Start Close In: Diplomacy, Technology, and the Ground Beneath Our Feet

WEBVTT
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The ground is not technical mastery, it is institutional literacy.
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I think this is very important to say. Diplomats do not need to become engineers.
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They need to remain present at the table. They need to ask what I would call
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architectural questions.
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So hello and welcome. You're listening to The Next Page, the podcast of the
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Library and Archives dedicated to advancing the conversation on multilateralism.
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I'm Amy Smith, and with me we have Wouter Schallier, my colleague,
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and online Anja Kaspersen, who is currently a Director for Global Markets Development,
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Frontier and Critical Technologies at IEEE, a global charity,
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and the world's largest technical professional organization.
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Last year, Anja was appointed also as a member of the United Nations Multi-Stakeholder
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Working Group on Data Governance at All Levels Wayback Machine.
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She is also the former director of the United Nations Office for Disarmament
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Affairs in Geneva and Deputy Secretary General of the Conference on Disarmament.
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Anja is one of those rare people who's worked across academia,
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diplomacy, and also business. So Anja, welcome to the podcast.
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Thank you so much. It's such an honor and pleasure to be with you.
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It's really nice to have you here with us.
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And we had a little preparatory call a few weeks ago to just have a little chat about this.
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And you brought up David Whyte's work, his poetry.
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And I just thought it was just such a beautiful way to ground this conversation
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on how we can create a more confident discussion on technology and diplomacy.
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And so, with your permission, perhaps we could just start with a few lines from
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one of his poems, which is this.
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Start close in. Don't take the second step or the third.
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Start with the first thing, close in, the step you don't want to take.
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Start with the ground you know, the pale ground beneath your feet,
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your own way to begin the conversation. David Whyte.
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So Anja, as someone who's working at this intersection of technology and diplomacy
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and ethics too, what's your way of beginning the conversation?
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Well, thank you for that question. And thank you for reading out the poem by David Whyte.
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I think it's a really nice framing for our conversation. And it was beautifully read.
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You know, reading poetry is also a bit of an art form on its own.
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I'll start with saying that poetry has always been my way of orienting myself in complexity.
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So when issues become layered, technical, politically charged at the same time,
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I think poetry helps us steady our perception, if that makes sense.
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And both David Whyte and Mary Oliver, I should add, have been constant companions
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of mine in my work, in my private life, professional life.
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And they do not simplify the world. That's what I love about their authorship or even scholarship.
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They deepen one's capacity to remain attentive within it.
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You know, Whyte also writes that the antidote to exhaustion is not rest, but wholeheartedness.
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And I think in diplomacy, that has often meant remaining present in rooms where
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progress is incremental and trust is very fragile.
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I also really like, and I often come back to, I like and I come back to this one question.
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This is one of Mary Oliver's very famous poems, where she's asking,
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what is it that you plan to do with and your one wild and precious life.
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Many of your listeners probably recognize this phrase because it's often quoted in different contexts.
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And to me, this feels less like introspection and more like civic responsibility.
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What are we prepared to carry, especially when consequences extend beyond ourselves?
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There's also another component to this and why poetry was like a nice framing
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for this conversation is that poetry trains attention.
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And attention in diplomacy is method. We talk about method acting when you watch movies, right?
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I think attention is very much the method acting, acting not being,
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you know, referencing that diplomats are acting in any way or form,
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but that there's a specific skill in there, which is that of attention.
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It is a discipline of noticing not only what is said between states,
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but what really defines relationships between human beings, between people and
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their countries and between countries themselves.
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So you operate at all these levels constantly.
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And often what shapes outcomes sits in tone and omission, what is being said,
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but also what is not being said, hesitation, silences.
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And that is where discernment begins. And I'll come back to this notion of discernment,
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you know, when we continue our conversation.
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But I'll start with saying this, that discernment to me is not moral superiