow has been negative since 2010. That means the program has distributed more in social security benefits than it has collected in social security taxes, as large cohorts from the baby-boom generation started to retire. As a result, the United States Treasury borrowed from financial markets to redeem Social Security trust fund securities. Estimates suggest that the program’s cash flow will remain negative for the next decade, leading to the depletion of its current $2.9 trillion reserves in the next decade.

Once the reserves run out, the benefits will be capped at the level of social security taxes received on annual basis. Without significant reforms, in just 10 years, the eligible beneficiaries — more than 80 million retirees, survivors of deceased workers, and disabled workers and their dependents — will receive less than 79 percent of the scheduled social security benefits they were promised. The longer-term outlook is even grimmer: the 75-year present value of the fiscal projection of Social Security and Medicare shows a $26.7 trillion and $54.9 trillion deficit.

The financial troubles of the Social Security and Medicare systems primarily stem from an aging population and declining employment to population ratio in the United States. In the past two decades, the share of population ages 65 and above increased from 12 to 17 percent, while the share of people ages 0-14 — future workers — declined from 22 percent to 18 percent (Figure 1). During the same period, the employment-to-population ratio declined from 65 to 59 percent — 61 percent before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic (Figure 2). 

Delaying substantive reforms will only exacerbate the crisis and increase the cost of future reforms

The cost of inaction will only rise the longer Congress waits to reform the Social Security systems. In 2010, the Trustees of the Social Security trust funds estimated that the reserves would be depleted by 2037 and the 75-year shortfall was equivalent to 1.92 percent of payroll. Only ten years later, in 2020, the depletion date was reduced to 2034 and the 75-year shortfall was equal to 3.21 percent of the payroll (Figure 3).

Considering the aging population, longer lives and retirements, fertility rates lower than the replacement rate, and the shrinking labor force participation rate in the United States, substantive reforms must be implemented immediately. A combination of the following reforms would make the Social Security system sustainable:

• Increasing social security tax rates: The Social Security tax rate is currently set at 12.4 percent and divided equally between the employee and employer. Fiscal Year 2020 estimates suggest that an increase of three percentage points in payroll tax would cover the fund’s shortfall over the next 75 years.
• Increasing or removing the income cap for social security tax: Currently, social security taxes are paid for incomes up to $142,800. In other words, in 2021, only 84.5 percent of all earnings will be subject to social security tax, while in 1982 this figure was around 90 percent of all earnings. Collecting social security tax on 90 percent of all earnings would reduce the 75-year financing shortfall of social security by around 20 percent. Moreover, if all earnings were subjected to social security tax, the program would remain solvent for over 40 years.
• Raising the retirement age: Currently, the full retirement age (FRA) is between 66 and 67 years old depending on the birth year of a worker. However, current social security rules allow workers to receive retirement benefits starting at age 62 (early eligibility age or EEA). Increasing the FRA and EEA by three months per year until it reaches 69 years old would eliminate 26% of the system’s projected shortfall in the next 75 years.
• Increasing the number of workers: With a current worker-beneficiary ratio of 2.6, the Social Security system is facing a negative cash flow — a worker-beneficiary ratio of 2.8 is needed to keep the system solvent. It is expected that this ratio will decline further, to 2:0 by 2060, pushing the system into severe crises. Therefore, any effective Social Security reform agenda must reverse this trend or, at minimum, reduce the downward pressure on the worker-beneficiary ratio. While immigration can help to some extent, there are other options. Attracting more workers into the labor force through introducing worker and family-oriented policies — such as high quality and affordable early education and child-care programs — is a more effective way to reverse the downward trajectory in the worker-beneficiary ratio.

Public opinion varies significantly around Social Security reform, making any changes to the system a challenging and politically charged topic in Washington. However, lawmakers on Capitol Hill only have a few years to restore balance and longevity to the system. Let’s not forget that the current estimates for the shortfalls are based on normal scenarios and do not take into account the negative shocks of future recessions, natural disasters, and crises such as the current pandemic, which is estimated to have reduced the Social Security exhaustion date by four years. Congress must act now.

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Productivity growth is a significant driver of GDP growth and heavily impacts workers well-being. When an economy increases its output without increasing inputs, its people can consume and earn more without paying or working more. Increased productivity also helps prevent inflationary pressures. Though increasing the number of hours worked or the amount of people working can also increase growth, continued long-term growth requires increased productivity within given limits on hours and people.

Increased productivity might occur because workers gain skills or education (human capital), or because workers obtain more effective equipment (physical capital). Economists also refer to total factor productivity (TFP), which is defined as the portion of productivity that is not directly attributed to capital accumulation and reflects other dynamics, such as technological or managerial innovation. In the United States, a common measure of productivity is labor productivity, which is the real (inflation adjusted) output per hour worked, reported by the US Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

In the boom times following World War II from 1948-1973, productivity grew at a 2.8 percent annual rate and TFP, reflecting modern innovations, accounted for over half of the growth. Productivity growth helped drive the 3 percent annual real income growth for the median American family during this time. Incomes doubled once every 23 years, approximately once a generation. Amidst the seemingly rapid technological transformations of the digital age, productivity growth since the early 1970’s has been significantly weaker, excluding the period from 1995-2004 when the advent of the internet turbocharged productivity. Real median family income growth has also slowed significantly since the early 1970’s for a variety of reasons, including low productivity growth.

Experts have debated the cause of the productivity growth slowdown in the United States. To date there is not definitive evidence for any one reason and similar trends have played out across many other advanced economies. Several drivers are often suggested, such as fewer transformational and obtainable innovations as compared to the mid-20^th century, decreased market competition and business dynamism, slower human capital growth, aging demographics, and lower public investment in R&D and infrastructure. Some also believe productivity growth is higher than reflected in the data. They argue that part of the story is a statistical measurement issue due to difficulty in track digital innovations. However, this seems unlikely to be a primary component of weaker productivity growth.

Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, US productivity growth data experienced several strong quarterly reports, until the latest reading for the third quarter of 2021 that was the lowest in over 60 years. The last report likely reflected disruptions in the economic recovery from when the Delta variant emerged and slowed activity as COVID cases rose sharply compared to the second quarter. Regardless of these factors, productivity data is often volatile in the immediate recovery after a recession due to cyclical composition effects. In contractionary situations, struggling businesses sometimes let the least productive workers go first and keep just enough workers to survive. Once demand and business activity returns, there is a temporary boost in productivity growth before employment meaningfully expands again during the initial stages of a recovery.

Despite this pattern, there is basis to think that the nature of the pandemic recovery could lead to continued increases in productivity growth. The pandemic altered the way many businesses and workers operate. Some aspects of these disruptions could lead to lasting changes that would boost productivity. Surveys suggest businesses are increasing and accelerating investment in new technologies and operational efficiency methods. Academic research finds that flexible working arrangements including more work from home time increase productivity as a result of time saved commuting, and consumers are relying on digital spending methods that lower business costs at a faster clip. 

Over the course of the pandemic some data has supported this story. Capital expenditures by businesses on equipment and intellectual property rights are in one of the strongest cycles in decades according to Morgan Stanley, as evidenced by overall business investment and quickly growing orders of capital goods.

Additionally, the bipartisan infrastructure legislation signed into law and President Biden’s Build Back Better proposals working their way through Congress are expected to increase productivity growth. They contain the highest level of physical and human capital investment the government has made in decades.

The path for US productivity growth in the years ahead is uncertain. Even if it does increase, it will be important to ensure that the gains are dispersed to workers through higher wages and a growing economy, and not concentrated in a small collection of larger firms. How productivity growth unfolds will dictate much of the US economy’s future strength. Enhanced productivity would improve American’s living standards while positioning the US economy to meet future challenges such as climate change, public health threats, and geopolitical competition.

Jeff Goldstein is a contributor to the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center. During the Obama administration he served as the Deputy Chief of Staff and Special Assistant to the Chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. He also worked at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Views and opinions expressed are strictly his own.

The post Impacts of the pandemic on US productivity growth appeared first on Atlantic Council.

How second- and third-order implications of emerging tech are changing the world

Developing new technologies used to be primarily an economic and commercial issue, but it is increasingly also about foreign and security policy. Emerging technologies in particular have become both an object and a driver of international cooperation and competition, shaping the global landscape in different and sometimes unexpected ways. To put it simple, high tech has come to signify high politics, too. Today, digital and tech advancements are geopolitical issues of the highest order, even more so with the second wave of digital innovations, which are more systemic in reach and will determine future economic and technological supremacy as well as respective security environments.

The development of cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities, for instance, has become the new playing field for great power competition between the United States and China, both striving for digital supremacy and spheres of economic influence. Such increasing bipolarity in the international system comes with a price tag for many countries around the globe. European states in particular are torn between their alignment in terms of values with the United States and their dependency on close economic ties with China for the sake of their own economic health. In worrying about an escalating rivalry, many countries and state conglomerates have started to pursue their own digital sovereignty, yet lag behind in the global race of tech development, innovation, and cyber capabilities.

On technology-induced societal changes

The international debate concerning technological change also includes many ethical, social, and legal questions in fields such as human rights and individual freedoms, competition and market structure, consumer protection, or public health. Furthermore, the COVID-19 pandemic has raised significant questions about the role of technology in crisis management. Conversations around technological advances, new forms of work, and the change in skills needed have dominated the employment policy debate in many countries around the world. The platform economy, technological advances, and artificial intelligence are irrevocably changing economic structures, tasks, and ways of working, and even what we understand by “work.”

Europe, for example, is already a patchwork of highly varied local economies and markets. McKinsey Global Institute claims that by 2030, more than half of Europe’s workforce will face significant transitions. Automation will most likely require almost all workers to gain new skills. About ninety-four million employees may not need to change occupations altogether, but will need retraining, as technology already handles 20 percent of their current activities. While some workers in declining occupations might be able to find similar types of work, estimates indicate that some 21 million will need to change occupations by the end of this decade. Newly created jobs are going to require more sophisticated skills, which are already scarce today, and the potential social implications cannot be underestimated in scale.

Similar trends are becoming obvious in the United States, too. Having studied 702 occupational groupings, Oxford University researchers Carl Frey and Michael Osborne asserted already in 2013 that technology will inevitably transform many sectors of life: there is high probability, they estimated, that 47 percent of US workers will see their jobs automated within two decades. These fears have subsequently been echoed by similar studies inter alia from the European think tank Bruegel, the McKinsey Global Institute, and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), showing automation affecting between 14 and 54 percent of jobs in the “near future.” Furthermore, half (48%) of the 1,896 experts surveyed by the Pew Research Center in 2014 envisioned a future „in which robots and digital agents have displaced significant numbers of both blue- and white-collar workers—with many expressing concern that this will lead to vast increases in income inequality, masses of people who are effectively unemployable, and breakdowns in the social order.“ The future is already here, and these effects and trends, in addition to the geopolitical competition over new technologies, will continue to transform our world significantly.

In this paper, authors from the Atlantic Council and the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland examine the transformation of technology and work in a broader social and political context, look at strategies that different regions of the world employ, and evaluate the transition’s geopolitical impact. The change in the global division of labor as well as its impacts are already well known. Consequences of the transformation of work challenge the very basis of the well-being of society, which has traditionally relied on productivity growth to increase wealth and living standards across the board. By all means, the fourth industrial revolution challenges the traditional segmentation describing work, skills, income, and many of the operating principles of society as it is known today. However, even if technology is reshaping the modern workplace and working processes, and jobs are lost sometimes faster than new work can be created, these changes do not happen overnight and decision makers have time to react to them.

This page contains only excerpts of the paper in order to give readers an introduction to the topic and the opportunity to browse through alternative futures. To access all content, please download a digital copy of the report.

Imagining alternative futures

To better understand the geopolitics of technology during the next five to ten years, the authors present three scenarios describing possible future developments. The projections portray a “not-so-distant-future,” in which technological transformation shapes a post pandemic world.

The first scenario, Postpandemic Letdown and Western Disarray (The Local Picture), uncovers the digital divides and inequalities within automated working life and COVID-19 aftershocks. The second scenario, Europe in a Bipolar Tech World (The Global Picture), reflects deepening US-China tensions and a drifting toward a transatlantic split. The third scenario, Counting the Costs of Technonationalism and the Balkanization of Cyberspace (The Regional Picture), depicts regulation and global governance efforts gone wrong. Together they broaden the horizon and underscore the importance of good decision-making today.

GeoTech Cues Dec 8, 2021

Postpandemic letdown and western disarray

By Mathew Burrows, Julian Mueller-Kaler, Kaisa Oksanen, and Ossi Piironen

After a spurt of inclusive growth, in which most segments saw gains, all the prepandemic structural problems resurfaced, particularly the inequalities that had grown worse under the pandemic.

China Cybersecurity

Report Dec 8, 2021

Europe in a bipolar tech world

By Mathew Burrows, Julian Mueller-Kaler, Kaisa Oksanen, and Ossi Piironen

With no sign of Beijing backing down, the US administration lays out a strategy for restructuring NATO to be targeted on Russia and China, combining its allies from Asia and Europe into an enlarged, redefined alliance.

China Cybersecurity

GeoTech Cues Dec 8, 2021

Counting the costs of technonationalism and the balkanization of cyberspace

By Mathew Burrows, Julian Mueller-Kaler, Kaisa Oksanen, and Ossi Piironen

While it started as a well-meaning effort to prevent disinformation and propagation of violent extremism, the increasing regulation began to fracture the Internet into at least three largely separate regimes, reinforcing the forces of technonationalism and protectionism.

China Cybersecurity

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The post Unpacking the geopolitics of technology appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Hopes were high in the middle of 2021 that the West would pull out of the pandemic and see accelerated growth and a return to relative normalcy after a year of deep recession. Yet after a spurt of inclusive growth, in which most segments saw gains, all the prepandemic structural problems resurfaced, particularly the inequalities that had grown worse under the pandemic.

Believing it is best not to depend too much on the vagaries of human employment, employers raced to automate as much of their business as possible. For the unskilled and semiskilled, whom everyone depended on for basic services during the pandemic, it was a double whammy. Initially, their wages had grown as employers had no choice but to hike pay to attract any workers. Then, without the necessary tech skills, they soon learned they were expendable when firms began to automate their operations. Despite central banks’ monetary-easing efforts, there was no return to prepandemic full employment. Worker participation rates dropped in the advanced economies as many of the low-skilled workers grew frustrated in the search for good-paying jobs. Over time, many of the unskilled and semiskilled dropped out of the workforce or retired early.

The more tech-savvy workers had largely done well and saw their wages improve in the aftermath of the pandemic. That initial improvement was not, however, replicated year after year. Automation was now also impacting the more complex work processes that formerly required skilled humans to operate. Although not all their jobs were made redundant, there was enough disruption that even retained skilled workers felt the pervasive, growing sense of job insecurity. The prepandemic pattern of capital being remunerated much more than labor resumed. Business leaders made the case that productivity gains from automation had boosted GDP in advanced economies above prepandemic levels and government revenues as well, which helped with increased social welfare demands.

Moreover, automation was helping firms deal with China, which was increasingly unfriendly to Western businesses. After being the other large economy that didn’t suffer a severe recession during the pandemic, China’s growth sputtered in the years following the initial outbreak of the coronavirus. Continuing outbreaks from different variants, such as delta or omicron, crippled parts of Chinese industry. Xi Jinping’s data security reforms also hit China’s tech firms hard. Beijing’s efforts to de-Americanize China’s supply chains— part of the Made in China plan—caused more disruption. With tensions increasing, US and Chinese firms sought to avoid any dealings. European businesses were caught in the crosshairs, and some bowed out of the Chinese market for fear of US secondary sanc- tions while others concentrated on doing business with China and sold off their US interests. With the contraction of global supply chains, US and European firms saw an opportunity to eliminate jobs through advanced automation technologies. Chinese businesses were more constrained in investing in automation technologies as the government was worried about higher unemployment. Robotics and 3D printing also took off in the labor-saving effort by Western businesses.

Workers’ Rights and Reforms

Smaller countries fared better than larger ones in stanching the growing societal divisions that grew out of rapid technology changes. To begin with, the income disparities were not as high in the many smaller European countries that had invested in expensive social welfare efforts. There was an understanding that automation could not be stopped—and shouldn’t be for the sake of improved efficiencies and all-around productivity. After all, automation was a godsend for Western societies with low birth rates and rapidly aging societies. Instead, the unskilled should be incentivized to learn new skills. Indeed, the educational systems would have to be completely remade. Everyone had a right to periodic sabbaticals for months of learning new skills. Just as there was a right to healthcare and retirement, all workers had opportunities for lifelong learning. Businesses could see the benefits.

Larger European countries had a harder time coming around to revamping the whole educational system, despite the benefits these smaller countries were achieving. There was pushback by businesses against another set of enhanced worker rights which the private sector would have to shoulder. In these bigger societies, reform had been more difficult for some time, adding to the challenge undertaking these reforms. In France, for example, where the reelected Macron government had been trying to lessen the burdens on employers, there was worry that enhancing the existing training programs and relatively generous social welfare would be too costly. Critics cited the low educational standards in job-deprived and socioeconomically disadvantaged areas as the real culprit for workers not being able to easily upgrade their skills.

In the United States, deep political partisanship combined with a decentralized educational system slowed any reforms. Americans had seen sagging educational standards for some time, which federal government officials felt increasingly powerless to reverse given much of the authority for the educational sector rested with local and state officials. Conservatives decried the growing role of government in the economy and saw the new proposed training-voucher scheme as pushing the country toward socialism and higher taxes. The growing numbers of college and high-school dropouts fueled populism at both ends of the political spectrum—left and right—leading to a political crisis. When the unemployed staged a million-person march on Washington, the National Guard was called out to protect the protesters from armed right-wing militant groups. As it was, the battles between protesters and the radicals resulted in several hundred dead and much of downtown Washington vandalized. Similar riots broke out across the country. At the congressional midterm elections, lawmakers calling for increased training programs and a top-to-bottom reform of the US education system were elected. Businesses also saw that they had gone too far with automation and promised to retrain existing workers for new jobs instead of just firing them.

New Social Model Evolving

Aided by the lessening of fears of a super-competitive China, Western leaders felt they had some maneuvering room to develop a new social model countering what was the fragmenting effect of the new technologies. Just as World War II had been important for spurring a new social peace buttressed with healthcare and pension benefits for all, the postpandemic era ended up redefining social welfare. Educational excellence would no longer be reserved for the privileged who could pay for it. Everyone had a right to having their abilities fully developed with no one being left behind. For decades, teachers in many Western societies had been poorly paid.

That changed along with the importance of providing a good education to everyone. Several big corporate CEOs took the lead in trying to regain the trust of their employees by offering more social benefits—paying for educational and retraining programs—and promising new employment to those whose jobs were eliminated through automation.

With personal dignity being so connected with employment, the concept of work was expanded. Volunteerism was honored and treated as equivalent to paid work. Moreover, with the rapid expansion of the educational sector, many jobs were created that did not exist before. Small and medium-size businesses—not just the big ones—became more adept at retraining and finding new opportunities for their workers. Where young workers once planned to spend only a few years with an employer, they now found the advantages of staying and benefiting from retraining so enticing that many ended up, like their grandparents, staying with one firm for their whole careers.

At times it had looked like some Western societies would be pulled apart and there was no hope of finding a solution to inequalities. Yet there was a deep, popular well of support for inclusiveness. The pandemic had been an eye-opener for many of the deep divisions in society. For the more tech-savvy, younger, and coming-of-age generation, it was intolerable that the unskilled and semiskilled should be “losers” in the latest technological revolution. Older generations—increasingly victims of automation—also began seeing the benefits of a better social safety net. Over time, the fears fueling populism dissipated and centrist politics came back with the maintenance of a social consensus, a broad-based popular expectation for political leaders.

This page is only an excerpt of a technology foresight report in order to give readers an introduction to the topic and the opportunity to browse through alternative futures. To access all content, please download a digital copy of the paper or return to the main report page.

Report Dec 8, 2021

Europe in a bipolar tech world

By Mathew Burrows, Julian Mueller-Kaler, Kaisa Oksanen, and Ossi Piironen

With no sign of Beijing backing down, the US administration lays out a strategy for restructuring NATO to be targeted on Russia and China, combining its allies from Asia and Europe into an enlarged, redefined alliance.

China Cybersecurity

Report Dec 8, 2021

Unpacking the geopolitics of technology

By Mathew Burrows, Julian Mueller-Kaler, Kaisa Oksanen, and Ossi Piironen

In this paper, authors from the Atlantic Council and the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland examine the transformation of technology and work in a broader social and political context, look at strategies that different regions of the world employ, and evaluate the transition’s geopolitical impact through alternative futures.

China Cybersecurity

GeoTech Cues Dec 8, 2021

Counting the costs of technonationalism and the balkanization of cyberspace

By Mathew Burrows, Julian Mueller-Kaler, Kaisa Oksanen, and Ossi Piironen

While it started as a well-meaning effort to prevent disinformation and propagation of violent extremism, the increasing regulation began to fracture the Internet into at least three largely separate regimes, reinforcing the forces of technonationalism and protectionism.

China Cybersecurity

Learn More

GeoTech’s Economy of Trust Newsletter

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1030 15th Street NW, Washington, DC 20005
P: +1.202.864.0888 | T: @ACGeoTech

The post Postpandemic letdown and western disarray appeared first on Atlantic Council.

In the run-up to the 2020 presidential election, Biden promised to turn the clock back on Trump’s policy changes. When it came to China, however, Biden piled onto Trump’s hostility toward Beijing. US tariffs on Chinese imports have stayed in place despite Beijing’s call for them to be reduced. The Biden administration, in coordination with the EU, has sanctioned China for its ruthless repression of Uighurs in Xinjiang and taken additional measures to punish the country for cyber hacking. Sino-US tensions continued to build in the South China Sea and over Taiwan. With no sign of Beijing backing down, the US administration lays out a strategy for restructuring NATO to be targeted on Russia and China, combining its allies from Asia and Europe into an enlarged, redefined alliance. Neither European nor Asian allies are keen on these US ideas, but temper their criticism to avoid offending the still predominant superpower.

Squeezed by Sino-US escalating tensions

With both Asians and Europeans less than enthusiastic, Washington puts the enlarged NATO idea on the back burner. Yet Europeans are less able to fend off Washington’s idea of resurrecting the Cold War-era Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls (CoCom), which was used to embargo exports of sensitive materials to communist countries. The US administration believes the competition over emerging technologies is at the heart of the conflict with China. Many in Washington subscribe to the belief that the Asian country has only become the leading tech competitor through its theft of US intellectual property. Besides export controls of cutting-edge tech, decision makers seek to wean Europe off China’s tech exports. Denying the country’s tech giants market access to Europe and the United States would, American strategists believe, curb Chinese innovation.

Increased US extraterritorial measures mean that the EU finds it hard to proceed with its goal of “strategic autonomy” and finding a “third way” without European businesses incurring restrictions on access to US markets. The US administration says it will offset any harsh anti-Chinese measures by offering greater support to the Europeans against Russia. Northern European export-dependent economies are likely to be conflicted and divided in their reactions to such an anti-Chinese push by Washington. The Baltic states, ever mindful of the Russian threat, are an exception and welcome the increased US commitment. At the same time, the Baltic states have been part of the 16+1 format with China, a platform initiated by Beijing to foster cooperation; although they lack deep ties with China, most of them have been hoping (like other Eastern Europeans) for more Chinese investment and trade. Under pressure from Washington, the countries of the region sign on to the US offer, sacrificing the possibility of strong economic ties with the Asian giant.

By contrast, the Scandinavian nations and Germany find the increased hostility toward China under Biden or any other subsequent US president very unwelcome. Berlin’s most important trading partner is China; Finland is the biggest EU investor in China in proportion to the size of its economy, and China is Sweden’s largest trading partner in Asia. Overall, the EU has become the country’s biggest trading partner and the two sides—EU and China—recently signed an upgraded trade deal, expanding the one that was signed and then halted in 2021. Squeezed between the United States and China, the Europeans—particularly Nordic nations and Germany— would pay a stiff economic price for going along with any US strictures against China and would use their diplomatic power to argue for a course change in US foreign policy.

Other EU countries are less economically dependent on China, but resent US interference and push back against US extraterritorial measures while professing their commitment to strong transatlantic ties. The EU tries to walk a fine line and neither offend Beijing nor Washington, finding it increasingly hard to defy American decision-makers on sanctions and tariffs against China without endangering US/NATO security guarantees.

All European governments on edge

At home, the European social model is under increasing pressure. Like the United States, many EU member states instituted new taxes on the wealthy to cover budget shortfalls. While subsiding during the first waves of the coronavirus, populism is on the upsurge again. After the initial economic surge, European economies slow, giving populism a new lease on life. The EU and immigrants are targets for the renewed surges, and nationalists are gaining election victories in multiple member states. There is a growing sentiment in favor of protectionism and the establishment of more border controls. Eastern Europeans even begin refusing entry to European citizens with immigrant backgrounds.

European split on a single foreign policy

Despite initial efforts to find a united middle ground, Europe splits and wavers in the face of US pressure. France and the Baltic, one or two of the Nordic, and several East European states try to temper growing US antagonism, but share Washington’s worries about a “hyperpuissance” in the East. Since Brexit, the United Kingdom has been trying to open new markets in Asia, including in China, but sees no real alternative to the United Sates remaining its closest ally. London remains the first to always accede to US pressure.

The Baltic and East European governments worry that Russia will take advantage of Western weakness and intervene in their countries. Moscow’s strong ties with China are seen as giving Putin more self-confidence despite Russia playing a junior role to Beijing. Germany and some of the Nordic states become even more adamant in their belief that China is their economic lifeline. With Western markets slowing, Asia looks to be the only outlet. Italy and some of the Eastern European states like Hungary are also eager for new Chinese investments, and hedge their bets.

Out with strategic autonomy, in with hedging

The growing split and mutual attacks by the two internal camps paralyze the EU. The initial rescue package that many observers saw as a step toward greater integration is never repeated. The idea of strategic autonomy is forgotten. Enlargement is at a standstill despite renewed calls from Ukraine, Georgia, and others seeking entry. China’s deteriorating human rights record and saber-rattling against Taiwan angers many European publics, sparking a growing popular movement throughout Europe opposed to China. Germany seeks to mediate, going along with some punitive measures against Beijing and Moscow, but diluting others. Berlin and Paris publicly object to US interference in EU affairs.

Europeans in both camps secretly welcome Chinese efforts to invest in developing countries, hoping the economic assistance can help stimulate economic activity and tamper migration even though they fear the Chinese efforts will end up bolstering authoritarianism throughout the world. Yet European countries don’t have the means to engage even in their traditional backyards. Paris has given up its fight against terrorism in the Sahel. Europe watches as Russia and China increasingly call the shots in Africa and the Middle East. Focused on battling China in East Asia, the US administration puts the blame on Europe for these failures, without wanting to intervene itself. The only united effort that all member states can still agree on is beefing up maritime patrols in the Mediterranean to close the EU’s external southern border.

In Washington, there is finger-pointing over who lost Europe. There’s a growing realization that the United States overreached despite its initial effort to rally the West. While in Europe, there is a worry about the future of the European project. Both the United States and the EU seek to paper over differences, but for China, the transatlantic split is further evidence of Western decline, feeding the hardliners’ appetite for more aggressive actions to expand Chinese influence in the region and beyond.

This page is only an excerpt of a technology foresight report in order to give readers an introduction to the topic and the opportunity to browse through alternative futures. To access all content, please download a digital copy of the paper or return to the main report page.

GeoTech Cues Dec 8, 2021

Postpandemic letdown and western disarray

By Mathew Burrows, Julian Mueller-Kaler, Kaisa Oksanen, and Ossi Piironen

After a spurt of inclusive growth, in which most segments saw gains, all the prepandemic structural problems resurfaced, particularly the inequalities that had grown worse under the pandemic.

China Cybersecurity

Report Dec 8, 2021

Unpacking the geopolitics of technology

By Mathew Burrows, Julian Mueller-Kaler, Kaisa Oksanen, and Ossi Piironen

In this paper, authors from the Atlantic Council and the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland examine the transformation of technology and work in a broader social and political context, look at strategies that different regions of the world employ, and evaluate the transition’s geopolitical impact through alternative futures.

China Cybersecurity

GeoTech Cues Dec 8, 2021

Counting the costs of technonationalism and the balkanization of cyberspace

By Mathew Burrows, Julian Mueller-Kaler, Kaisa Oksanen, and Ossi Piironen

While it started as a well-meaning effort to prevent disinformation and propagation of violent extremism, the increasing regulation began to fracture the Internet into at least three largely separate regimes, reinforcing the forces of technonationalism and protectionism.

China Cybersecurity

Learn More

GeoTech’s Economy of Trust Newsletter

Latest GeoTech Cues & Analyses

1030 15th Street NW, Washington, DC 20005
P: +1.202.864.0888 | T: @ACGeoTech

The post Europe in a bipolar tech world appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Two trends come together: digital sovereignty and fighting disinformation. At one time, Western democracies were committed to an open, free Internet with minimal government involvement. That was, however, before the social media channels became the arena for hatred and disinformation. The Europeans got angry when the big US tech giants did such a poor job policing it. In the United States, Republican politicians accused the tech companies of being biased, banning Trump and other conservatives from Twitter as well as other outlets. At the same time, many moderate politicians, like their European counterparts, thought Facebook, Google, and others could do a better job eliminating hate speech. Worldwide, “Internet sovereignty” was catching on. Already in 2019, thirty-three governments shut down the Internet 213 times, up from the previous year. Whereas “Internet sovereignty” was once associated just with China’s “Great Firewall” of censorship, it became popular with other governments, such as India, Russia, Turkey, and Indonesia, too.

While there were varying degrees of government control over the Internet, the trend line became clearer and darker as democracies moved in the direction of authoritarianism, believing that liberal markets were no model for the digital age. While they still decried China’s growing repression and use of social media to target dissidents, the Internet was seen as a threat to democracy, too, rather than a bulwark—the way it was originally portrayed. For Western elites, the unregulated digital space was a conveyor belt of disinformation, making it virtually impossible to govern. The French post-pandemic presidential election, for instance, was marred by widespread disinformation campaigns both by domestic as well as international foes of President Macron. The newly elected president blamed his near-defeat (it was only on the recount that he emerged victorious) on the disinformation coming from right-wing extremists. Anti-immigrant groups throughout Europe were active in trying to defeat him and other liberal forces.

The right-wing, Trump-supported attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, had been pivotal in persuading lawmakers that there had to be more oversight of social media. For many progressives in the Democratic Party, the tech companies were too big and monopolistic anyway and should be broken up. It was only a half step for them to call for more regulation of the companies to prevent the spread of domestic radicalism. The United States also instituted curbs on Chinese technology, including their apps. The government in Beijing moved to tightly regulate China’s tech companies’ operations abroad, convincing US regulators that those companies could not be trusted with data gathered in the United States. Over time, US tech companies saw their market share dwindle in China and Asia, as more and more US government regulatory curbs encouraged Chinese tech companies to leave the US market, too.

While it started as a well-meaning effort to prevent disinformation and propagation of violent extremism, the increasing regulation began to fracture the Internet into at least three largely separate regimes, reinforcing the forces of technonationalism and protectionism. Because of security fears, the United States and China became highly protected tech markets; Europe has less of a choice, not having tech champions of its own, so both US and Chinese tech companies operated there, but under EU regulatory control. The economic costs of such a fractionalizing of the Internet were staggering. Before all the new regulation, a report by Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI) had estimated that at least half of all trade in services is ICT-enabled (between 50 and 56 percent); digital commerce would account for 25 percent of global trade by 2025; and that this percentage would likely accelerate by an order of magnitude over the coming decade.

Efforts to negotiate globally agreed standards governing the use of software codes, data sharing, and/or commercialization of private content and storage of data, as well as minimally accepted standards on privacy—vital for the continuing flow of data—broke down or became too complex in view of the proliferation of national requirements. Digital commerce depends on open commercial, scientific, and academic data flows. Without such flows, joint research efforts also ceased to exist. Increasingly, scientists were only working with counterparts in their own country, not those outside. In particular, the number of Chinese students and researchers in the United States began to dwindle significantly.

The medical and other supply chain shocks from COVID-19, combined with the growing US distrust of China, lent support to the increasing protectionism and breakdown in flows of information and people. In addition, the United States sought to export its standards. Even before the recent regulatory-driven breakup, the American decision-makers had tried to mobilize support for anti-China “clean networks” banning Huawei infrastructure. It wasn’t always successful, however. China offered too many economic enticements for countries even in the United States’ own backyard—Latin America— for all countries in the region to fall in line with Washington’s dictates.

Europeans decide to fight back

Europeans began to worry about their own ability to trade—not just with China but other countries in China’s orbit—and stayed out of the US clean networks program themselves, even though they followed many of the guidelines for their domestic systems due to worries, for example, about the security of data running over Huawei-built infrastructure. Brussels therefore began efforts to counterbalance the fractionalizing of cyberspace, calling on Washington and Beijing to support an international effort to map the future of the world’s climate, using the latest breakthroughs in quantum computing. Taking a leaf out of its own history, EU leaders thought cooperation on climate—a pressing interest for all, like the establishment of the European Coal and Steel Community after WWII—could decrease the centrifugal dynamics of technonationalism.

At first, Washington was wary, but when it saw Brussels sign an agreement with Beijing for a joint research effort, it wanted in. The EU said there would be no proprietary information. The detailed output—a mapping of likely effects of climate change over the next hundred years—would be a free good for countries participating in the project. Such data would be the basis for policy decided by the next UN Climate Conference, which the Europeans were scheduled to host. Any country not participating would be at a disadvantage. The fruits of an international brain trust using the latest quantum computing could demonstrate how cooperation was much more powerful than competition and conflict, curbing for a time at least the growing US-China hostility. Without more international cooperation on climate change, decision makers risked incalculable harm to everyone’s future. Were Americans really ready to balkanize the Internet if it meant undermining prospects for global innovation that could help save the planet? Moreover, EU leaders were confident that young people everywhere would side with them, putting pressure on Washington and Beijing to limit their competition and explore avenues for an era of great power cooperation.

This page is only an excerpt of a technology foresight report in order to give readers an introduction to the topic and the opportunity to browse through alternative futures. To access all content, please download a digital copy of the paper or return to the main report page.

GeoTech Cues Dec 8, 2021

Postpandemic letdown and western disarray

By Mathew Burrows, Julian Mueller-Kaler, Kaisa Oksanen, and Ossi Piironen

After a spurt of inclusive growth, in which most segments saw gains, all the prepandemic structural problems resurfaced, particularly the inequalities that had grown worse under the pandemic.

China Cybersecurity

Report Dec 8, 2021

Unpacking the geopolitics of technology

By Mathew Burrows, Julian Mueller-Kaler, Kaisa Oksanen, and Ossi Piironen

In this paper, authors from the Atlantic Council and the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland examine the transformation of technology and work in a broader social and political context, look at strategies that different regions of the world employ, and evaluate the transition’s geopolitical impact through alternative futures.

China Cybersecurity

Report Dec 8, 2021

Europe in a bipolar tech world

By Mathew Burrows, Julian Mueller-Kaler, Kaisa Oksanen, and Ossi Piironen

With no sign of Beijing backing down, the US administration lays out a strategy for restructuring NATO to be targeted on Russia and China, combining its allies from Asia and Europe into an enlarged, redefined alliance.

China Cybersecurity

Learn More

GeoTech’s Economy of Trust Newsletter

Latest GeoTech Cues & Analyses

1030 15th Street NW, Washington, DC 20005
P: +1.202.864.0888 | T: @ACGeoTech

The post Counting the costs of technonationalism and the balkanization of cyberspace appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The post Nusairat quoted in Bahrain News Agency on DERASAT signing a new agreement with Atlantic Council appeared first on Atlantic Council.

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The post Lakhani quoted in Bloomberg News: Startup Fever Is Gripping the World’s Last Big Untapped Nation appeared first on Atlantic Council.

While the LFRP declined among both working-age men and women in China, India, and the United States, six other G20 economies have experienced declining LFPR only among their working-age men from 2000 to 2019: South Africa, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Indonesia, and the United Kingdom (Figures 2a and 2b).

Depending on the country, several factors could be contributing to these trends — especially among the working-age male population. These include a changing attitude towards work, opting out for early retirement because of increasing wealth, a growing informal economy in emerging markets and developing economies, the rising ratio of female to male LFPR (Figure 3) – except for India, China, and Russia – which has made it financially possible for more men to drop out of labor force. As well, an increasing dependency on social programs because of disability laws and chronic medical conditions, the increasing cost of child care, and an increasing number of discouraged workers due to declining job security and tenure are driving LFPRs down. Many of these factors were exacerbated by the pandemic, pushing the LFPR even lower across all G20 economies — but the pandemic is not the root cause

In addition to generally declining LFPRs, female LFPR rose relative to that of men in most G20 economies before the pandemic (figure 3). However, in all G20 economies, LFPR for working-age women remained lower than men’s LFPR (Figure 4). This difference is especially stark in Saudi Arabia (57 percentage points difference), India (57 percentage points difference), Turkey (39 percentage points difference), Mexico (33 percentage points difference), Indonesia (28 percentage points difference) and Argentina (20 percentage points difference). Among the G7 countries of G20, Italy has the largest gap between working-age male and female LFPR, followed by Japan: 18 and 14 percentage points differences, respectively. The preliminary 2020 data coming from many of the G20 economies suggests that the pandemic has increased the gender gap in LFPR in many of the G20 economies, as large number of mothers were forced to leave the labor force to care for their children at home when schools and child-care facilities shut down.

Labor force participation rate for the working-age population is an important indicator measuring the health of the labor market in an economy. Many of the G20 economies have struggled to maintain LFPRs even before the pandemic, a challenge exacerbated by the pandemic. Though the 2021 G20 meetings are over, labor market challenges continue to threaten the well-being of these economies, especially given recent shortage of labor supply and rapid wage increases. Will labor market challenges be part of the next G20 meetings’ agenda? They should be, for the benefit of their economies and citizens.

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Let’s talk about informality!

By Amin Mohseni-Cheraghlou

The US economy added 266,000 jobs in April, well below experts’ forecasts of one million jobs. April numbers suggest that there were about 1.1 people unemployed for every job opening in the economy, pointing to a shortage story in labor supply.

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Investing in US labor for today and tomorrow

By Jeff Goldstein

The labor market in the United States has substantially improved since the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, but significant slack remains. Investing more resources into active labor market policies will provide micro and macro benefits in the short-run as the economy continues to recover, as well as in the long-run as the U.S. labor market grapples with structural challenges.

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The post Labor force participation rates in G20 in five charts appeared first on Atlantic Council.

By 2025, automation has the potential to displace 85 million jobs, according to the World Economic Forum (WEF)’s latest “Future of Jobs” report. On a more hopeful note, the authors also argue that the robot revolution is expected to create 97 million new jobs at the same time. The resulting job balance may be positive, but these drastic shifts in the labor market should offer both hope and caution; they will impact each nation’s economy significantly, and alter the demand for skills in employees, but may also stir social structures and affect citizens’ trust in their respective governments, public institutions, and the private sector.

In essence, respective governments, nations, and markets that equip their citizens for the upcoming skills-transition will be most successful. Those nations and companies that fail to plan ahead and adapt their education plans will risk falling behind. For example, low-wage workers may need to shift to occupations in higher wage brackets and require different skills to remain employed – with analytical thinking, creativity, and flexibility being among the most sought-after skills of the future. In this vein, the Swiss apprenticeship model becomes a model for others. Switzerland’s dual system combines learning on the job – and being paid a learning wage – with one to two days of theory at school. With 230 vocational professions to choose from, ranging from catering to high-tech industries, around two-thirds of Swiss school leavers opt for an apprenticeship.

Across countries and supply chains, research has evidenced rising demand for employment, particularly in nonroutine analytics jobs accompanied by significant automation of routine manual jobs. As economies and job markets evolve, new roles will emerge across the care economy in technology fields (such as artificial intelligence) and in content creation careers. In response to these substantial changes and the rapid scale-up of digital platforms, the World Bank invites nations to (1) “ramp up investment in human capital and lifelong learning for workers,” (2) “strengthen social protection to facilitate work transition and reduce disincentives to the creation of formal jobs,” (3) “ensure affordable access to the internet while adapting regulations to confront the challenges posed by digital platforms,” and (4) “upgrade taxation systems to address tax avoidance and create fiscal space for universal social protection and human capital development.”

Technological progress will create multiple opportunities, but the process towards them can be disruptive – how well countries cope with the demand for changing job skills will also depend on how quickly the supply of skills shifts. Early planning by governments and companies alike can help avoid the escalation of unemployment rates and social unrest. Automation is no “side issue” —applied the right way, it has the potential to bring substantial benefits to both economic modernization and social well-being. These challenges will need to be approached in a humane and socially inclusive manner —offering education that keeps pace with the times, facilitating the creation of new livelihoods at all levels of society, or making the joy of invention accessible to all. It is not too late for nations and industries to adapt their learning and labor structures, increase collaboration between the public and private sectors, and build trust in the community and its leaders’ decision-making.

Sincerely,

Pascal Marmier
Economy of Trust Foundation / SICPA
Stephanie Wander
Atlantic Council GeoTech Center
Borja Prado
Editor

GeoTech Cues Aug 10, 2021

Contextualizing COVID-19 and its implications for the future of work

By Matthew Gavieta

As workers around the world adapted to a new normal amid a public health crisis, remote work took on a new meaning. However, questions about how to structure long-term telework arrangements remain. The current landscape of data reveals a tenuous relationship between well-being and telework. To secure a brighter future for our labor force, we must continue developing worker-centered technology policy and doing research on how to improve life at work.

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GeoTech Cues Oct 1, 2021

Building smarter military bases for climate resilient communities

By Kiran S. Jivnani, Inkoo Kang

To properly cope with climate-related dangers, the military must be able to future-proof its installations to defend themselves against twenty-first-century threats, specifically by capitalizing on the use of smart technologies.

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GeoTech Cues Sep 29, 2021

Reimagining a just society pt. 6: Our planetary condominium

By Carol Dumaine

Carol Dumaine’s latest in a blog post series on “Reimagining a Just Society” recalls the tragic condo collapse in Florida last June and asks whether the commons elements of a typical condominium association suggest any parallels for understanding “global commons” or public goods in an age of pandemics, climate change and AI.

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GeoTech Cues Sep 28, 2021

Getting ahead of the next catalyst: A new paradigm for cybersecurity in the space domain

By Andrew LaBarbera and Jeremy Harchelroad

Consider the terms “cyber attacks”1and” information and influence activities2.” These two terms were relatively infrequently used before the computer malware Stuxnet and the 2016 US presidential election3 , respectively. Yet these events and the terms characterizing the emergence of new threats mark a threshold where a traditional government issue transcended into the commercial arena, and when nation-state […]

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GeoTech Cues Aug 25, 2021

Reimagining a just society pt. 5: “Is this working as intended?” — Global trends amid contested futures

By Carol Dumaine

The question of ‘is this working as intended’ is applicable to contemporary concepts of national and international security as well as of economic value, growth, and development. Given how our world is being reshaped by new technologies, data capabilities, and geopolitics, leaders in both the public and private sector need to pause and consider if governance and geopolitics in today’s world are actually working – or not.

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Getting from commitment to content in AI and data ethics: Justice and explainability

There is widespread awareness that the use of artificial intelligence and big data raises challenges involving justice, privacy, autonomy, transparency, and accountability. However, articulating values, ethical concepts, and general principles is only the first step

read the full report

The post How public trust survives in the era of automation appeared first on Atlantic Council.

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In the months since the start of the pandemic, states and employers had to quickly adopt new strategies to maintain production efficiency and uphold worker safety. Overwhelmingly, the response was to move work online. COVID-19 has forever altered the notion that work must be done in the office. According to Gartner, remote work (also known as work from home [WFH] or telecommuting) is “a type of flexible working arrangement that allows an employee to work from a remote location outside of corporate offices.” Of course, remote work isn’t new. According to Pew Research, “one-in-five say they worked from home all (12 percent) or most (7 percent) of the time before the coronavirus outbreak, while 18 percent worked from home some of the time.” However, because of the pandemic, 42 percent of the US labor force worked from home in 2020. Indeed, this trend is not looking transient.

This new arrangement has been adopted by many large corporations. The topic of WFH and its effects on worker well-being has been of particular interest to corporations employing knowledge workers before the pandemic – with mixed conclusions reached by major tech companies. In 2013, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer famously banned telework to foster company cohesion. Meanwhile, other Silicon Valley giants increased their capacity for remote work. Now that a significant portion of the workforce has shifted online, new research could provide a more conclusive understanding of how remote work arrangements impact worker well-being.

The current landscape of research 

Due to the unique circumstances of each nation and how they handled COVID-19, the current landscape of data reveals a tenuous relationship between well-being and telework. Most surveys of worker well-being conducted during the pandemic were not cross-sectional, and it was difficult to isolate the causality of well-being amidst a global public health crisis. Additionally, before the pandemic, most of the literature on telework’s impacts was not worker-centered; instead, most researchers opted to examine its effects on worker productivity and organizational outcomes. For example, Martin & MacDonnell conducted a meta-analysis in 2012 on the perceptions of telework and organizational outcomes with positive findings (e.g., telework increased worker productivity). On its own, one might speculate that increased productivity is associated with better worker well-being, but they are not established as causally-related variables.

In 2019, one pre-pandemic study by Charalampous et al. analyzed the relationship between telework and worker well-being. They found a “greater consensus towards a beneficial impact” but overall inconclusive results, citing “social and professional isolation and perceived threats in professional advancement to be significant negative impacts of WFH.” The authors of this study engaged in a systematic literature review of sixty-three studies “employing quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-method designs” to gain a deeper understanding of the association between remote work and well-being in knowledge workers. Overall, they advocated for more advanced studies to be conducted on this relationship, such as looking at “longitudinal data, diary studies, as well as moderating and mediating relationships”.

Moving into the pandemic, studies continue to illustrate the complicated nature of WFH’s effects on well-being. In contrast to Charalampous et al., Yijing et al.’s 2020 research illustrates a negative relationship between telework and the “social, behavioral and physical factors on well-being of office workstation users during COVID-19.” The results from their anonymized survey indicated a blanket decrease in overall physical and mental well-being and an increase in physical and mental health issues during the first few months of the pandemic. Additionally, Yijing et al. highlighted that lifestyle factors, “such as physical activity…eating habits,” and social aspects of WFH, “including who is living in the home, distractions while working, and communication with co-workers” were the primary predictors of decreased well-being. Regarding specific population impacts, this research also found that female workers and laborers making salaries of less than $100,000 were disproportionately more likely to have “two or more new physical and mental issues” transitioning to the new WFH arrangement. The mechanism behind these results will be discussed below. While these findings are compelling, it is important to note that the pandemic introduces numerous confounding factors that affect well-being. Cross-sectional surveys are prone to skew.

Currently, there is one longitudinal study released by Savolainen et al. that investigates the “psychological, situational, and socio-demographic predictors of COVID-19 anxiety among Finnish workers.” The study recruited participants from a previous longitudinal “Social Media at Work in Finland” survey, which was nationally representative and conducted before the pandemic. Savolainen et al. matched the sample of their study with the general Finnish working population and stratified participants according to their occupational fields. Overall, their results determined “loneliness, psychological distress, technostress, and neuroticism” to be “significant psychological predictors of COVID-19 anxiety of workers.” Additionally, Savolainen et al. found that “increased technology use has not entirely been able to maintain or create a meaningful psychological connection to work for communities” for remote workers. Mirroring all the previous studies, Savolainen et al. recommended for more research to be done on the relationship between telework and well-being.

While the findings of all these studies are crucial to understanding the relationship between telework and well-being, researchers are still in the process of coming to a consensus and remain hesitant to commit to a position. This is understandable, given the many competing logics behind remote work and its theoretical impacts on worker well-being.

Summary and theoretical mechanisms for remote work’s impacts on well-being 

On one hand, the flexibility factor that provides workers the freedom of dictating their own work-life balance is one of the most compelling arguments for remote work increasing well-being. When employees start working from home, they suddenly have more agency regarding their time. Workers can tailor their work hours on an individual basis and have more time to attend to their personal lives. This flexibility enables workers to see their families more often and fit in appointments and errands more easily. Additionally, workers can work when they feel the most productive since they aren’t confined to a rigid office schedule. This flexibility has been shown to not decrease worker productivity or work hours; in fact, the massive shift to remote work in the first few months of the pandemic revealed an overall increase in hours.

On the other hand, remote workers have reported issues with the blurring of work-life boundaries. Research has dictated that working from home offers no separation between work and leisure time, leading to “enhanced emotional exhaustion” and a “deterioration in healthy lifestyle behaviors.” This negative effect has been speculated to manifest disproportionately between men and women. As Yijing et al. examined, there is robustness to the claim that WFH may be more challenging for women. Women are still more likely to be responsible for household chores and child-rearing. Mothers that work at home are more likely to experience the blurring of work and life boundaries leading to increased pressure. Generally, in a traditional office work setting, commuting offers a change of scenery by default and physically separates professional and home life. However, in a WFH setting, individuals need to take initiative to change their scenery, which has been shown to boost their well-being and mood. Remote workers also have a harder time communicating with coworkers through a virtual medium. It is easier to misread conversational cues through text and video calls. Charalampous et al.‘s study also illustrated that workers were more likely to perceive boundaries to professional advancement in an online setting. Additionally, Savolainen et al. introduced the concept of technostress, which mostly manifests from “back-to-back” virtual meetings, unfamiliarity with technology, and the increased work hours associated with WFH. Finally, the lack of in-person contact with co-workers can lead to isolation and disconnection, which are correlated with increased worker stress and anxiety— marked factors that decrease well-being.

In effect, acknowledging the context of the COVID-19 pandemic further complicates researchers’ ability to draw causality between remote work and well-being. This is because the pandemic introduces new moderating variables, such as fluctuating economic insecurity, isolation, and relationship breakdown caused by the lockdown, as well as increasing mistrust in the government. These new variables worsen and weaken remote work’s theoretical mechanisms on well-being. For example, the positive aspects of a flexible remote job are hampered by economic insecurity. Likewise, relationship breakdown can completely negate the usual benefits of increased family contact provided by remote work. Lastly, compounding mistrust in institutions, specifically in the healthcare sector, is a worrying trend that can promulgate the spread of COVID-19. According to a release from the Interdisciplinary Association of Population Health Sciences, people who mistrust the healthcare sector are more prone to vaccine hesitancy, less likely to report their illnesses, and underutilize healthcare— a dangerous, and perhaps deadly, combination in the context of a pandemic.

The pandemic’s asymmetric impacts on developing countries, frontline workers, and minority populations  

According to a survey conducted on 1,022 American professionals in January 2021, “29 percent of working professionals say they would quit their jobs if they couldn’t continue working remotely.” A Gallup poll similarly reflects this estimate, which found 23 percent of the US workforce eager to keep their remote setting.

Despite the enthusiasm for remote work, some employees, such as those in frontline positions, cannot pivot online. In 2020, estimates between the Occupational Information Network and the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that 34 to 44 percent of Americans had the ability to telework. In western Europe Boeri et al. predicted the “home-based work potential as 24 percent for Italy, 28 percent for France, 29 percent for Germany, 25 percent for Spain, and 31 percent for Sweden and the UK” in the same year. Globally, the & International Labor Organization (ILO) forecasted in a policy brief that 18 percent of workers in 2020 had the means to shift to remote work. Considering that many developing countries are likely to possess remote work infrastructure below this global ILO average, it is undeniable that there is an asymmetry in worker access to remote labor correlated to wealth. Workers in developing countries with less robust information and communication technology infrastructure are likely to experience more amplified negative impacts of being unable to work remotely. In virtually every country, poorer workers are less likely to secure a remote job and more likely to experience job or economic insecurity, especially in the context of the pandemic.

Broadly, many of these frontline workers also tend to be poorer, suggesting that many intersecting factors are negatively affecting their well-being. According to a longitudinal study on 21,874 adults living in England between March 21, 2020, and February 22, 2021, key workers had “consistently higher levels of depressive and anxiety symptoms than non-key workers across the whole of the study period.” These key workers were defined as health and social care workers, teachers, childcare workers, public service workers, and food chain or utility workers. Another longitudinal study done on Polish healthcare workers supported the notion of exacerbated negative health outcomes for essential workers. Overall, frontline worker populations appear to face some of the worst difficulties of the pandemic. 

Across all developed countries, minority populations are more likely to work in frontline occupations. A recent study by Goldman et al. revealed that “greater work exposures likely contribute to a higher prevalence of COVID-19 among Latino and Black adults in the US.” Moreover, due to historic health inequities perpetuated by institutional racism (e.g., forced sterilization and scientific racism), marginalized populations tend to have less trust in the healthcare system. As previously mentioned, this renders minority populations; more susceptible to vaccine hesitancy, healthcare underutilization, and general negative health outcomes. Additionally, as the CDCwrites, ethnic and racial minority communities have had more COVID-19 cases, deaths, and hospitalizations. Further, policies targeted to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 “might cause unintentional harm, such as lost wages, reduced access to services, and increased stress, for some racial and ethnic minority groups.” In other words, due to longstanding inequalities intensified by the pandemic, well-being among minority populations has plummeted. Altogether, asymmetric impacts on specific populations all blur the relationship between telework and well-being. Moving forward, it is important to address systemic inequalities and assess how policies impact different communities in order to close the digital divide and create a diverse and resilient workforce.

Policy recommendations from the GeoTech Center and academia 

As workers around the world adapted to a new normal amid a public health crisis, remote work took on a new meaning. It symbolized the deeply intertwined relationship between labor and technology. It signified progress and the future. However, the sweeping shift to new telework arrangements also brought many questions. Is it really good for workers’ health and well-being? Who is sidelined by implementing new technology in the workplace? How can we increase the resilience of our labor supply chains in the event of a new crisis? Is there a golden ratio between in-person and remote work? Currently, the US is at a major inflection point; we must continue developing technology policy and doing research to address these important questions.

The bipartisan report by the Commission on the Geopolitical Impacts of New Technologies and Data includes a seventh chapter titled “The Future of Work,” which explores these questions and supplies recommendations for addressing the future and mitigating disaster as workers brave periods of uncertainty. Some key points from this report are combined with academic literature to provide actionable guidelines for the future of work that are relevant to both government leaders and private sector CEOs, specifically:

• To mitigate the negative impacts of WFH, employers should prioritize creating an inclusive and empathetic work culture that provides technical and psychological support online. In line with other studies, Savolainen et al. argues that higher organizational support lowers worker anxiety, especially in times of crisis (Savolainen et al., 2021).
• To alleviate feelings of social isolation during normal working hours, employers can set ‘virtual coffee breaks’ to create a more collaborative work environment (Mostafa, 2021).
• Human capital development and management data should address projections of the supply and demand for workers according to categories of technical skills, results of the search and hiring process, and how well the employer’s needs were satisfied. The data also should inform how well the training policies provided equitable access to skills training across the workforce. These data should enable analyses of the expected value of different options for skills education and training for workers, the return on the investment of workforce training for businesses, and options for adjusting workforce training policies (GeoTech Commission Report).
• Expanding on the point above, we ought to acquire data on the labor side. For example, management could implement more longitudinal questionnaires on worker well-being.
• The United States needs to ensure equitable access to opportunity for the GeoTech Decade ahead. From access to affordable broadband to digital literacy, governments and the private sector need to make significant investments and work together to reduce barriers to full participation in the economy. Ensuring that all people can participate in the GeoTech Decade requires a commitment to equitable access to affordable, high-speed Internet. Millions do not have high-speed broadband, particularly in rural areas. What is more, many with access to high-speed broadband are still unable to afford the high cost of Internet and the devices needed to access it. Lack of access and affordability perpetuates systemic inequities (GeoTech Commission Report).
• Digital literacy— the ability to find, evaluate, utilize, and create information using digital technology is becoming an essential skill for every individual. Digital literacy is an important element in eliminating a digital divide among nations and within a society. It complements affordable, high-speed Internet access by enabling people to develop and communicate local content, to communicate their issues and concerns, and to help others understand the context in which these issues occur (GeoTech Commission Report).
• In order to foster lifelong learning and digital literacy, managers could encourage employees to sharpen their skills with new learning opportunities and online training through free online professional development webinars and training sessions (Mostafa, 2021). These events can be found through Khan Academy, the Atlantic Council, and many other online platforms.

Matthew Gavieta is a Young Global Professional with the GeoTech Center as well as a rising senior at Cornell University, where he majors in industrial and labor relations and minors in philosophy and law & society. He is most interested in the intersection of law, policy, and technology. He hopes to do work in the field of intellectual property to promote safe, large-scale innovation and creativity.

The post Contextualizing COVID-19 and its implications for the future of work appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Executive summary

There is widespread awareness among researchers, companies, policy makers, and the public that the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and big data raises challenges involving justice, privacy, autonomy, transparency, and accountability. Organizations are increasingly expected to address these and other ethical issues. In response, many companies, nongovernmental organizations, and governmental entities have adopted AI or data ethics frameworks and principles meant to demonstrate a commitment to addressing the challenges posed by AI and, crucially, guide organizational efforts to develop and implement AI in socially and ethically responsible ways.

However, articulating values, ethical concepts, and general principles is only the first step—and in many ways the easiest one—in addressing AI and data ethics challenges. The harder work is moving from values, concepts, and principles to substantive, practical commitments that are action-guiding and measurable. Without this, adoption of broad commitments and principles amounts to little more than platitudes and “ethics washing.” The ethically problematic development and use of AI and big data will continue, and industry will be seen by policy makers, employees, consumers, clients, and the public as failing to make good on its own stated commitments.

The next step in moving from general principles to impacts is to clearly and concretely articulate what justice, privacy, autonomy, transparency, and explainability actually involve and require in particular contexts. The primary objectives of this report are to:

• demonstrate the importance and complexity of moving from general ethical concepts and principles to action-guiding substantive content;
• provide detailed discussion of two centrally important and interconnected ethical concepts, justice and transparency; and
• indicate strategies for moving from general ethical concepts and principles to more specific substantive content and ultimately to operationalizing those concepts.

I. Introduction

There is widespread awareness among researchers, companies, policy makers, and the public that the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and big data analytics often raises ethical challenges involving such things as justice, fairness, privacy, autonomy, transparency, and accountability. Organizations are increasingly expected to address these issues. However, they are asked to do so in the absence of robust regulatory guidance. Furthermore, social and ethical expectations exceed legal standards, and they will continue to do so because the rate of technological innovation and adoption outpaces that of regulatory and policy processes.

In response, many organizations—private companies, nongovernmental organizations, and governmental entities—have adopted AI or data ethics frameworks and principles. They are meant to demonstrate a commitment to addressing the ethical challenges posed by AI and, crucially, guide organizational efforts to develop and implement AI in socially and ethically responsible ways.

Identifying a set of ethical concepts, and formulating general principles using those concepts, is a crucial component of articulating AI and data ethics. Moreover, there is considerable convergence among the many frameworks that have been developed. They coalesce around core concepts, some of which are individual oriented, some of which are society oriented, and some of which are system oriented (see Table 2). That there is a general overlapping consensus on the primary ethical concepts indicates that progress has been made in understanding what responsible development and use of AI and big data involves.

However, articulating values, ethical concepts, and general principles is only the first step in addressing AI and data ethics challenges—and it is in many ways the easiest. It is relatively low cost and low commitment to develop and adopt these statements as aspirational documents.

The much harder work is the following: (1) substantively specifying the content of the concepts, principles, and commitments—that is, clarifying what justice, privacy, autonomy, transparency, and explainability actually involve and require in particular contexts;¹ and (2) building professional, social, and organizational capacity to operationalize and realize these in practice ² (see Figure 1 for what these tasks encompass and how they are interconnected). Accomplishing these involves longitudinal effort and resources, as well as collaborative multidisciplinary expertise. New priorities and initiatives might be required, and existing organizational processes and structures might need to be revised. But these are the crucial steps in realizing the espoused values and commitments. Without them, any commitments or principles become mere “ethics washing.” Ethically problematic development and use of AI and big data will continue and industry will be seen by policy makers, employees, consumers, and the public as failing to make good on its own stated commitments.

The objectives of this report are to:

• demonstrate the importance and complexity of moving from general ethical concepts and principles to action-guiding substantive content, hereafter called normative content;
• provide detailed analysis of two widely discussed and interconnected ethical concepts, justice and transparency; and
• indicate strategies for moving from general ethical concepts and principles to more specific normative content and ultimately to operationalizing that content.

Defining “normative content”

There are two uses of the term “norms.” One is descriptive, for which “norms” describe what is ordinary or typical to do. The other is ethical, for which “norms” prescribe what ought or should be done. Often, what ought or should be done (prescriptive) is different from what is currently being done (descriptive). The call for ethics for, and responsible development and use more generally of, AI and big data is a call for guidance on how it ought to be done because current practices are problematic in many respects. For example, justice-oriented considerations ought to be incorporated in ways that avoid perpetuating discriminatory practices and unjustified inequalities.

Therefore, as the term is used here, normative content refers to guidance on what “ought” or “should” be done. It is about developing well-justified standards, principles, and practices for what individuals, groups, and organizations should do, rather than merely describing what they currently do.

Normative content (in the ethical, prescriptive sense) is ultimately grounded on values, both social and organizational. This report is about the process of translating those general values into concrete and actionable guidance and commitments. This process is complex because specific principles and commitments need to be context sensitive, and because different values can sometimes come into tension with each other.

II. Example: Informed consent in bioethics³

To illustrate the challenge of moving from a general ethical concept to action-guiding normative content it is helpful to reflect on an established case, such as informed consent in bioethics. Informed consent is widely recognized as a crucial component to ethical clinical practice and research in medicine. But where does the principle come from? What, exactly, does it mean? And what does accomplishing it involve?

Informed consent is taken to be a requirement of ethical practice in medicine and human subjects research because it protects individual autonomy.⁴ Respecting people’s autonomy means not manipulating them, deceiving them, or being overly paternalistic toward them. People have rights over themselves, and this includes choosing whether to participate in a research trial or undergo medical treatment. A requirement of informed consent is the dominant way of operationalizing respect for autonomy.

But what is required to satisfy the norm of informed consent in practice? When informed consent is explicated, it is taken to have three main conditions: disclosure, comprehension, and voluntariness. The disclosure condition is that patients, research subjects, or their proxies are provided clear, accurate, and relevant information about the situation and the decision they are being asked to make. The comprehension condition is that the information is presented to them in a way or form that they can understand. The voluntariness condition is that they make the decision without undue influence or coercion.

But these three conditions must themselves be operationalized, which is the work of institutional review boards, hospital ethics committees, professional organizations, and bioethicists. They develop best practices, standards, and procedures for meeting the informed consent conditions—e.g., what information needs to be provided to potential research subjects, what level of understanding constitutes comprehension for patients, and how physicians can provide professional opinions without undue influence on decisions. Moreover, standards and best practices can and must be contextually sensitive. They cannot be the same in emergency medicine as they are in clinical practice, for example. It has been decades since the principle of informed consent was adopted in medicine and research, yet it remains under continuous refinement in response to new issues, concerns, and contexts to ensure that it protects individual autonomy.

So while informed consent is meant to protect the value of autonomy and express respect for persons, a general commitment to the principle of informed consent is just the beginning. The principle must be explicated and operationalized before it is meaningful and useful in practice. The same is true for principles of AI and data ethics.⁵

The case of informed consent in bioethics has several lessons for understanding the challenge of moving from general ethical concepts to practical guidance in AI and data ethics:

• To get from a general ethical concept (e.g., justice, explanation, privacy) to practical guidance, it is first necessary to specify the normative content (i.e., specify the general principle and provide context-specific operationalization of it).
• Specifying the normative content often involves clarifying the foundational values it is meant to protect or promote.
• What a general principle requires in practice can differ significantly by context.
• It will often take collaborative expertise—technical, ethical, and context specific—to operationalize a general ethical concept or principle.
• Because novel, unexpected, contextual, and confounding considerations often arise, there need to be ongoing efforts, supported by organizational structures and practices, to monitor, assess, and improve operationalization of the principles and implementation in practice. It is not possible to operationalize them once and then move on.

In what follows, we focus on the complexities involved in moving from core concepts and principles to operationalization—the normative content—for two prominently discussed and interconnected AI and data ethics concepts: justice and transparency.

III. What Is justice in artificial intelligence and machine learning?

There is consensus that justice is a crucial ethical consideration in AI and data ethics.^6,7 Machine learning (ML), data analytics, and AI more generally should, at a minimum, not exacerbate existing injustices or introduce new ones. Moreover, there is potential for AI/ML to reduce injustice by uncovering and correcting for (typically unintended) biases and unfairness in current decision-making systems.

Problems of fairness and justice in AI and data ethics

Fairness and justice are widely recognized as key components of AI and data ethics. One reason for this is that there already have been many high-profile cases where machine learning and automated decision systems have led to biased, discriminatory, or otherwise problematically unequal results. Here are just a few examples:

• AI recruiting and job advertising systems have been found to replicate existing racial and gender biases and stereotypes in the workforce¹
• AI systems used to assign risk scores in medical contexts assigned lower risk scores to African-American patients as compared to white patients, resulting in their receiving less care or less urgent care²
• Facial recognition systems have been found to be racially biased³
• AI systems used in social service eligibility determinations are making it more difficult for people to access benefits for which they are qualified⁴
• Hate speech detection systems have been found to wrongly classify speech patterns associated with African-Americans as hate speech⁵
• A recidivism prediction system used in parole and bail setting overpredicted recidivism by African-Americans and underpredicted recidivism by whites⁶
• AI advertising systems have been found to racially differentiate with apartment listings⁷

However, the concept of “justice” is complex, and can refer to different things in different contexts. To determine what justice in AI and data use requires in a particular context—for example, in deciding on loan applications, social service access, or healthcare prioritization—it is necessary to clarify the normative content and underlying values. Only then is it possible to specify what is required in specific cases, and in turn how (or to what extent) justice can be operationalized in technical and techno-social systems.

The meanings of “fairness” and “justice”

“Fairness” and “justice” are often used interchangeably in the discourse around AI and data ethics, and that is how they are used here. The reason for this is to encompass the full range of considerations that fall under them (as indicated below). However, the terms also sometimes have more specific meanings. For example, among computer scientists who work on these issues, “fairness” is often used to refer to certain forms of parity among groups. So, for example, an algorithmic system would be “fair” if it had the same level of accuracy or false positive rates across protected groups; a common question raised is which, if any, of those forms of parity is the appropriate operationalization of fairness for that context (since it is often impossible to realize multiple forms of parity together). In institutional contexts, “fairness” is often used to refer to treatment in a particular context, whereas “justice” refers to the institutional features that structure the context—a process (e.g., lending or criminal justice) can be unfair because the system is unjust (e.g., organized in a way that advantages some groups and disadvantages others).

III.1 The values and forms of justice

The foundational value that underlies justice is the equal worth and political standing of people. The domain of justice concerns how to organize social, political, economic, and other systems and structures in accordance with these values. A law, institution, process, or algorithm is unjust when it fails to embody these values. So, the most general principle of justice is that all people should be equally respected and valued in social, economic, and political systems and processes.

However, there are many ways these core values and this very general principle of justice intersect with social structures and systems. As a result, there is a diverse set of more specific justice-oriented principles, examples of which are given in Table 3.

Each of these principles concerns social, political, or economic systems and structures. Some of the principles address the processes by which systems work (procedural justice). Others address the outcomes of the system (distributive justice). Still others address how people are represented within systems (recognition justice). There are many ways for things to be unjust, and many ways to promote justice.

Each of these justice-oriented principles is important in specific situations. Equality of opportunity is often crucial in discussions about K-12 education. Equality of participation is important in political contexts. Prioritizing the worst off is important in some social services contexts. Just deserts is important in innovation contexts. And so on. The question to ask about these various justice-oriented principles when thinking about AI or big data is not which of them is the correct or most important aspect of justice. The questions are the following: Which principles are appropriate in which contexts or situations? And what do they call for or require in those contexts or situations?

III.2 Justice in artificial intelligence and data systems

What is an organization committing to when it commits to justice in AI and data practices? Context is critically important in determining which justice-oriented principles are operative or take precedence. Therefore, the first step in specifying the meaning of a commitment—i.e., specifying the normative content—is to identify the justice-oriented principles that are crucial to the work that the AI or data system does or the contexts in which they operate. Only then can a commitment to justice be effectively operationalized and put into practice.

Legal compliance will of course be relevant to identifying salient justice-oriented considerations—for example, statutes on nondiscrimination. But, as discussed above, legal compliance alone is insufficient.⁸ Articulating the relevant justice-oriented principles will also require considering organizational missions, the types of products and services involved, how those products and services could impact communities and individuals, and organizational understanding of the causes of injustice within the space in which they operate. In identifying these, it will often be helpful to reflect on similar cases and carefully consider the sorts of concerns that people have raised about AI, big data, and automated decision-making. Consider again some of the problem cases discussed earlier (see Problems of fairness and justice in AI and data ethics). Several of them, such as the sentencing and employment cases, raise issues related to equality of opportunity and equal treatment. Others, such as those concerning facial and speech recognition, involve representation and access. Still others, such as the healthcare cases, involve access and treatment as well as prioritization, restitutive, and benefit considerations. Here are two hypothetical and simplified cases—a private financial services company and a public social service organization—to illustrate this. They share the same foundational values (equal worth and political standing of people) and core ethical concepts (fairness and justice). However, they diverge in how these are specified, operationalized, and implemented due to what the algorithmic system does, its institutional context, and relevant social factors (see Figure 4 and Figure 5).

When there are multiple justice-oriented considerations that are relevant, it can frequently be necessary to balance them. For example, prioritizing the worst off or those who have been historically disadvantaged can sometimes involve moving away from same treatment. Or accomplishing equal opportunity and access can sometimes require compromises on just deserts. What is crucial is that all the relevant justice-oriented principles for the situation are identified; that the process of identification is inclusive of the communities most impacted; that all operative principles are considered as far as possible; and that any compromises are justified by the contextual importance of other justice-oriented considerations.

Recidivism Prediction and the importance of clarifying the appropriate conception of justice

In the much-discussed case of the COMPAS recidivism prediction algorithm, there was a tradeoff between equal accuracy among groups on the one hand and equal false positive and negative rates among groups on the other hand. The prediction system was roughly equally accurate with respect to recidivism predictions for whites and Blacks. However, it differed with respect to the kinds of mistakes that it made, when it made mistakes. It overpredicted recidivism by Blacks and underpredicted it by whites. Moreover, a plausible explanation for these differences across groups is the use of training data that embodies a history of overpolicing minority communities. So while there is a sense in which the algorithm accomplishes equal treatment on one parameter (i.e., equal accuracy in prediction), it fails to address the more justice-relevant treatment consideration in this context (i.e., overprediction of recidivism) and it does not take into account other relevant justice-oriented considerations, such as restitutive and representational considerations.⁸

The diversity of justice-relevant principles and the need to make context-specific determinations about which are relevant and which to prioritize reveal the limits of a strictly algorithmic approach to incorporating justice into ML, data analytics, and autonomous decision-making systems.

First, there is no singular, general justice-oriented constraint, optimization, or utility function; nor is there a set of hierarchically ordered ones. Instead, context-specific expertise and ethical sensitivity are crucial to determining what justice requires.⁹ A system that is designed and implemented in a justice-sensitive way for one context may not be fully justice sensitive in another context, since the aspects of justice that are most salient can be different.

Second, there will often not be a strictly algorithmic way to fully incorporate justice into decision-making, even once the relevant justice considerations have been identified.¹⁰ For example, there can be data constraints, such as the necessary data might not be available (and it might not be the sort of data that could be feasibly or ethically collected). There can be technical constraints, such as the relevant types of justice considerations not being mathematically (or statistically) representable. There can be procedural constraints, such as justice-oriented considerations that require people to be responsible for decisions.

Therefore, it is crucial to ask the following question: How and to what extent can the salient aspects of justice be achieved algorithmically? In many cases, accomplishing justice in AI will require developing justice-informed techno-social (or human-algorithm) systems. AI systems can support social workers in service determinations, admissions officers in college admissions determinations, or healthcare professionals in diagnostic determinations—the systems might even be able to help reduce biases in those processes—while not being able to replicate or replace them. Moreover, it might require not using an AI or big data approach at all, even if it is more accurate or efficient. This could be for procedural, recognition, or relational justice reasons, or because it would be problematic to try to use or collect the necessary data. For example, justice might require a jury-by-peer criminal justice system even if it were possible to build a more accurate (in terms of guilt/innocent determinations) algorithmic system. A commitment to justice in AI involves remaining open to the possibility that sometimes an AI-oriented approach might not be a just one.

For these reasons, organizations that are committed to justice in AI and data analytics will require significant organizational capacity and processes to operationalize and implement the commitment, in addition to technical capacity and expertise. Organizations cannot rely strictly on technical solutions or on standards developed in other contexts.

Justice in AI and big data: Key takeaways

• Justice is grounded in the foundational value of equal worth and political standing of all people.
• AI and data analytics should not create or perpetuate injustice, and they should make every effort to promote justice.
• Specifying the normative content of justice in AI—i.e., what that commitment means—involves clearly articulating the justice-oriented considerations or principles that must inform automated decision systems.
• What justice requires is multifaceted and context specific.
• Which justice-oriented principles and considerations are most salient often depends upon an organization’s mission, products/services, and the contexts in which it operates.
• Determining which justice-oriented principles and considerations are most salient therefore involves context-specific expertise—and crucially the perspectives of those who experience the injustice—AI/data ethics expertise, organizational governance, and technical and techno-social system expertise.
• There is usually not a strictly technical or algorithmic way to accomplish justice in AI and data analytics. It requires value sensitive design, monitoring, and auditing of both technical and techno-social (or human-machine) systems.
• Accomplishing justice in AI and data analytics is a substantial, collaborative, and ongoing process that requires developing organizational capacity. 
  

IV. What is transparency in artificial intelligence and machine learning?

Assessing whether a decision-making system is just or fair and holding decision-makers accountable often requires being able to understand what the system is doing and how it is doing it. So, from the concepts of justice and accountability follow principles requiring transparency, for example, ensuring that algorithmic systems can be sufficiently understood by decision-subjects.

One feature of algorithmic decision-making that has been met with concern is that many of these systems are “black boxes”—how they make decisions is sometimes entirely opaque, even to those who build them. If an algorithmic decision-making system is a black box, then parties subject to its decisions will be in a poor position to assess whether they have been treated fairly and users of the system will be in a poor position to know whether it satisfies their commitment to justice. Parties to hiring and firing decisions and parole decisions and those that use products, such as pharmaceuticals, that are discovered or designed using algorithms often have a significant interest in understanding how decisions are made or about how the products they use are designed.

Since black box algorithms can serve as an obstacle to realizing justice and other important values, concerns about opacity in algorithmic decision-making have been met with calls for transparency in algorithmic decision-making.^{11, 12} However, like justice, transparency has many meanings, and translating calls for transparency into guidance for the design and use of algorithmic decision-making systems requires clarifying why transparency is important in that context, to whom there is an obligation to be transparent, and what forms transparency might take to meet those obligations.¹³

IV.1 The values and concepts underlying transparency

Transparent decision-making is important for and sometimes essential to realizing a variety of values and concepts. One such example, already mentioned, is justice. Opacity can sometimes prevent decision-subjects—e.g., the person who is seeking a loan, who is up for parole, who is applying for social services, or whose social media content has been removed—from determining whether they have in fact been treated respectfully and fairly. In many contexts, decision-makers owe decision-subjects due consideration. It is often important to hear others out, try to understand their perspective, and take that perspective seriously when making decisions. It is often disrespectful or shows lack of due consideration to make unilateral decisions that have significant impacts on others without taking the specific details of their circumstances into account. When a parole board decides whether to grant parole, for example, decision-subjects have a right to know that decision-makers have made a good faith effort to understand relevant details about their lives and take those details into account—i.e., that they have treated them as an individual.

In addition to the role that transparency plays in helping to achieve justice, it can also play an important role in realizing other concepts and values.

Compliance

Compliance is a normative concept associated with the value of respecting the law. Opaque decision-making systems can make it difficult to determine whether a system or a model is compliant with applicable laws, regulations, codes of conduct, or other ethical norms. If a recidivism prediction system, targeted advertising system, or ranking system for dating apps were completely opaque and there was no way to tell whether it was using, for example, race or ethnicity (or proxies thereof) in its decision-making, it would be impossible to tell whether the system was in compliance with anti-discrimination law or requirements of justice. Thus, transparency is often justified or important because it makes it possible to determine whether it satisfies legal and ethical obligations.

Autonomy

Autonomy is a normative concept associated with the value of respecting persons. Enabling autonomy involves allowing people to make informed decisions, especially when those decisions make significant impacts on their life prospects. Opaque decision-making systems can make it difficult for decision-subjects to use decisions to guide future behavior or choices. If a decision-subject is rejected for a loan, job, school admission, or social service but has no access to how or why the decision was made, or what they can do to achieve a more satisfactory outcome, they will have a difficult time determining what they can do to achieve a favorable outcome in the future should they reapply. Thus, transparency is often valuable because it informs and empowers decision-making subjects to change behaviors in ways that impact future decisions about the trajectory of their lives.

Knowledge

Knowledge is a normative concept grounded in the value of understanding. Knowledge enables us to better understand the world and our place in it. In some instances, algorithmic systems are used to uncover hidden patterns in large data sets. These patterns can help develop diagnostics or treatments even while knowledge of the patterns and/or of the underlying mechanisms that cause or explain those patterns remains opaque. ¹⁴ Knowledge in these areas could help practitioners not only intervene to realize better outcomes but generate new understanding, cures, and insights about a domain. ¹⁵ Thus, transparency is often valuable because it enables future discoveries.

Trust

Trust is a normative concept related to a variety of foundational values, including developing good relationships, and trust grounds principles of transparency because transparency can build trust. To fully realize the benefits of algorithmic tools, from medicine to route mapping, stakeholders must trust these systems and the ways they exercise power over their lives. Stakeholders that do not understand the how and why of such decisions are less likely to accept the use of such technologies and its decisions. Thus, transparency is often valuable because it can foster trust in decision-making systems.

IV.2 Specifying transparency commitments

Just as there are many concepts, including justice, that ground principles of transparency, there are many ways in which a decision-system could be made transparent, and so there are many forms that commitments to transparency might take, such as a commitment to interpretability of algorithmic decision-making systems, a commitment to the explainability of algorithmic decisions, or a commitment to accountability for such decisions. For example, a system can be transparent in the sense that individual decisions or behaviors of a system can be understood by technical experts or decision-subjects. For instance, a computer scientist might be able to explain how sensitive an algorithmic decision-making system used to set insurance rates is to factors such as age or driving experience. A broader form of transparency involves being transparent about why certain decision-making systems are in use, even if those decision-making systems are opaque. For instance, a decision-maker might show decision-subjects that the use of a largely opaque recommendation engine results in vastly more accurate recommendations with very low risk.

Here are some ways of understanding some common commitments to transparency:

Interpetability

An often-discussed way to commit to transparency in algorithmic decision-making is to require these systems to be interpretable.¹⁶ Some algorithmic systems are so complex—for example, because they rely on models built on such large data sets or involve many layers—that data and computer scientists themselves cannot determine in any precise way how system inputs are transformed to outputs. The interpretability of a system is relevant to many of the values above. For example, an uninterpretable system is a serious obstacle to discovering underlying patterns of inference the system relies on and could make it impossible to ensure compliance with certain norms. However, not all AI and ML systems are uninterpretable, and computer and data scientists are working to develop tools to recover interpretability from black box systems.

Explainability

Another kind of commitment to transparency is to require that algorithmic decision-making systems be explainable.¹⁷ A decision-making system is explainable when it is possible to offer stakeholders an explanation that can be understood as justifying a given decision, behavior, or outcome. An interpretable system does not necessarily generate outputs that are explainable in this sense; knowing the inferences that underwrite a systems’ decisions will not always serve to justify those decisions. Explainability is essential to realizing the values discussed above. Decision-subjects often need to know the reasons or considerations that led to the decisions about them to see if they have been treated with respect or for them to trust decision-makers. It is also often crucial for ensuring compliance with legal and ethical norms.

Justified opacity

Being transparent in the sense of ensuring interpretability or explainability can sometimes come at a cost to the accuracy of a system, i.e., there are sometimes trade-offs between accuracy on the one hand and interpretability or explainability on the other. In such cases, the trade-off might not be justified—i.e., in some contexts maximizing accuracy might be more important than ensuring that an algorithmic decision-making system is interpretable or explainable. Even so, there is a broader commitment to transparency that can still help realize core concepts such as trust. For example, patients might be willing to accept an uninterpretable diagnostic tool if that tool is significantly more accurate than alternatives. Transparency about the reasons for adopting opaque systems can serve to justify other forms of opacity.

Auditability

A final kind of commitment to transparency is auditability.¹⁸ It is not always feasible to provide transparency about all the individual decisions made by a system. Still, it is possible to evaluate the system by auditing some set of decisions periodically or based on certain observed patterns in decision-making to determine whether core values are realized. For example, while it might be infeasible to provide an explanation for every decision made by an autonomous vehicle system, it might be important for increasing trust that audits can reveal explanations for particular decisions. One virtue of auditing procedures is that they provide transparency not solely about algorithmic decision-making but about the broader systems in which they are embedded. A carefully constructed audit can provide assurance that decision-making systems broadly are trustworthy, reliable, and compliant.

Moving from a principle of transparency to the appropriate commitment and ultimately to a measurable specification in a given context involves determining which core concepts we are trying to achieve in that decision-context with a principle of transparency and which specific commitments to transparency best instantiate that principle. Increasing system interpretability might help minimize safety concerns but does little to increase trust or provide evidence of respect, for example.

Transparency and explainability in AI and ML: Key takeaways

• Opacity is an obstacle to achieving a variety of values and core ethical concepts, including justice.
• Developing transparency standards that overcome these obstacles requires recognizing why transparency is valuable or important in a given context.
• Developing transparency standards also requires identifying which commitments to transparency—interpretability, explainability, justified opacity, or auditability—are necessary and sufficient for realizing relevant values and concepts in a given context.
• Satisfying transparency standards does not always require that everyone understands how every decision is made. In some contexts, such a high level of transparency is not needed and would compromise other important system values, such as efficiency and accuracy.

V. Conclusion: From normative content to specific commitments

General commitments to ethics in AI and big data use are now commonplace. A first step in realizing them is adopting principles, value statements, frameworks, and codes that broadly articulate what responsible development and use encompass. However, if these concepts and principles are to have an impact—if they are to be more than aspirations and platitudes—then organizations must move from loose talk of values and commitments to clarifying how normative concepts embody foundational values, what principles embody those concepts, what specific commitments to those principles are for a particular use case, and ultimately to some specification of how they will evaluate whether they have lived up to their commitments. It is common to hear organizations claim to favor justice and transparency. The hard work is clarifying what a commitment to them means and then realizing them in practice.

This report has emphasized the complexities associated with moving from general commitments to substantive specifications in AI and data ethics. Much of this complexity arises from three key factors:

• Ethical concepts—such as justice and transparency—often have many senses and meanings.
• Which senses of ethical concepts are operative or appropriate is often contextual.
• Ethical concepts are multidimensional—e.g., in terms of what needs to be transparent, to whom, and in what form.

An implication of these factors is that specifying normative content in AI and data ethics is not itself a strictly technical problem. It often requires ethical expertise, knowledge of the relevant contextual (or domain-specific) factors, and expertise in human-machine interactions, in addition to knowledge of technical systems. Moreover, it is not possible to substantively specify a general standard of justice or transparency (or other ethical concept) that can then be applied in each instance of AI development and use.

A corollary to this is that for organizations to be successful in realizing their ethical commitments and accomplishing responsible AI, they must think broadly about how to build ethical capacity within and between their organizations. The field of AI and data ethics is still developing, but there already are initiatives at many organizations to do this, including the following:

Organizational structures and governance

• Creating AI and data ethics committees that can help develop policies, consult on projects/products, and conduct reviews
• Establishing responsible innovation officer positions whose role includes translating ethical codes and principles into practice
• Developing tools, organizational practices, and structures/processes that encourage employees to identify and raise potential ethical concerns

Broadening perspectives and collaborations

• Meaningfully engaging with impacted communities to better understand ethical concerns and the ways in which AI and data systems perpetuate inequality, as well as identifying opportunities for promoting equality, empowerment, and the social good
• Hiring in-house ethics and social science experts and/or consulting with external experts

Training and education

• Developing ethics trainings/curricula for employees, partners, and customers that raise awareness and understanding of the organization’s commitments
• Creating programs that encourage integrating ethics education into computer science, data science, and leadership programs

Integrating ethics in practice

• Incorporating value-sensitive design early into product development—often via responsible innovation practices—by including members who represent legal, ethical, and social perspectives on research and project teams
• Conducting “ethics audits” on data and AI systems with both technical tools and case reviews
• Conducting privacy- and ethics-oriented risk and liability assessments that are considered in decision-making processes
• Developing ways to signal to users and customers that products and services meet robust ethical standards
• Ensuring compliance of responsible innovation protocols and best practices throughout the organization

Building an AI and data ethics community

• Developing industry and cross-industry collaborative groups and fora to share experiences, ideas, knowledge, and innovations related to accomplishing responsible AI
• Creating teams within organizations and collaborations across organizations focused on promoting AI as a social good along well-defined specifications
• Supporting foundational AI and data ethics research on problems/issues of organizational concern

This collection of interconnected strategies is being innovated across sectors—e.g., business, medicine, education, financial services, government, nonprofits—and across scales—e.g., start-ups to multinationals and local to federal. Collectively, they provide a rich set of possibilities for generating ethical capacity within organizations. They demonstrate that the challenge of translating general commitments to substantive action is fundamentally a techno-social one that requires multi-level system solutions incorporating diverse groups and expertise. They also show that translating general AI ethics principles into substantive operationalized efforts is not easily done. It involves significant ongoing commitment.

VI. Contributors

John Basl, PhD
Associate Professor of Philosophy
Northeastern University

Author

John Basl is an author of this report. He is an associate professor of philosophy in the Department of Philosophy & Religion at Northeastern University, a researcher at the Northeastern Ethics Institute, and a faculty associate of both the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics and the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. He works primarily in moral philosophy, the ethics of AI, and the ethics of emerging technologies. 

Ronald Sandler, PhD
Professor of Philosophy; Chair, Department of Philosophy and Religion; Director, Ethics Institute
Northeastern University

Author

Ronald Sandler is an author of this report. He is a professor of philosophy, Chair of the Department of Philosophy and Religion, and Director of the Ethics Institute at Northeastern University. He works in ethics of emerging technologies, environmental ethics, and moral philosophy. Sandler is author of Nanotechnology: The Social and Ethical Issues (Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars), Environmental Ethics: Theory in Practice (Oxford), Food Ethics: The Basics (Routledge), and Character and Environment (Columbia), as well as editor of Ethics and Emerging Technologies (Palgrave MacMillan), Environmental Justice and Environmentalism (MIT), and Environmental Virtue Ethics (Rowman and Littlefield). 

Steven Tiell
Nonresident Senior Fellow, GeoTech Center
Atlantic Council

Contributing Editor

Steven is a contributing editor to this report. He is a Nonresident Senior Fellow with the Atlantic Council’s GeoTech Center. He is an expert in data ethics and responsible innovation working at Accenture, where he helps clients to integrate responsible product development practices and executives to manage risks brought on by digital transformation and widespread use of artificial intelligence. He founded the Data Salon Series, now a program at the GeoTech Center, in 2018. Since embarking on Data Ethics research in 2013, Steven has contributed to and published more than a dozen papers and has worked with dozens of organizations in high-tech, media, telecom, financial services, public safety, public policy, government, and defense sectors. He often speaks on topics such as governance, trust, data ethics, surveillance, deepfakes, and industry trends.

The post Getting from commitment to content in AI and data ethics: Justice and explainability appeared first on Atlantic Council.

As the United States became richer in the 20^th century, birth rates trended downward and have been falling nearly continuously since 2009. In 1960, the fertility rate in the United States was 3.6 births per woman. In 2020, it was 1.64, the lowest rate on record, and the number of babies born in the United States in 2020 was the lowest in over forty years. The current fertility rate is below the 2.1 “replacement fertility” rate needed for the population to stabilize.

Declining population growth has serious economic and societal implications due to major shifts in the population’s composition. Over time, fewer and fewer workers will be supporting more and more retirees, altering how society has been structured to date. Data shows that US working-age population (those 16-64) growth over the last ten years was its lowest in decades. The diminished supply of labor threatens the economy’s growth potential, productivity and investment capacity, and budget health (e.g., in declining revenues for Social Security). This dynamic is not unique to the United States; many other advanced and large economies are also grappling with declining population growth. The experiences of countries such as Japan, China, and others illustrate that it is not feasible to reverse population trends.

The pandemic has further accelerated this trend due to a “baby bust” of an estimated 300,000 fewer than expected births over the past year, as well as increased retirements from older workers.

There are some positive aspects of declining population growth. All else equal, fewer people mean fewer carbon emissions and resource usage, which is good news for climate change efforts given the steep road ahead. In addition, some US women express feeling heightened agency over motherhood decisions compared to past generations and have a desire to invest more in each child they do have.

If the United States is going to keep its commitments to older residents and make a green transition, it will need to maximize workers’ labor market participation and productivity through measures like active labor market policies, infrastructure improvements, and supportive working family policies like those in the American Families Plan. It will also need an improved immigration system. 

As a nation of immigrants, immigration has long played a crucial role in the US economy. Immigration is clearly a complex and multi-faceted topic, involving challenging political and ethical dynamics. However, from an economic and business dynamism perspective, the evidence is truly clear: immigration is a tremendous contributor to US productivity and growth.

Immigrants to the United States help the economy in a variety of ways: they expand the labor force with more workers; they disproportionately start and operate new businesses, which increases labor demand; and they are innovative, leading to gains in productivity growth. All these impacts lead to more growth and higher wages, as well as positive budgetary effects (on average, taxes paid by immigrants exceed the costs of services they use). The last time Congress seriously considered comprehensive immigration reform in 2013, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) predicted that the proposed bill would add 0.3 percentage points to average annual GDP growth over a twenty-year period. (The CBO currently estimates potential real GDP growth is 2 percent.)

US Immigrants Disproportionately Own Businesses

Different types of immigrants bring different benefits to the economy; however, high-skill, low-skill, and undocumented immigrants across the country all help the economy. For example, agriculture and construction employers often rely on lower-skilled and undocumented immigrant workers due to US-born worker shortages. It is also true that the distributional impacts of immigration can create difficulties sometimes. However, while these effects are real and must be addressed, they are not indicative of immigration’s overall economic impact. For US-born workers, it is more likely immigration increases their wages than reduces them and evidence suggests “immigrants act more as job creators than job takers.”

The United States has many more immigrants than any country in the world. For much of its history, it has benefited from an ample supply of talented and hard-working foreigners. But in recent years, immigration has declined due to the Trump administration making the process more difficult, as well as concerns around pandemic safety and other countries’ increased efforts at attracting the world’s best. The Biden administration is attempting to expand the legal immigration system and make it smoother, and higher education institutions are a consistently large pull. Nonetheless, comprehensive reform that fixes a large backlog of people waiting to immigrate, increases the supply of visas for high-skill immigrants (for over twenty years, the demand for H-1B visas has greatly exceeded the supply), brings undocumented immigrants out of the shadows to further participate in the economy, and more is desperately needed.

For better or worse, domestic population growth in the United States is overwhelmingly likely to continue declining, putting increasing levels of burden on a shrinking working age population. As US policymakers debate strategic options about how to manage this dynamic, comprehensive immigration reform should be at the top of their to-do list.

Jeff Goldstein is a Contributor to the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center. During the Obama Administration he served as the Deputy Chief of Staff and Special Assistant to the Chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. He also worked at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Views and opinions expressed are strictly his own.

At the intersection of economics, finance, and foreign policy, the GeoEconomics Center is a translation hub with the goal of helping shape a better global economic future.

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Online Event Wed, June 23, 2021 • 8:30 am ET

A special event with Brian Deese, Director of the National Economic Council

AN #ACFRONTPAGE EVENT – A conversation with Director of the National Economic Council, Brian Deese on US industrial policy.

Economy & Business Fiscal and Structural Reform United States and Canada

Event transcript

Speaker
Brian Deese,
Director, National Economic Council

Introduction
Frederick Kempe,
President and CEO, Atlantic Council

Moderator
Rana Foroohar,
Associate Editor, Financial Times

FREDERICK KEMPE: Good morning, good afternoon, good evening to our audience all around the world. I’m Fred Kempe, president and CEO of the Atlantic Council, and I’m delighted to welcome you to the latest edition of Atlantic Council Front Page, #ACFrontPage, our premier platform for global leaders.

Today, we’re honored to welcome Brian Deese, the White House director of the National Economic Council, to provide special remarks on the administration’s vision and plans on US industrial policy, a critical topic for the future of not only the American but also the global economy. From supply chains to semiconductors to manufacturing, this issue crosses borders and goes to the heart of the Atlantic Council’s mission of shaping the global future together. We are proud that the GeoEconomics Center has been a leader on this issue since its launch last year under the capable leadership of its director, Josh Lipsky, and Deputy Director Julia Friedlander.

Some may question the need for a US industrial policy, but we all know something has to change. Pandemic-induced trade disruptions and ongoing product shortages have caused real economic damage. The strain on our system has sparked debates about the proper relationship between the public and the private sector.

There’s no one better equipped to explain the administration’s thinking on this issue than Brian Deese. Director Deese has a track record at the forefront of strengthening our economic system. Throughout his career, Director Deese has been dedicated to questioning conventional thinking and taking bold action to ensure the US economic system delivers. During the Obama administration, he worked on rescuing the economy during the global financial crisis and he worked on negotiating the Paris Climate Accords. He held roles including deputy director of the National Economic Council, deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, and senior advisor to the president. In short, he knows his stuff.

It was Director Deese who helped manage the administration’s successful effort to rescue the auto industry, and his tireless work saved an essential part of the American economy in doing that. As the United States and its allies grapple with economic disruption, Director Deese has led the National Economic Council in fulfilling President Biden’s vision to build back better. And part of building back better means forging a new approach on industrial policy. So it’s not an overstatement to say that the whole world is eager to hear from him about this crucial topic.

Following Director Deese’s speech, he will participate in a conversation with one of the finest international journalists I know: Rana Foroohar, associate editor and global business columnist at the Financial Times. Rana, as always, it’s a pleasure to work with you. To engage in the discussion please use the hashtag #ACFrontPage.

Director Deese, the floor is yours.

BRIAN DEESE: Well, thank you, Fred, and to the entire Atlantic Council team for having me today. I’m really excited to be here. I’m excited to engage with your global community of leaders and thinkers, and really excited to speak at this topic.

You teed this up, but it is true: We meet today virtually at a unique inflection point for American economic policy. It’s unique in the United States in terms of the speed and the strength of our recovery. Since the beginning of this year, we are seeing rapid progress on constraining the coronavirus. COVID-19 deaths are down 85 percent. We’ve averaged more than 500,000 new jobs per month, and the American economy is growing at the fastest rate in almost forty years. In fact, the US is the only major economy where future growth projections out five years are stronger now than they were in January 2020, before the pandemic hit.

This is a direct result of our vaccination effort, our unique fiscal response, and an economic strategy that is focused on driving growth from the bottom up and the middle out of our economy. At the same time, [this time is] unique because this pandemic exposed economic vulnerabilities that we have yet to fully grapple with: Empty store shelves, shortage of basic medicines, supply chain bottlenecks from computer chips to advanced medical equipment. Some of the depth of that crisis and the fragility of our system can wane quickly. But we’re continuing to see, as the economy comes roaring back, these bottlenecks and these discontinuities persist.

This crisis and this recovery expose a long-term hollowing-out of our country’s industrial base, which happened over years and decades. Today nearly 90 percent of generic active pharmaceutical ingredient facilities are located overseas. And they’ve been moving overseas for the last fifty years. Until the 1980s, the United States was the world’s leader in rare-earth production. Now China controls 85 percent of global refining capacity. The US share of semiconductor production’s fallen almost 40 percent—from almost 40 percent to just over 10 percent over the last forty years. And the list goes on.

Our private sector and public policy approaches to domestic production that has prioritized short-term cost savings over security, sustainability, and resilience, are coming to a fore. In short, this was a wake-up call. And we need a new approach. Which is why, as we navigate out of this pandemic, as we drive through a uniquely strong economic recovery, the Biden administration is putting rebuilding for resilience, with a focus on creating good jobs for American workers, at the core of our build back better agenda.

And it’s why today I’m very excited to lay out a vision for a twenty-first-century American industrial strategy—a strategy to strengthen our supply chains [and] rebuild our industrial base across sectors, technologies, and regions of this country. I want to start by noting that national industrial strategies are not new—certainly not new globally and not new in the United States either. In the early nineteenth century when this country was transitioning from an agrarian to an industrial economy, we subsidized transportation and created a national bank. In the post-World War II era, we as a federal government made strategic investments in emerging technologies from microelectronics to telecommunications and biotechnology.

But at the same time, today’s global economic environment is very different. The pace of technological change, this idea of a Moore’s law for everything, is upending production processes, transforming supply chains, and transforming the modern workplace and the meaning of work. The pace of climate change is accelerating. It’s threatening to transform economies, migration patterns, supply chains, [and] the security and stability of economies and regions of the world.

Persistent inequality in the United States is slowing economic growth and risks fracturing the democratic stability upon which our economic success depends. And the approach of our competitors and our allies has changed rapidly. We should be clear-eyed that China and others are playing by a different set of rules. Strategic public investments to shelter and grow champion industries is a reality of the twenty-first-century economy. We cannot ignore or wish this away.

That’s why we need a new strategy, one that draws from the best lessons of our past but also leans into the challenges of the future. Our view is this strategy needs to be built on five core pillars: supply-chain resilience, targeted public investment, public procurement, climate resilience, and equity. I want to speak about each of these briefly.

First, the pandemic made clear that resilient supply chains must be at the center of a twenty-first-century economic strategy and industrial strategy. Earlier this month, we in the administration released the results of an all-of-government one-hundred-day sprint to study and assess our supply-chain vulnerabilities. The key takeaway: We need a new and broader toolkit.

We need to leverage the Defense Production Act authorities in new ways, like investing in advanced pharmaceutical manufacturing technologies in the United States.

We need to be tougher in tying innovation that is produced with funding from the US government, tying that to domestic manufacturing and employment at home by American workers.

We need to make strategic investments to build domestic supply-chain capacity in areas like computer chips, where bipartisan work in Congress is advancing a historic fifty-billion-dollar investment in the domestic semiconductor industry, which is sorely needed. We need to get that done.

And we need to work with allies and partners. This is an important point. It’s neither feasible nor advisable for us to re-shore all of our supply chains. Resilience does not mean closing ourselves to the rest of the world. Partnerships with our allies that promote more stable access to key inputs while improving environmental sustainability and workers’ rights is essential. And you saw the president in his recent trip prioritize and succeed in bringing many of our allies to this strategy.

In all of this, we are going to need new models of public-private collaboration. The public sector can’t discern when to intervene on its own and the private sector is struggling to manage through rapidly changing demand for products in highly concentrated markets—supply chains with multiple chokepoints and bottlenecks that have been unexpected and unanticipated to date.

As many economists have pointed out, and as the literature has deepened in recent years by the work of Dani Rodrik and others, this coordination between the public and the private sector is critical to solving these asymmetries of information, getting the right investment outcomes, spurring the right kind of private sector innovation. That’s the problem we’re trying to solve for, which leads to the second public investment.

There is a unique, compelling, and urgent economic need to make a one-time capital investment in this country. This is about strengthening the public systems that connect manufacturers and researchers and workers and small businesses: public investment in our roads, our bridges, our ports, universal access to high-speed Internet, affordable high-speed Internet, a modernized power grid, a transportation system and power system that work together toward a zero-carbon future, new schools and childcare facilities that allow—that are the elements that allow people and parents to work.

We have proposed the largest civilian investment in public R&D on record, $180 billion, as well as a $100 billion investment in America’s workforce, including a targeted and sectoral-based approach to workforce development. Now these may sound like large numbers, but, in fact, these are among the most prudent and modest investments that this country could make, a capital investment in ourselves. The reason is straightforward: Markets on their own will not make investments in technologies and in infrastructure that benefit an entire industry. We know that when the benefits of innovation are broadly shared, no one firm has incentive to invest in the kind of game-changing technologies or the kind of connecting infrastructure that fosters long-term economic competitiveness at the industry, the region, and the nationwide level.

And these are not your typical market failures. These failures require a different role for government, one where public R&D lays a foundation for breakthrough technologies, but the government also looks to pull forward the deployment and the dispersion of innovation, works to work with the private sector to overcome those barriers of information and communication that have stymied private—prior efforts. That’s why we are targeting high-value public investment that we know have worked and that will accelerate innovation.

And I just want to make a final point on this. The proposals on the table are large, but in—but they are in—spread out across time, our proposals are to do an eight- to ten-year investment. In aggregate, it would be about a percent of GDP a year. If you look at that in the international context, it is the minimum necessary to actually make a capital investment that could propel our economy forward.

Connected to that and third, we need to reimagine public procurement policy. The federal government is the largest buyer in the world, spending over $600 billion in contracts annually, and one of the unique approaches that President Biden has been talking about since the campaign is we need to think about how to leverage this purchasing power strategically to shape markets. This is a through line for President Biden across all of his economic strategies.

And we know firsthand that federal purchasing can help achieve momentous goals in innovation. NASA is perhaps one of the best examples. When I worked previously in the Obama administration at the Office of Management and Budget, one of the things that we worked to do was to try to create outcome-driven models where NASA’s procurement was partnering with the private sector, setting milestones and goals to meet mission needs while pulling forward the kind of innovation and advancement in technologies that we know are necessary. Those types of contracting—the approach to public procurement—has opened up new innovation and is just a glimpse of the power that a comprehensive procurement policy brings. That’s why we’ve proposed a fifty-billion-dollar investment, for example, to pull forward demand in new clean-energy products and prioritize buy American so procurement supports US-based manufacturing and American jobs.

Fourth, we need an industrial base that drives our effort to address the existential threat of climate change. We need an industrial base that is resilient to the increasing reality of a climate-affected world. That requires a fundamental shift in how we produce and how we power the economy.

The scale, complexity, and urgency of the climate challenge gets to the heart of why having a forward-looking industrial strategy is so important. Public-sector policy and investment [are] needed to help unleash the ingenuity of private markets, rapidly mobilizing resources toward decarbonization. And our twenty-first-century approach to rebuilding industrial strength puts investments in decarbonization at the forefront in the power sector, in the transportation sector, in the industrial sector, and the built environment, supporting research, development, and deployment in these sectors as well as supply-side production incentives that drive private-sector growth and increase US market share.

This is not just about winning domestically. We know that globally clean energy is going to be one of the fastest-growing markets, whether in vehicles or in the production of clean technologies. Our strength and the robustness of our industry at home will dictate how much of that global market share we can win, and export markets means more US investment and more US jobs.

Fifth, and finally, equity must run through everything that we do. We must learn from our historical mistakes. Prior economic transformations in the United States have not brought everyone along. By doing it different this time, we will enhance our economic competitiveness. We know that by prioritizing racial and gender equity we can reduce the yawning gaps in wealth and opportunity and unleash stronger growth. We know that by investing in all of America, particularly in those regions that have suffered from decades of deindustrialization, we can avoid further geographic entrenchment and polarization and unlock more of our innovative capability. And by ensuring labor standards for all and incorporating worker voice into the process, American industry will be more resilient for the long term. From investing in HBCUs and MSIs, in our R&D, to investing in regional manufacturing hubs, technology hubs, Manufacturing USA, ways to align investment in R&D, education and training, working with the private sector and bringing innovation to all areas of the—of the country, this is what it is going to take to build an economy from the bottom up and the middle out.

So this is our five-pillar strategy and our approach.

And to conclude, I want to make a final point. This strategy, and indeed all of President Biden’s economic agenda, rests on the core belief that American capitalism and American democracy can deliver for our people and our future. At this moment, the stakes could not be higher. We need to demonstrate that American capitalism can work to benefit everyone, not just shareholders. In the face of persistent cynicism, skepticism, and doubt, we need to show that smart public investment can help unleash innovation, unleash the capacity of our private sector, and deliver strong, resilient, and inclusive growth; and must show that our democratic system of government can serve working people in this country better than any other form of government.

We are off to a strong start, a uniquely strong American economic recovery. But we have a lot of work to do and no time to lose. As the president has said, years from now our children will look back at this time as the moment when America had the chance to win the twenty-first century. Let’s seize this moment together. Thank you very much.

Read Brian Deese’s prepared remarks

Transcript

Jun 23, 2021

The Biden White House plan for a new US industrial policy

By Atlantic Council

In a speech at the Atlantic Council, Director of the National Economic Council Brian Deese unveiled the Biden administration’s new strategy for creating American industrial strength. Here are his full prepared remarks.

Economy & Business International Markets

RANA FOROOHAR: Well, Director Deese, thank you so much for that speech. A lot in there, and a lot for us to dig into in the next twenty to twenty-five minutes or so. Let me start by saying I really like the way that you set up the historical precedent for American industrial policy because, as you say, this goes way back. In some people in the international community would say that some of the best things China has done in recent decades has been out of the Alexander Hamilton playbook. You know, this is—this is something that has gone back and forth between countries. The US is unique, really, amongst developed countries these days in not using any kind of official industrial policy. So this is really a big change.

I’m wondering if you can help people to understand how an industrial strategy could bridge and re-moor the gap between income growth and productivity growth, because that’s really what’s been broken in the last few decades. That’s why we’ve seen so much growing inequality, we’ve seen the politics of inequality. But historically when you have the public sector saving the private sector to create, you know, great new technologies—the railroads, the internet, now possibly climate change—you do get that bridging of incomes going up while productivity goes up. And maybe you can talk about how that could happen now.

BRIAN DEESE: Yeah, thank you. Thank you for that. I think that—look, I think that, to your first point, there’s a lot of—you know, there’s been a lot of debate around the term “industrial policy.” Is it a term to be embraced? Is it a dirty word? What does it mean? And part of what we’re trying to communicate is that there are realities of the post-pandemic global economic environment that we have to acknowledge, and we have to embrace. And those—we have to in some sense put those debates in the past. We don’t operate in a global stylized free-market equilibrium, particularly when we’ve got a counterpart economy like China that operates the way that it does.

And so we need to be clear-eyed in having a strategy that actually positions the US economy for success in that environment. One key element of that is the point that you made, which is how do we actually generate economic growth in the US that not only unleashes our innovative capacity, but where more of those benefits flow to workers and we start to—we start to reduce those inequities. And at the core for us is public investment in those areas that we know are drivers of increasing our productive capacity and, importantly, in increasing participation by all workers and more power for those workers in the marketplace.

So to give you an example, investments—equalizing investments, like bringing high-speed, affordable internet to all parts of the country. Today, 35 percent of people who live in rural areas of the United States have no access to high-speed internet. Without access to high-speed internet today, you can’t be a full participant in the American economy. But by making that type of public investment over the course of the next several years, by bringing that tool to all of America, we’re going to put a lot of people in the position where they can innovate, they can create small businesses, they can get online, and they can engage. They can compete for jobs without having to move place.

That’s equalizing in an important respect. Likewise, our investments in education. The president has talked about now being a moment where, like the early twentieth century, we need to expand four years of public education. Two on the front end with universal preschool for three- and four-year-olds, and two on—at least two on the back end with access with access to free community college. That’s an equalizing investment where we know that access to education is one of the biggest—and achievement of education—is one of the biggest drivers of future wages. So those are the kind—so as we think about public investment we think about them in an equalizing way, but in opening the productive capacity of our people.

RANA FOROOHAR: So the education point is very important because two-thirds of jobs being created right now actually don’t require a four-year degree. They require two years of community college, as you say, which is important.

Let’s talk a little bit about the timeframe for this. You made a point both in terms of the budget—which seems—the headline numbers seem big, but as you say this is being stretched out over eight years, ten years. It also takes a decade to really build up a semiconductor industry, which is something that the administration is committed to doing and, reading through the executive summary of the supply chain report, you have a real plan for. Talk about timeframe. What can we expect to happen in the short term, in the next one or two years? And then where are we going to be in five years, ten years if we can stick with this plan?

BRIAN DEESE: So it’s a great point. And we do need to separate out the timeframe. In the short term, our economic strategy is focused on driving strong growth out of this crisis. And we believe that that strong growth, and getting as quickly as possible to full employment, will actually put our economy on a footing where we’re much better positioned to succeed over the medium term. We’ve seen in recent recoveries that a slow recovery, a slow labor market recovery, has extraordinary negative scarring effects for workers, for regions of the country. So in the short term we’re really focused on how do we drive a strong recovery. And that’s what we’re seeing. That’s what we’re seeing right now.

Over the medium term, a lot of these investments are not intended to just be you solve this in a year or two. You’re not going to get high-speed internet to all of America, you’re not going to rebuild countries in this country over the course of one or two years. This is over the course of three, five, eight, [or] ten years, where you have a dedicated investment strategy that helps to unlock that innovative capacity. To your point about semiconductors is a good example. Today we’re living through real-time bottlenecks in the semiconductor industry that have exposed really interesting, but also harrowing, weaknesses in our supply chains.

We’re working to try to resolve those in the very immediate term, but the real answer for the US is to build resilience by building back domestic capability. Not to source all semiconductors here in the United States, but to have enough capacity here, enough innovation here, and enough production here that we don’t find ourselves exposed. That’s going to take years. It’s going to take public investment and it’s going to take coordination between the public and private sector.

But that’s the kind of model that we want to use in other areas as well, being deliberate about the fact that the goal is over five years from now, eight years from now we put ourselves in a situation where when the next crisis, the next set of challenges, inevitably hit, we’re operating from a much stronger foundation.

RANA FOROOHAR: What would you say to some of the critics that have said, all right, well, this is a great idea in theory but it’s going to create inflationary pressures, particularly in the short term, given that we’re at the end of a multiyear period of easy monetary policy which was, you know, depending on where you put the marker, has been going on for decades. You know that this could get the US into a problem. The dollar could be challenged. How do you see all that fitting together?

BRIAN DEESE: Well, I think that the timeframe, to go back to the last question, to answer that question, the timeframe is absolutely essential. When we’re talking about the public investment strategy we’re talking about here, that is a long-term strategy. We are proposing to fully offset the costs of that strategy. So in terms of the impact on aggregate demand, it is spread out across time. And to the degree that people are focused on inflationary pressures in the short term, that really is not the issue.

In the short term, you know, this is a—this is an economy that is recovering very strongly. And we are—you know, we’re looking at the implications of an economy that comes out of a—you know, a policy-induced coma and comes roaring back, in part because demand is so strong because of the success of the ongoing vaccination campaign. Our view is that that economic strength and the speed of this recovery is absolutely vital to be putting our economy in a situation where we can tackle these issues, where we’re not operating from a sluggish position across time.

And I would note that we still have, you know, extraordinary economic challenges. We’re still down seven million jobs from where we were before. We still have, you know, half of the US population that’s not been fully vaccinated. So we still have a lot of work to do in the short term. But over the medium and long term, these are investments that are not about overheating the economy, but actually providing the core elements that are going to allow us to sustain growth across time.

RANA FOROOHAR: You made a point towards the end of your speech about the economy needing to not just serve shareholders, really, but a broader range of stakeholders. Given that some of the problems you’re trying to address come from the period in the 80s and the 90s in which there was a lot of financialization of the economy, there was a lot of pressure on multinationals—American multinationals—particularly relative to state competitors in places like China to make short-term decisions to please Wall Street quarter by quarter. How can or should any kind of financial reform—changes within the SEC, changes coming from the markets—kind of support what you’re doing?

BRIAN DEESE: Well, I think what we’ve seen across the American economy and the American private sector is a realization over the last few years that the model of sole focus on the short term and the primacy of the shareholder above all else does not actually serve to generate long-term sustainable profit over the long term. And so we’ve seen businesses acknowledge and, in fact, embrace the idea that having a strategy that actually supports your stakeholders more broadly—whether it’s your employees, the communities that you operate in—is actually integral to succeeding over the medium to long term. That’s happening in the private market, and there’s a lot of enthusiasm for that. There’s skepticism for that in some quarters, and I think it’s incumbent on the businesses that believe that to actually demonstrate that in action.

With respect to policy, there’s a couple things that are critical. One is providing better and clearer information to the public and to investors about how companies are actually operating against those goals. So if a company is setting targets to try to reduce emissions or to reduce its environmental footprint, is there data—if we believe those things are material to a company’s success, is there data that is comparable and that can be assessed between companies? That’s where, you know, the SEC and other regulatory bodies have an important role to play.

This is also a place where climate change comes squarely into the picture. We released an executive order on the climate-related financial risk recently that said that across government we need to be better assessing and measuring and monitoring and mitigating those real risks that climate change poses to the financial system and to the operations of companies therein. So there’s a lot of work to be done on the public-policy side of that as well.

RANA FOROOHAR: You know, something I hear a lot speaking to multinational CEOs [is that] they agree that we’re at a pivot point, a unique inflection point as you put it, in a sense that, you know, in the neoliberal era American multinationals were meant to simply go out, make money wherever you can. Most of them get about 50 percent of their revenues from overseas. Until quite recently, China has been a key market for many. The Chinese themselves are now shutting off several strategic markets, making them much more favorable to national players. That’s something that’s been developing and will continue to develop. That’s an explicit part of their own five-year plan. But if you’re a multinational CEO—if you’re an American CEO, you know, of a company like Qualcomm, for example, which gets half its money from Apple and half its money from China, what’s the message to these leaders? How should they be thinking about this new future?

BRIAN DEESE: Well, in the conversations that I and we have with American CEOs, CEOs of multinational companies, and CEOs of global companies that are investing and operating in the US, there’s two things that I’m hearing over and over again. The first is the rethinking of the balance between competitiveness and cost versus resilience. That’s true with respect to supply chains, that the resilience of a supply chain is more valuable in a world in which we’ve gone through this shock and we’ve seen the destruction of value that can come if you have a very-low-cost, just-in-time supply chain that is not resilient to idiosyncratic risks. So that’s—so number one—but resilience of the business model as well, and resilience to geopolitical and other risks.

The second is attracting and retaining trained workers. And I think that this is also an interesting shift, where having an educated and trained workforce at the ready is something that I think businesses across the board are identifying as one of the key ingredients for their success going forward. And I think there’s a growing recognition that there needs to be, from the perspective of the businesses themselves, more explicit investment—investment of dollars, but also investment in creativity in training those workers—in making it attractive to come and work. And I think that we’re going to start to see that is sort of what we’re seeing in the economy now, is a dynamic where when employers have to compete more for workers as opposed to workers competing for jobs that are scarce, that also encourages companies to up their games, and I think that training is a place where we’re going to see more companies put emphasis. But that, like many of these things we’re talking about, requires coordination between the public and the private sector, between government and training programs and the private sector and what they need to do as well.

RANA FOROOHAR: Let me ask you two more questions before I hand it over to Julia. Would you like to see as part of encouraging that training changes in the tax code, for example, that would allow the depreciation of investment into human capital rather than just machinery, or the encouragement of R&D tax credits, basically creating an ecosystem in which each company isn’t going at it alone but there is a sense that investment into people can be as favorable as, say, investment into technology?

BRIAN DEESE: So I think that we’re open and quite interested in any idea that would provide a clear foundation and encouragement for companies to up their investment in their workforce and in training and retaining their workers. And I think as part of a corporate tax reform, those are the kinds of ideas that should be in the mix.

I think that what we have seen consistently is that the training that is the most successful actually connects workers with training programs that are close to them in terms of them being able to access them physically, but also in terms of meeting them where they are—but also connected to jobs. And so the best partnerships are one where you’ve got local training capability, whether it’s a community college or a research facility, with employers so that people can see a line of sight to the job that is waiting for them.

We’ve got an extraordinary set of examples across the country where we’re seeing this work well. And one of the things that I think we—hopefully, we’re going to see in this next period is a recognition by companies that they’re prepared to invest more in making this happen, that they recognize that trained workforces are not just going to evolve and it’s not just the public sector’s role. But certainly, where there are ways where we could provide long-term incentives for companies to invest more in this space, it’s something that we want to have an open conversation about. And in the context of reforming our tax code, certainly we want a tax code that encourages more investment in domestic production, more investment in domestic research and development, and more investment domestically in workers.

RANA FOROOHAR: OK. Final question. Buy America sounds good to a lot of people in this country. It makes some allies nervous. How can this need to build demand in areas like semiconductors, which really require demand in order to be viable—how could allies be brought along and sort of be brought into that ecosystem? Where is the low-hanging fruit there to make this not just about the US, but about a new alliance in high-growth areas?

BRIAN DEESE: I’d say two things on that. The first is that the president is—this is an issue that the president feels strongly about—that when we’re using federal taxpayer dollars to purchase or to invest that money should go toward American workers and American production. And we are working hard on a set of reforms to laws that have been on the books since the 1930s. The Buy American Act has been the law of the land for decades but has never really been enforced, has never really been a focus. And the president is committed to actually delivering on the laws as they exist and making sure that that is the case.

At the same time—and I would say that’s an approach that many of our allies take, as well, with respect to their own domestic procurement. It’s true for our European counterparts as well, many of whom, as a share of their economy, their domestic procurement is considerably higher than the United States today.

At the same time, our approach is not one in which we want to bring all production here into the United States. We want to draw lines from our allies, or to suggest that it’s actually the right economic strategy to try to produce everything here in the United States. And that’s why focusing on working with partners and allies is a core part of our supply-chain resilience and supply-chain-strength strategy, that, in fact, by partnering with allies to have more predictable supply, by partnering with allies to actually focus on the challenges of global overcapacity that that threaten economies collectively, we can actually have a multilateral approach to this set of issues.

So while there are some issues where certainly the approach to buy American is one that the president is going to be uncompromising about, I think what we found and we saw, particularly in the president’s most recent trip, is that there’s much more space for us to actually work constructively with partners and allies to solve our shared supply-chain challenges, and so that’s a big priority for us as well.

RANA FOROOHAR: OK. Well, I have many more questions but I know you don’t have a lot more time, so I’m going to now hand it over to Julia Friedlander, who is a senior fellow at the GeoEconomics Center.

JULIA FRIEDLANDER: Thank you, Rana.

And Director Deese, thank you so much, on behalf of the Atlantic Council, for spending part of your morning with us today. It was wonderful to hear you outline the pillars of your new strategy.

My question, I think, is a pretty typical Atlantic Council question… Reviewing some of the public documents that the White House has put out, there’s an explicit link between restoring domestic economic growth and resilience and competition abroad, particularly with China. So in a sort of tactical way, how do you integrate economic policy into foreign policy? Right? They’ve traditionally been rather bifurcated in the US policy sphere. And then maybe to echo what Rana just said: How do you convince our allies that that’s indeed the case, that economics is a tool of foreign policy? Thank you.

BRIAN DEESE: Great. Thanks, Julia.

Well, I appreciate the tactical element to the question because I think that it’s important, which is that it’s easier to say that you’re integrating domestic economic policy and foreign policy than it is to do in practice.

One of the things that the president has been talking about for a long time, and talked about it as a candidate, was that he wanted to have a foreign policy for America’s middle class. And so one of the things that we have done from day one is that the National Economic Council, which I lead, and the National Security Council, which Jake Sullivan leads, when we work on these issues, we really work on them hand and glove. So I’ll give you an example: the supply-chain review, the one-hundred-day review that we conducted and which we just released a few weeks ago. Jake and I and our teams worked hand in glove on that. Every meeting we had with the interagency, we partnered and did that together, and we signaled clearly in the work of the teams that ultimately an assessment of supply-chain risks needed to fully integrate our national security and foreign policy equities, as well as our domestic economic and international economic equities as well. It’s hard work and I won’t suggest that we have gotten it completely right but having a strategy to make clear to the interagency and to the agencies that are working on these issues that that’s the approach that we’re going to take is important.

With respect to your question about allies, I think this actually goes to something that President Biden spoke about repeatedly when he was in Europe, which is that the core of our strength as a country, our ability to support and partner with allies, is our economic strength at home, and that’s why, both as a matter of policy, this administration and President Biden have focused—put so much focus and effort early on on having a vaccination strategy to get our hands around this virus but also to pass the American Rescue Plan within the first sixty days in office to deliver the strongest fiscal policy response to this crisis of any country globally and to signal that, in the United States, we’re not only capable but we’re committed to driving an economic strategy where the United States right now, our growth, projected to be about 7 percent this year, is actually having positive spillovers to the global economy.

The OECD, the IMF, the World Bank have all found recently that the pace of the growth in the United States, the increase in growth as a result of our fiscal policies, is actually having positive spillovers for the rest of the world. And that is a—that is a core way that we can help support a global recovery, help support the values that we’re trying to drive with respect to our foreign policy and put us in a position of strength when we are interacting with competitors on issues where we disagree and where we’re going to have—we’re going to have competition.

So that idea of our economic strength and our economic resilience being at the core of our foreign policy is something that really animates how we are approaching a number of foreign policy issues. And you’ll continue to see that as well, the prioritization that we have right now. And today we’ll be up doing a bunch of conversations with folks on the Hill on this. Our focus on infrastructure and investment domestically in this domestic investment agenda, that’s key to our foreign policy success. We view these things as interlinked, and we’re certainly tactically going to continue to try to operate the government with those linkages front and center.

RANA FOROOHAR: OK. I’m going to jump back in and turn it over for final words now to Josh Lipsky, who is the director of the GeoEconomics Center at the Atlantic Council. Thank you, Director.

JOSH LIPSKY: Well, thank you, Rana. And thank you, Director Deese, for coming to the Atlantic Council and laying out this vision with us on industrial policy so clearly and comprehensively during what we know is an extraordinarily busy week for you and the entire team at the White House.

So we, at the GeoEconomics Center, believe that economics, finance, and national security are all interlinked. And as you pointed out in your speech, that is not a new idea. It goes back to our country’s founding. But it is an idea that has been misunderstood, and misapplied, and perhaps overlooked—most importantly—in recent decades.

So we’ll continue to do our part at the Atlantic Council to remind this country and its allies the potential behind that idea. And this is the beginning of the conversation, as you both have said, and it’s not the end. And in fact, tomorrow we’ll start unpacking the speech and vision laid out today in an event with members of the European Commission, and the private sector, and other government officials, to talk about the implications both at home and abroad. And on July 13, we’ll welcome the director-general of the WTO, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, for the next Atlantic Council Front Page.

So thank you everyone for being with us today. Please stay with us and have a great rest of the day.

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WASHINGTON, DC – MAY 26, 2021 – The Atlantic Council’s bipartisan Commission on the Geopolitical Impacts of New Technologies and Data today released a landmark report proposing recommendations for the US government and like-minded allies on global technology and data development policy.

The report’s recommendations are designed to maintain US and allied leadership in science and technology; ensure the trustworthiness and resilience of physical and IT supply chains, infrastructures, and the digital economy at large; improve global health protection; assure commercial space operations for public benefit; and create a digitally fluent and resilient workforce.

The report was developed over months of intensive study and debate by an esteemed panel of commissioners comprised of senior representatives from Congress, academia, industry, and former officials from recent administrations. Sens. Mark Warner (D-VA) and Rob Portman (R-OH) and Reps. Suzan DelBene (D-WA) and Michael McCaul (R-TX) served as honorary co-chairs of the commission. John Goodman, Chief Executive Officer of Accenture Federal Services, and Teresa Carlson, President and Chief Growth Officer of Splunk, served as co-chairs. The commission was housed within the Atlantic Council’s GeoTech Center, which was launched in 2020 to champion positive paths forward to ensure new technologies and data empower people, prosperity, and peace.

Today’s report comes amid the “GeoTech Decade,” in which new technologies and data capabilities will have an outsized impact on geopolitics, economics, and global governance. However, no nation or international organization has created the appropriate governance structures needed to grapple with the complex and destabilizing dynamics of emerging technologies. As a result, new approaches are required for developing and deploying critical technologies, cultivating human capital, rebuilding trust in domestic and global governance, and establishing norms for international cooperation.

Key recommendations from the report include:

• Global science and technology leadership: Develop a National & Economic Security Technology Strategy
• Secure data and communications: Strengthen the National Cyber Strategy Implementation Plan and accelerate quantum information science technologies operationalization
• Enhanced Trust and Confidence in the Digital Economy: Demonstrate AI improvements to delivery of public- and private-services
• Assured Supply Chains and System Resiliency: Broaden federal oversight of supply chain assurance
• Continuous Global Health Protection and Global Wellness: Launch a global pandemic surveillance and warning system
• Assured Space Operations for Public Benefit: Harden security of commercial space industry facilities and space assets
• Future of Work: Create the workforce for the GeoTech Decade and equitable access to opportunity

“The work of the bipartisan GeoTech Commission was 14 months in the making, representing the consensus of public and private sector leaders on practical steps forward for Congress, the White House, private industry, academia, and like-minded nations,” said Dr. David Bray, director of the Atlantic Council’s GeoTech Center. “The sophisticated, but potentially fragile, data and tech systems that now connect people and nations mean we must incorporate resiliency as a necessary foundational pillar of modern life. It is imperative that we promote strategic initiatives that employ data and tech to amplify the ingenuity of people, diversity of talent, strength of democratic values, innovation of companies, and reach of global partnerships.”

“The U.S. stands at a crossroads. New technologies and ready access to data offer exciting opportunities to tackle the world’s greatest challenges. Yet there are also risks that threaten to undermine peace and prosperity in unanticipated ways,” said John Goodman, CEO of Accenture Federal Services. “For the US and its partners to remain economically competitive and protect national security, we must work together to build trust in the digital fabric of the GeoTech decade. We must act now to invest in these new technologies, to develop and expand our skilled workforce, and to establish norms to ensure that technology emerges as a powerful force for good.”

“The GeoTech Decade impacts all countries, people, communities, and businesses from global safety to security and more,” said Teresa Carlson, President, and Chief Growth Officer at Splunk. “The recommendations in this independent report are necessary for innovation in the years to come. With bi-partisan buy-in from U.S. Congress and top industry leaders, executing on these seven areas will help us combine the data and technologies required for success in this new age.”

“We’re in the midst of a titanic technological shift, from IT modernization to artificial intelligence, as organizations from all industries look to harness the power of data to solve complex challenges,” said Max Peterson, Vice President, Worldwide Public Sector, Amazon Web Services. “Advanced computing systems, faster and higher-bandwidth communications networks, and increasingly sophisticated technologies are digitizing the information around us and transforming the way we live, learn, and do business. Together, government and the private sector should work to ensure we grasp the innovative opportunities before us in ways that promote security, trust, and inclusion.”

Commission on the Geopolitical Impacts of New Technologies and Data

Co-Chairs:
John Goodman, Chief Executive Officer, Accenture Federal Services
Teresa Carlson, President and Chief Growth Officer, Splunk

Honorary Co-Chairs:
Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-VA)
Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH)
Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-WA)
Rep. Michael T. McCaul (R-TX)

Commissioners:
Max R. Peterson II, Vice President, Worldwide Public Sector, Amazon Web Services
Paul Daugherty, Chief Executive – Technology & Chief Technology Officer, Accenture
Maurice Sonnenberg, Guggenheim Securities
Michael Chertoff, Former U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security
Michael J. Rogers, Former Chairman of the U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
Pascal Marmier, Head, Economy of Trust Foundation, SICPA
Ramayya Krishnan, PhD, Director, Block Center for Technology and Society, Carnegie Mellon University
Dr. Shirley Ann Jackson, President, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Susan M. Gordon, Former Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence
Vint Cerf, Internet Pioneer & “Father of the Internet”
Zia Khan, PhD, Vice President for Innovation, The Rockefeller Foundation
Anthony Scriffignano, PhD, Senior Vice President, Chief Data Scientist at Dun & Bradstreet Corporation
Frances F. Townsend, Executive Vice President, Activision Blizzard
Admiral James Stavridis, USN, Ret.

Executive Director:
David Bray, PhD, Director, GeoTech Center, The Atlantic Council

The Commission on the Geopolitical Impacts of New Technologies and Data was made possible by support from Accenture Federal Services and Amazon Web Services. The report’s full findings and recommendations can be found here.

For media inquiries, please contact press@atlanticcouncil.org.

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Conclusion

The increasing capabilities and availability of data and new technologies change how nations remain competitive and secure. In the coming GeoTech Decade, data and technology will have a disproportionate impact on geopolitics, global competition, and global opportunities for collaboration as new capabilities may eliminate a technical advantage or may enable new processes superior to current methods. The United States and like-minded nations must be able to adapt and demonstrate effective governance, at faster speeds, in employing data and new technologies to promote a more secure, free, and prosperous world.

In 1945, Vannevar Bush, director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, transmitted a report, Science – the Endless Frontier, with the goal of answering a few key questions asked by then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt in November 1944. In the report, Bush elaborated:

• “With particular reference to the war of science against disease, what can be done now to organize a program for continuing in the future the work which has been done in medicine and related sciences?
• “What can the Government do now and in the future to aid research activities by public and private organizations?
• “Can an effective program be proposed for discovering and developing scientific talent in American youth so that the continuing future of scientific research in this country may be assured on a level comparable to what has been done during the war?”

Among its recommendations, the 1945 report called for the creation of the National Research Foundation. Bush concluded, noting the importance of action by Congress:

• “Legislation is necessary. It should be drafted with great care. Early action is imperative, however, if this nation is to meet the challenge of science and fully utilize the potentialities of science. On the wisdom with which we bring science to bear against the problems of the coming years depends in large measure our future as a nation.”

Now, almost seventy-six years later, the GeoTech Commission similarly seeks to promote freedom and security through initiatives that employ data and new technologies to amplify the ingenuity of people, diversity of talent, strength of democratic values, innovation of companies, and the reach of global partnerships.

There are several areas where data and technology can help, or hinder, the achievement of these goals:

• Communications and networking, data science, cloud computing
• Artificial intelligence, distributed sensors, edge computing, the Internet of Things
• Biotechnologies, precision medicine, genomic technologies
• Space technologies, undersea technologies
• Autonomous systems, robotics, decentralized energy methods
• Quantum information science, nanotechnology, new materials for extreme environments, advanced microelectronics

To maintain national and economic security and competitiveness in the global economy, the United States and its allies must continue to be preeminent in these key areas, and must achieve trustworthy and assured performance of the digital economy and its infrastructure. The GeoTech Commission provided recommendations in the following seven areas where the United States and like-minded nations must succeed:

• Global science and technology leadership
• Secure data and communications
• Enhanced trust and confidence in the digital economy
• Assured supply chains and system resiliency
• Continuous global health protection and global wellness
• Assured space operations for public benefit
• Future of work

The report’s recommendations embody several ideals. First, work to ensure the benefits of new technologies reach all sectors of society. Second, define protocols and standards for permissible ways to develop and use technologies and data, consistent with the norms of the United States and like-minded nations. Third, guide technology cooperation and sharing with nondemocratic nations based on respecting democratic values.

Just as Vannevar Bush urged in 1945, the United States must create new ways to develop and employ future critical and emerging technologies at speed, cultivate the needed human capital, and establish norms for international cooperation with nations. Such creation requires important action by Congress and the new administration to ensure that the United States has the wisdom with which to apply science to the challenges and opportunities of the coming years. If enacted, the report’s recommendations will enable the United States and like-minded nations to employ data capabilities and new technologies intentionally to promote a freer, more secure, and more prosperous world.

Appendices

Appendix A. Additional readings on identifying and countering online misinformation

Appendix B. Improving the software supply chains and system resiliency for the US government

Appendix C. Advancing a data fabric for achieving continuous global health protection

Appendix D. Additional readings on the history and future of global space governance

Appendix E. Informational GeoTech Center synopses

Appendix F. Additional readings and acronyms

Biographies of the GeoTech Commission co-chairs and commissioners

Co-chairs

John Goodman, Chief Executive Officer, 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. Since joining Accenture in 1998, he has held a variety of leadership roles – including managing director of Accenture’s Defense & Intelligence portfolio, head of Management Consulting for the global Public Service Operating Group, and most recently Chief Operating Officer of AFS. John began his career at Accenture as a Member of the Communications & High Technology practice.

Prior to joining Accenture, John served for five years in the federal government as Deputy Under Secretary of Defense (Industrial Affairs & Installations), Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (Industrial Affairs), and a member of the staff of the National Economic Council, the White House office responsible for coordination of economic policy. He previously served on the Harvard Business School faculty.

John is co-chair of the Atlantic Council’s GeoTech Commission and member of the boards of both the Atlantic Council and the Northern Virginia Technology Council, as well as a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is a member, and the immediate past chair, of the Executive Committee of the Professional Services Council, a former member of the Executive Committee of AFCEA, and the former chairman of the Defense Business Board. John was named Executive of the Year by the Greater Washington Government Contractors in 2018; a Wash100 inductee in 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021; and a Fed100 Award winner in 2015. He has been awarded the Office of the Secretary of Defense Medal for Exceptional Public Service, the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service, and the Department of Defense Medal for Outstanding Public Service.

John received his Bachelor of Arts, summa cum laude, from Middlebury College and his Master of Arts and Ph.D. from Harvard University.

Teresa Carlson, President and Chief Growth Officer, Splunk

As President and Chief Growth Officer at Splunk, Teresa Carlson leads our efforts to align and drive our ongoing business transformations across Splunk’s go-to-market segments. Most recently, Carlson served as Vice President, Worldwide Public Sector and Industries, for Amazon Web Services (AWS). After she founded AWS’s Worldwide Public Sector in 2010, Carlson’s role eventually expanded to include financial services, energy services, telecommunications, and aerospace and services industry business units.

Carlson has also been a strong advocate for empowering women in the technology field. That passion led to the creation of “We Power Tech,” AWS’s diversity and inclusion initiative, which aims to ensure underrepresented groups – including women – are reflected throughout all AWS outreach efforts. Carlson dedicates time to philanthropic and leadership roles in support of the global community. Prior to joining AWS in 2010, Carlson led sales, marketing and business development organizations at Microsoft, Keyfile/Lexign and NovaCare. Carlson holds a B.A. and M.S. from Western Kentucky University.

Honorary co-chairs

Mark R. Warner U.S. Senator from Virginia

Senator Warner was elected to the U.S. Senate in November 2008 and reelected to a third term in November 2020. He serves on the Senate Finance, Banking, Budget, and Rules Committees as well as the Select Committee on Intelligence, where he is the Chairman. During his time in the Senate, Senator Warner has established himself as a bipartisan leader who has worked with Republicans and Democrats alike to cut red tape, increase government performance and accountability, and promote private sector innovation and job creation. Senator Warner has been recognized as a national leader in fighting for our military men and women and veterans, and in working to find bipartisan, balanced solutions to address our country’s debt and deficit.

From 2002 to 2006, he served as Governor of Virginia. When he left office in 2006, Virginia was ranked as the best state for business, the best managed state, and the best state in which to receive a public education.

The first in his family to graduate from college, Mark Warner spent 20 years as a successful technology and business leader in Virginia before entering public office. An early investor in the cellular telephone business, he co-founded the company that became Nextel and invested in hundreds of start-up technology companies that created tens of thousands of jobs.

Senator Warner and his wife Lisa Collis live in Alexandria, Virginia. They have three daughters.

Rob Portman U.S. Senator for Ohio

Rob Portman is a United States Senator from the state of Ohio, a position he has held since he was first elected in 2010. Portman previously served as a U.S. Representative, the 14th United States Trade Representative, and the 35th Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). In 1993, Portman won a special election to represent Ohio’s 2nd congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives and served six terms before President George W. Bush appointed him as U.S. Trade Representative in May 2005. Portman currently serves as the Ranking Member on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, as well as on the Senate Finance and Foreign Relations Committees. He was born and raised in Cincinnati, where he still lives today with his wife Jane. Together they have three children: Jed, Will, and Sally.

Suzan DelBene. U.S. Congresswoman Representing Washington’s 1st District

Congresswoman Suzan DelBene represents Washington’s 1st Congressional District, which spans from northeast King County to the Canadian border and includes parts of King, Snohomish, Skagit, and Whatcom counties. First sworn into the House of Representatives in November 2012, Suzan brings a unique voice to the nation’s capital with more than two decades of experience as a successful technology entrepreneur and business leader. Suzan takes on a wide range of challenges both in Congress and in the 1st District and is a leader on issues of technology, health care, trade, taxes, environmental conservation, and agriculture.

Suzan currently serves as the Vice Chair on the House Ways and Means Committee, which is at the forefront of debate on a fairer tax code, health care reform, trade deals, and lasting retirement security. She serves on the Select Revenue Measures and Trade Subcommittees. Suzan also serves as Chair of the forward-thinking New Democrat Coalition, which is one of the largest ideological coalitions in the House, and is co-chair of the Women’s High Tech Caucus, Internet of Things Caucus, and Dairy Caucus. She is also a member of the Pro-Choice Caucus.

Over more than two decades as an executive and entrepreneur, she helped to start drugstore.com as Vice President of Marketing and Store Development, and served as CEO and President of Nimble Technology, a business software company based on technology developed at the University of Washington. Suzan also spent 12 years at Microsoft, most recently as corporate vice president of the company’s mobile communications business.

Before being elected to Congress, Suzan served as Director of the Washington State Department of Revenue. During her tenure, she proposed reforms to cut red tape for small businesses. She also enacted an innovative tax amnesty program that generated $345 million to help close the state’s budget gap while easing the burden on small businesses.
Suzan and her husband, Kurt DelBene, have two children, Becca and Zach, and a dog named Reily.

Michael T. McCaul, U.S. Congressman Representing Texas’ 10th District

Congressman Michael T. McCaul is currently serving his ninth term representing Texas’ 10th District in the United States Congress. The 10th Congressional District of Texas stretches from the city of Austin to the Houston suburbs and includes Austin, Bastrop, Colorado, Fayette, Harris, Lee, Travis, Washington and Waller Counties.

At the start of the 116th Congress, Congressman McCaul became the Republican Leader of the Foreign Affairs Committee. This committee considers legislation that impacts the diplomatic community, which includes the Department of State, the Agency for International Development (USAID), the Peace Corps, the United Nations, and the enforcement of the Arms Export Control Act. In his capacity as the committee’s Republican Leader, McCaul is committed to ensuring we promote America’s leadership on the global stage. In his view, it is essential the United States bolsters international engagement with our allies, counters the aggressive policies of our adversaries, and advances the common interests of nations in defense of stability and democracy around the globe. He will continue to use his national security expertise to work to counter threats facing the United States, especially the increasing threat we face from nation state actors such as China, Iran, Russia, North Korea, among others.

Prior to Congress, Michael McCaul served as Chief of Counter Terrorism and National Security in the U.S. Attorney’s office, Western District of Texas, and led the Joint Terrorism Task Force charged with detecting, deterring, and preventing terrorist activity. McCaul also served as Texas Deputy Attorney General under current U.S. Senator John Cornyn, and served as a federal prosecutor in the Department of Justice’s Public Integrity Section in Washington, DC.
A fourth generation Texan, Congressman McCaul earned a B.A. in Business and History from Trinity University and holds a J.D. from St. Mary’s University School of Law. In 2009 Congressman McCaul was honored with St. Mary’s Distinguished Graduate award. He is also a graduate of the Senior Executive Fellows Program of the School of Government, Harvard University. Congressman McCaul is married to his wife, Linda. They are proud parents of five children: Caroline, Jewell, and the triplets Lauren, Michael, and Avery.

Commissioners

Max R. Peterson II, Vice President, Worldwide Public Sector, Amazon Web Services

Max Peterson is Vice President for Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) Worldwide Public Sector. In this role, Max supports public sector organizations as they leverage the unique advantages of commercial cloud to drive innovation among government, educational institutions, health care institutions, and nonprofits around the world.

A public sector industry veteran with thirty years of experience, he has an extensive background in developing relationships with public sector customers. He has previously worked with Dell Inc. as Vice President and General Manager for Dell Federal Civilian and Intelligence Agencies, as well as CDWG and Commerce One.

Max earned both a Bachelor’s Degree in Finance and Master’s of Business Administration in Management Information Systems from the University of Maryland.

Paul Daugherty, Accenture Chief Executive – Technology and Chief Technology Officer

Paul Daugherty is Accenture’s Group Chief Executive – Technology & Chief Technology Officer. He leads all aspects of Accenture’s technology business. Paul is also responsible for Accenture’s technology strategy, driving innovation through R&D in Accenture Labs and leveraging emerging technologies to bring the newest innovations to clients globally. He recently launched Accenture’s Cloud First initiative to further scale the company’s market-leading cloud business and is responsible for incubating new businesses such as blockchain, extended reality and quantum computing. He founded and oversees Accenture Ventures, which is focused on strategic equity investments and open innovation to accelerate growth. Paul is responsible for managing Accenture’s alliances, partnerships and senior-level relationships with leading and emerging technology companies, and he leads Accenture’s Global CIO Council and annual CIO and Innovation Forum. He is a member of Accenture’s Global Management Committee.

Maurice Sonnenberg, Guggenheim Securities

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 US Commission on Protecting and Reducing Government Secrecy, and from 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 2002, he was a member of the Task Force of Terrorist Financing for the Council on Foreign Relations. From 2007-2010, he served on the Department of Homeland Security Advisory Council and the Panel Advisory Board for the Secretary of the Navy from 2008-2015. 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. Sonnenberg has worked at the investment banking firms Donaldson Lufkin and Jenrette, Bear Stearns, and J.P. Morgan, and at the law firms Hunton & Williams, Manatt, Phelps & Phillips. Currently, he is with Guggenheim Securities as Senior International Advisor. He is also a Senior Advisor to the Advanced Metallurgical Group, N.V.

Michael Chertoff, Former U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security

Michael Chertoff is the Executive Chairman and Co-Founder of The Chertoff Group. From 2005 to 2009, he served as Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Earlier in his career, Mr. Chertoff served as a federal judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and head of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Criminal Division. He is the Chairman of the Board of Directors of BAE Systems, Inc., the U.S.-based subsidiary of BAE Systems plc. In 2018, he was named the chairman of the Board of Trustees for Freedom House. He currently serves on the board of directors of Noblis and Edgewood Networks. In the last five years, Mr. Chertoff co-chaired the Global Commission in Stability of Cyberspace and also co-chairs the Transatlantic Commission on Election Integrity. Chertoff is magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School.

Michael J. Rogers, Former Chairman of the U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence

Mike Rogers is a former member of Congress, where he represented Michigan’s Eighth Congressional District for seven terms. While in the U.S. House of Representatives, he chaired the powerful House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), authorizing and overseeing a budget of $70 billion that funded the nation’s seventeen intelligence agencies. Mr. Rogers built a legacy as a bipartisan leader on cybersecurity, counterterrorism, intelligence, and national security policy. Mr. Rogers worked with two presidents, congressional leadership, and countless foreign leaders, diplomats, and intelligence professionals. Before joining Congress, he served as an officer in the US Army and as a Special Agent with the FBI. He is currently investing in and helping build companies that are developing solutions for healthcare, energy efficiency, and communications challenges. He also serves as a regular national security commentator on CNN and hosted the channel’s documentary-style original series Declassified. Mr. Rogers is a regular public speaker on global affairs, cybersecurity, and leadership. He is married to Kristi Rogers and has two children.

Pascal Marmier, Head, Economy of Trust Foundation, SICPA

Pascal Marmier is head of SICPA’s Economy of Trust Foundation. Most recently, Marmier held several positions in the United States within Swiss Re, a global reinsurer, focusing on digital strategy and innovation management. Previously, he spent twenty years as a Swiss diplomat as one of the early leaders of the Swissnex network, a private–public partnership dedicated to facilitating collaboration with Swiss universities, startups, and corporations in all fields related to science, technology, and innovation. After spending a decade establishing key partnerships and activities in Boston, Marmier moved to China to establish the Swissnex platform in the region. He holds law degrees from the University of Lausanne and Boston University, as well as an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Ramayya Krishnan, PhD, 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 Carnegie Mellon University. He is Dean of the H. John Heinz III College of Information Systems and Public Policy and directs the Block Center for Technology and Society at the university. His scholarly contributions have focused on mathematical modeling of organizational decision making, the design of data driven decision support systems and statistical models of consumer behavior in digital environments. He advises governments, businesses and development banks on digital transformation technology and its consequences.

Dr. Shirley Ann Jackson, President, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

The Honorable Shirley Ann Jackson, Ph.D., has served as the 18th president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute since 1999. A theoretical physicist described by Time Magazine as “perhaps the ultimate role model for women in science,” Dr. Jackson has held senior leadership positions in academia, government, industry, and research. She is the recipient of many national and international awards, including the National Medal of Science, the United States’ highest honor for achievement in science and engineering. Dr. Jackson served as Co-Chair of the United States President’s Intelligence Advisory Board from 2014 to 2017 and as a member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology from 2009 to 2014. Before taking the helm at Rensselaer, she was Chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission from 1995 to 1999. She serves on the boards of major corporations that include FedEx and PSEG, where she is Lead Director.

Dr. Jackson holds an S.B. in Physics, and a Ph.D. in Theoretical Elementary Particle Physics, both from MIT.

Susan M. Gordon, Former Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence

The Honorable Susan (Sue) M. Gordon served as Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence from August 2017 until August 2019. In her more than three decades of experience in the IC, Ms. Gordon served in a variety of leadership roles spanning numerous intelligence organizations and disciplines, including serving as the Deputy Director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) from 2015 to 2017. In this role, she drove NGA’s transformation to meet the challenges of a 21st century intelligence agency. Since leaving government service, Ms. Gordon serves on a variety of public and private boards, is a fellow at Duke and Harvard Universities, and consults with a variety of companies on technology—including cyber and space—strategy, and leadership, focusing on shared responsibility for national and global security.

Vint Cerf

Vinton G. Cerf is vice president and Chief Internet Evangelist for Google. Cerf is the codesigner of the TCP/IP protocols and the architecture of the Internet. He has served in executive positions at the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the Internet Society, MCI, the Corporation for National Research Initiatives, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. A former Stanford Professor and member of the National Science Board, he is also the past president of the Association for Computing Machinery and serves in advisory capacities at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the Department of Energy, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Cerf is a recipient of numerous awards for his work, including the US Presidential Medal of Freedom, US National Medal of Technology, the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering, the Prince of Asturias Award, the Tunisian National Medal of Science, the Japan Prize, the Charles Stark Draper Prize, the ACM Turing Award, the Legion d’Honneur, the Franklin Medal, Foreign Member of the British Royal Society and Swedish Academy of Engineering, and twenty-nine honorary degrees. He is a member of the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists and the Worshipful Company of Stationers.

Zia Khan, PhD, Vice President for Innovation, The Rockefeller Foundation

As Senior Vice President for Innovation, Zia Khan oversees the Rockefeller Foundation’s approach to developing solutions that can have a transformative impact on people’s lives through the use of convenings, data and technology, and strategic partnerships. He writes and speaks frequently on leadership, strategy, and innovation. Khan has served on the World Economic Forum Advisory Council for Social Innovation and the US National Advisory Board for Impact Investing. He leads a range of the Rockefeller Foundation’s work in applying data science for social impact and ensuring artificial intelligence contributes to an inclusive and equitable future.

Prior to joining the Rockefeller Foundation, Khan was a management consultant advising leaders in technology, mobility, and private equity sectors. He worked with Jon Katzenbach on research related to leadership, strategy, and organizational performance, leading to their book, Leading Outside the Lines.

Zia holds a BS from Cornell University and MS and PhD from Stanford University.

Anthony Scriffignano, PhD, is Senior Vice President, Chief Data Scientist at Dun & Bradstreet Corporation

Anthony Scriffignano, PhD is Senior Vice President, Chief Data Scientist at Dun & Bradstreet Corporation. He is an internationally recognized data scientist with experience spanning over forty years in multiple industries and enterprise domains. Scriffignano has extensive background in advanced anomaly detection, computational linguistics and advanced inferential algorithms, leveraging that background as primary inventor on multiple patents worldwide. Scriffignano was recognized as the U.S. Chief Data Officer of the Year 2018 by the CDO Club, the world’s largest community of C-suite digital and data leaders. He is also a member of the OECD Network of Experts on AI working group on implementing Trustworthy AI, focused on benefiting people and the planet. He has briefed the US National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee and contributed to three separate reports to the president, on Big Data Analytics, Emerging Technologies Strategic Vision, and Internet and Communications Resilience. Additionally, Scriffignano provided expert advice on private sector data officers to a group of state Chief Data Officers and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Scriffignano serves on various advisory committees in government, private sector, and academia. Most recently, he has been called upon to provide insight on data science implications in the context of a highly disrupted datasphere and the implications of the global pandemic. He is considered an expert on emerging trends in advanced analytics, the “Big Data” explosion, artificial intelligence, multilingual challenges in business identity and malfeasance in commercial and public-sector contexts.

Frances F. Townsend, Executive Vice President, Activision Blizzard

Frances Fragos Townsend is the Executive Vice President of Corporate Affairs, Chief Compliance Officer and Corporate Secretary at Activision Blizzard. Prior to that, she was Vice Chairman, General Counsel and Chief Administration Officer at MacAndrews & Forbes, Inc. In her 10 years there, she focused internally on financial, legal and personnel issues, as well as international, compliance and business development across MacAndrews’ portfolio companies. Prior to that, she was a corporate partner with the law firm of Baker Botts, LLP. From 2004 to 2008, Ms. Townsend served as Assistant to President George W. Bush for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism and chaired the Homeland Security Council. She also served as Deputy National Security Advisor for Combatting Terrorism from 2003 to 2004. Ms. Townsend spent 13 years at the US Department of Justice under the administrations of President George H. W. Bush, President Bill Clinton and President George W. Bush. She has received numerous awards for her public service accomplishments. Ms. Townsend is a Director on the Board of two public companies: Chubb and Freeport McMoRan. She previously served on the Boards at Scientific Games, SciPlay, SIGA and Western Union. She is an on-air senior national security analyst for CBS News. Ms. Townsend previously served on the Director of National Intelligence’s Senior Advisory Group, the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) External Advisory Board and the US President’s Intelligence Advisory Board. Ms. Townsend is a trustee on the Board of the New York City Police Foundation, the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum, the McCain Institute, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and the Atlantic Council. She also serves on the Board at the Council on Foreign Relations, on the Executive Committee of the Trilateral Commission and the Board of the International Republican Institute. She is a member of the Aspen Strategy Group.

Admiral James Stavridis, USN, Ret.

Admiral James Stavridis is an Operating Executive of The Carlyle Group and Chair of the Board of Counselors of McLarty Global Associates, following five years as the 12th Dean of The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He also serves as the Chairman of the Board of the Rockefeller Foundation. A retired four-star officer in the U.S. Navy, he led the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Alliance in global operations from 2009 to 2013 as Supreme Allied Commander with responsibility for Afghanistan, Libya, the Balkans, Syria, counter piracy and cyber security. He also served as Commander of U.S. Southern Command, with responsibility for all military operations in Latin America from 2006 to 2009. He earned more than 50 medals, including 28 from foreign nations in his 37-year military career. Admiral Stavridis earned a PhD in international relations and has published 10 books and hundreds of articles in leading journals around the world, including the recent novel “2034: A Novel of the Next World War,” which was a New York Times bestseller. His 2012 TED Talk on global security has close to one million views. Admiral Stavridis is a monthly columnist for TIME Magazine and Chief International Security Analyst for NBC News.

Biographies of supporting Atlantic Council staff

Dr. David A. Bray, Director, GeoTech Center, Atlantic Council

Dr. David A. Bray has served in a variety of leadership roles in turbulent environments, including bioterrorism preparedness and response from 2000 to 2005, time on the ground in Afghanistan in 2009, serving as a non-partisan Senior National Intelligence Service Executive directing a bipartisan National Commission for the Review of the Research and Development Programs of the US Intelligence Community, and providing leadership as a non-partisan federal agency Senior Executive where he led a team that received the global CIO 100 Award twice in 2015 and 2017. He is an Eisenhower Fellow, Marshall Memorial Fellow, and Senior Fellow with the Institute for Human & Machine Cognition. Business Insider named him one of the top “24 Americans Who Are Changing the World” and the World Economic Forum named him a Young Global Leader. Over his career, he has advised six different start-ups, led an interagency team spanning sixteen different agencies that received the National Intelligence Meritorious Unit Citation, and received the Joint Civilian Service Commendation Award, the National Intelligence Exceptional Achievement Medal, Arthur S. Flemming Award, as well as the Roger W. Jones Award for Executive Leadership. He is the author of more than forty academic publications, was invited to give the AI World Society Distinguished Lecture to the United Nations in 2019, and was named by HMG Strategy as one of the Global “Executives Who Matter” in 2020.

Dr. Peter Brooks, Consultant, GeoTech Center, Atlantic Council

Peter Brooks is a senior researcher and national security analyst at the Institute for Defense Analyses, a federally funded research and development center. For more than three decades, he has contributed to the understanding of critical national security issues for a wide range of government agencies. His broad expertise includes intelligence analysis, advanced technologies and applications, and joint force analyses, experimentation, strategy, and cost assessments.

Stephanie Wander, Deputy Director, GeoTech Center, Atlantic Council

Stephanie Wander is a technology and innovation strategist with a successful track record of launching large-scale projects to solve global grand challenges. Ms. Wander’s approaches integrate innovation best practices and mindsets, including design thinking, behavior change strategies, foresight techniques, and expert and public crowdsourcing.

Previously, Ms. Wander was a lecturer at the University of Southern California Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work where she taught graduate social work professionals in design, innovation, and disruptive technology.

Rose Butchart, Senior Adviser, National Security Initiatives, GeoTech Center, Atlantic Council

Rose Butchart is the senior adviser for National Security Initiatives at the Atlantic Council’s GeoTech Center.

As a program manager for the Department of Defense’s National Security Innovation Network, she managed, designed, and scaled a variety of programs, including a technology, transfer, and transition (T3) program designed to bring breakthrough Department of Defense lab technology to market— and to the warfighter. She also managed a workshop series to tackle some of the military’s intractable problems and a fellowship which placed active duty military and Department of Defense civilians at technology start-ups.

Claudia Vaughn Zittle, Program Assistant, Atlantic Council GeoTech Center

Claudia Vaughn Zittle was a program assistant with the Atlantic Council’s GeoTech Center. In this role, she managed a wide range of projects at the intersection of emerging technologies and dynamic geopolitical landscapes. She also conducted research and provided written analysis for publication on Atlantic Council platforms.

Originally from the Washington, DC, area, she received her BA in International Relations from Cornell College. She is continuing her education at American University’s School of International Service, where she studies International Relations with a concentration in US Foreign Policy and National Security.

Claire Branley, Program Assistant, Atlantic Council GeoTech Center

Claire Branley joined the Atlantic Council’s Geotech Center after graduating from the University of Washington with a BS in Public Health and Global Health. She was a research assistant in the Moussavi-Harami Lab, uncovering gene therapies for inherited heart disease. She is deeply passionate about the prevention of disease and has assisted several maternal and child health research projects and volunteered in farm-to-food pantry initiatives to decrease food insecurity in the Seattle area. Her interests include chronic disease burden, global food security, and promoting interdisciplinary solutions.

Biographies of the key contributors to the GeoTech Commission Report

Research and writing on misinformation

Dr. Pablo Breuer, Nonresident Senior Fellow, GeoTech Center, Atlantic Council

Dr. Pablo Breuer is an information/cyber warfare expert and a twenty-two-year veteran of the US Navy with tours including the National Security Agency, US Cyber Command, and United States Special Operations Command. He is a cofounder of the Cognitive Security Collaborative and coauthor of the Adversarial Misinformation and Influence Tactics and Techniques (AMITT) framework.

Dr. Robert Leonhard, National Security Analysis, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory

Robert Leonhard is on the principal professional staff as an analyst in the National Security Analysis Department of Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory (JHU/APL). His main areas of focus are irregular warfare, nuclear deterrence, and game design. Prior to joining JHU/APL, he earned a PhD in American History from West Virginia University, a Master of Military Arts and Sciences from the US Army, an MS in International Relations from Troy State University, and a BS in European History from Columbus University. He is a retired Army infantry officer and planner. He is the author of The Art of Maneuver (Presidio Press, 1991), Fighting by Minutes: Time and the Art of War (Praeger, 1994), The Principles of War for the Information Age (Presidio Press, 1998), Little Green Men: a primer in Russian Unconventional Warfare, Ukraine 2013-2014 (JHUAPL, 2016), and The Defense of Battle Position Duffer: Cyber-Enabled Maneuver in Multi-Domain Battle (JHUAPL, 2016). He may be contacted at Robert.Leonhard@jhuapl.edu.

John Renda, Program Manager, Army Special Operations, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory

Col. John Renda, USA (Ret), is a program manager for Army Special Operations at the Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory. He graduated from Tulane University with a degree in Political Science and International Relations, and earned a MS in National Security from the US Naval War College. He served as a career Psychological Operations officer in US Army Special Operations. His key assignments included 75th Ranger Regiment Information Operations Officer, 1st Psychological Operations Battalion Commander, United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) Director J39 National Capital Region, and National Security Council Staff, Director for Strategic Communication. He may be contacted at john.renda@jhuapl.edu.

Dr. Sara-Jayne Terp, Nonresident Senior Fellow, GeoTech Center, Atlantic Council

Sara-Jayne Terp builds frameworks to improve how autonomous systems, algorithms, and human communities work together. At Threet Consulting, she creates processes and technologies to support community-led disinformation defence. She is an Atlantic Council Senior Fellow, CogSecCollab lead, and chair at CAMLIS and Defcon AI Village. Her background includes intelligence systems, crowdsourced data gathering, autonomous systems (e.g., human-machine teaming), data strategy, data ethics, policy, nation state development, and crisis response.

Appendix B

Stewart Scott, Assistant Director, GeoTech Center, Atlantic Council

Stewart Scott is an assistant director with the Atlantic Council’s GeoTech Center, where he conducts research and provides written analysis for publication on Atlantic Council platforms and works on joint projects with other centers in the Atlantic Council. He earned his AB, along with a minor in Computer Science, at the School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.

We would also like to thank the following members of the Atlantic Council’s Cyber Statecraft Initiative for their contributions to Appendix B: Trey Herr, Simon Handler, Madison Lockett, Will Loomis, Emma Schroeder, and Tianjiu Zuo.

Appendix C and writings on global health

Dr. Divya Chander, Nonresident Senior Fellow, GeoTech Center, Atlantic Council

Dr. Chander is a physician and neuroscientist who trained at Harvard, University of California San Diego, University of California San Francisco, and the Salk Institute. She has been on the Anesthesiology Faculty at Stanford University since 2008 and Neuromedicine Faculty at Singularity University since 2010. Her postdoctoral training in optogenetic technology was conducted in the laboratories of Karl Deisseroth and Luis de Lecea at Stanford University, where she used light-activated ion channels inserted in DNA to study sleep and consciousness switches in brains. She is currently working on applications of neural wearable devices to crossover consumer and medical markets.

Appendix D

Inkoo Kang, Research Consultant, GeoTech Center, Atlantic Council

US Air Force 2nd Lt. Inkoo Kang is a research consultant for the Atlantic Council’s GeoTech Center. At the Atlantic Council, he conducts research and provides written analyses on the increasingly important role of outer space for social, economic, and military operations. His main interest focuses on how emerging technologies are merging military, diplomatic, humanitarian, and economic challenges and how the military must learn to adapt to such threats.

Appendix E

Borja Prado, Research Assistant, GeoTech Center Atlantic Council

Borja Prado holds an MS in Foreign Service (MSFS) from Georgetown University, where he concentrated in Global Politics and Security, focusing on the impact of disruptive technologies on governments, businesses, and societies.

He aims to apply his research experience, language skills, and strong background in technology and global affairs to help governments, businesses, and societies succeed in this increasingly uncertain era.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the following members of the Commission Co-Chair teams for their assistance, expertise, and technical review of the report:

• Stoney Burke, Head of Federal Affairs and Public Policy, Amazon Web Services
• Ira Entis, Managing Director, Growth and Strategy Lead, Accenture Federal Services
• Geoffrey Kahn, Managing Director, Government Relations, Accenture
• Pamela Merritt, Managing Director, Federal Marketing and Communications, Accenture Federal Services
• Davis Pace, Professional Staff Member, House Foreign Affairs Committee
• Sean Sweeney, Manager, Government Relations, Accenture
• Clayton Swope, Senior Manager, National Security Public Policy, Amazon Web Services
• Carolyn Vigil, Senior Customer Engagement Manager, Amazon Web Services

We would like to acknowledge the following individuals for their review and commentary on relevant sections of the report: Laura Bate, Natalie Barrett, Pablo Breuer, Mark Brunner, Mung Chiang, Kevin Clark, Donald Codling, Carol Dumaine, Ryan G. Faith, Melissa Flagg, James F. Geurts, Jasper Gilardi, Bob Gourley, Bob Greenberg, Simon Handler, Henry Hertzfeld, Robert Hoffman, Erich James Hösli, Diane M. Janosek, William Jeffrey, Charles Jennings, Declan Kirrane, John J. Klein, Sandra J. Laney, John Logsdon, Robert Lucas, Lauren Maffeo, Jerry Mechling, Ivan Medynskyi, Ben King, Ben Murphy and the team at Reaching the Future Faster LLC, James Olds, Nikhil Raghuveera, Matthew Rose, Benjamin Schatz, Emma Schroeder, Jeremy Spaulding, Keith Strier, Daniella Taveau, Trent Teyema, Bill Valdez, and Tiffany Vora.

We also would like to express sincere appreciation to individuals both internal and external to the Atlantic Council for help in preparing this report for final publication. Their professional and dedicated efforts were essential to this work.

Lastly, we want to thank all the GeoTech Fellows and GeoTech Action Council members, each of whom embodies the spirit of the new Center as we look to the future ahead: Be bold. Be Brave. Be Benevolent.

Transcript Jun 23, 2021

Brian Deese on Biden’s vision for ‘a twenty-first-century American industrial strategy’

By Atlantic Council

National Economic Council Director Brian Deese spoke about how the Biden administration can strengthen US economic recovery by working with the private sector and global allies.

Economy & Business Future of Work

GeoTech Cues Aug 10, 2021

Contextualizing COVID-19 and its implications for the future of work

By Matthew Gavieta

As workers around the world adapted to a new normal amid a public health crisis, remote work took on a new meaning. However, questions about how to structure long-term telework arrangements remain. The current landscape of data reveals a tenuous relationship between well-being and telework. To secure a brighter future for our labor force, we must continue developing worker-centered technology policy and doing research on how to improve life at work.

Digital Policy Future of Work

Blog Post Jul 27, 2021

The time for US immigration reform is now

By Jeff Goldstein

The US is currently grappling with a multi-decade long trend of declining population rates leading to fewer and fewer workers. To meet the challenges of the future, US policymakers must manage declining population growth – and one of the best arrows in their economic policy quiver is comprehensive immigration reform.

Future of Work Macroeconomics

The post Conclusion, appendices, and acknowledgements appeared first on Atlantic Council.

While this report has focused on the technological changes that will impact geopolitics over the next decade, the recommendations contained within will be meaningless if the United States and allied nations ignore the most important ingredient in the success or failure of all endeavors: people. Developing a digitally fluent and resilient workforce that can meet the challenges of the GeoTech Decade will require private and public sectors to pursue several approaches. These include a broadened view of technical competencies and how they are acquired, improved alignment of skills and job requirements, incentives for employer-based training, and data collection to help assess the effectiveness of these investments and their effects on workers. Ensuring that people, especially people from underrepresented communities, are not left behind by the advance of technology—and that societies have the skilled workforces they need to innovate and prosper—will determine whether the GeoTech Decade lives up to its ambition.

From artificial intelligence (AI) to quantum computing, and for applications ranging from augmented reality to smart cities and communities,¹ the technologies that will shape the GeoTech Decade require specialized investments in the US workforce.² Shifting from the “findings and recommendations” format of the previous chapters, this closing chapter discusses key areas needing greater focus and investment from businesses, governments, educational institutions, and stakeholder organizations, as follows.

Create the workforce for the GeoTech Decade

Recognize the diverse competencies that characterize skilled technical workers

Diverse competencies include academic credentials, technical competencies in an industry, and technical competencies in a specific occupation, plus “soft skills” that make for reliable and collegial employees.³ Job descriptions should consider the value of all sources of relevant experience and ability.

Communicate the breadth of pathways for gaining skilled technical work 

Given the current focus on a college degree being a prerequisite to desirable, skilled technical jobs, the workforce should be better informed about the variety of skilled technical occupations, the different ways of acquiring credentials, e.g., college certificates, professional certifications, professional licenses, and digital badges and how such credentials allow more points of entry into desired occupations.

Strengthen skilled technical training and education

Secondary school: Career and technical education (CTE) programs⁴ enable the acquisition of STEM education combined with work experience that teaches technical skills relevant to specific professions. CTE programs can be enhanced through active participation and guidance provided by representatives from local businesses. This could help ensure that the skills training is better matched with employer needs and requirements. The P-TECH program, now operating schools in eleven US states, Australia, Morocco, and Taiwan, is another model for building regional workforces with the needed technical skills and for providing underserved youths with opportunities for gaining relevant technical skills.⁵

Post-secondary school: There are 936 public community colleges in the United States,⁶ representing a nationwide resource for improving the technical skills of the current and future workforce. According to a Community College Resource Center analysis, “6.7 million students were enrolled at community colleges in fall 2017, and nearly 10 million students enrolled at a community college at some point during the 2017-18 academic year. Yet, the overall percent of community college enrollees in 2014 that completed a college degree at a four-year institution within six years is 17 percent.”⁷ Increasing this completion rate through financial incentives and investments could increase the number and qualifications of the technically skilled workforce in the United States.

Non-college credentials: The value to the worker and the employer of non-college degree certification programs—apprenticeships, certifications, certificate programs—could be improved by better linking them to established, defined technical workforce competencies. Improved standards and data on the effectiveness of these credentials will help workers and employers determine the value of these credentials and enable more informed choices for skills training.

Alternative sources of skilled workers: A recent study⁸examined the prevailing practice of a four-year college degree being a prerequisite for skilled jobs. The analysis identified large populations of workers with suitable skills but who did not have a college degree. Of these, the analysis showed that twenty-nine million have skills that would enable them to transition to an occupation with a significantly higher wage. These results suggest that job descriptions should be carefully specified so as to reach the largest qualified talent pool.

Better align employer-based training with needs

Business incentives: Incentives for employers to invest in improving workforce technical skills should help a company remain competitive. The investments would align the employer’s needs for technically skilled workers and the training and education that is offered. One approach could be based on tax incentives for increasing investment in workforce skill development to increase productivity.”⁹

Technology development and training: Workforce organizations can play a role in effectively communicating, between employers and the workforce, issues concerning needed technical skills and the mechanisms and policies being used to manage these requirements. To accelerate identifying and acquiring future technical skills needed by the workforce, technology development programs could also create a training program for the skills associated with using the new technology in a product. This can shorten the link between technology development and the training of workers.

Acquire and analyze human capital development and management data

Human capital development and management data should address projections of the supply and demand for workers according to categories of technical skills, results of the search and hiring process, and how well the employer’s needs were satisfied. The data also should inform how well the training policies provided equitable access to skills training across the workforce.

These data should enable analyses of the expected value of different options for skills education and training for workers, the return on the investment of workforce training for businesses, and options for adjusting workforce training policies.

Foster lifelong learning

The pace at which advanced technology is changing the workplace and the skills needed to maintain a competitive economy makes lifelong learning imperative. Individuals should be able to guide their training and education throughout their working years.

To accomplish this on a national scale will require effort to craft incentives that motivate individuals to embrace this approach. Important elements may involve information on the value of continuing educational programs and the job opportunities that are enabled, funding mechanisms to lower the cost to the individual, and strategies developed with businesses that specify how continuing learning enhances an individual’s work prospects.

To guide individual choices, new tools can facilitate gathering and synthesizing the complex array of information on skills, occupations, training opportunities, and assessments of their value. The tools can also help the individual identify and secure funding from available sources, and help government funding sources be applied efficiently to this long-term challenge.

Equitable access to opportunity

The United States needs to ensure equitable access to opportunity during the GeoTech Decade. From access to affordable broadband to digital literacy, governments and the private sector need to make significant investments and work together to reduce barriers to full participation in the economy.

Access to affordable, high-speed Internet and devices to use it

Ensuring that all people can participate in the GeoTech Decade requires a commitment to equitable access to affordable, high-speed Internet. Millions do not have high-speed broadband, particularly in rural areas.¹⁰ What is more, many with access to high-speed broadband are still unable to afford the high cost of Internet and the devices needed to access it.¹¹ Lack of access and affordability perpetuates systemic inequities. 

While Congress has made significant investments in broadband since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, more remains to be done. The Emergency Broadband Benefit Program has helped low-income households afford broadband during the pandemic.

Acquiring digital literacy

Digital literacy, the ability to find, evaluate, utilize, and create information using digital technology, is becoming an essential skill for every individual. Digital literacy is an important element in eliminating a digital divide among nations and within a society. It complements affordable, high-speed Internet access by enabling people to develop and communicate local content, to communicate their issues and concerns, and to help others understand the context in which these issues occur.

Transcript Jun 23, 2021

Brian Deese on Biden’s vision for ‘a twenty-first-century American industrial strategy’

By Atlantic Council

National Economic Council Director Brian Deese spoke about how the Biden administration can strengthen US economic recovery by working with the private sector and global allies.

Economy & Business Future of Work

GeoTech Cues Aug 10, 2021

Contextualizing COVID-19 and its implications for the future of work

By Matthew Gavieta

As workers around the world adapted to a new normal amid a public health crisis, remote work took on a new meaning. However, questions about how to structure long-term telework arrangements remain. The current landscape of data reveals a tenuous relationship between well-being and telework. To secure a brighter future for our labor force, we must continue developing worker-centered technology policy and doing research on how to improve life at work.

Digital Policy Future of Work

Blog Post Jul 27, 2021

The time for US immigration reform is now

By Jeff Goldstein

The US is currently grappling with a multi-decade long trend of declining population rates leading to fewer and fewer workers. To meet the challenges of the future, US policymakers must manage declining population growth – and one of the best arrows in their economic policy quiver is comprehensive immigration reform.

Future of Work Macroeconomics

The post Future of work appeared first on Atlantic Council.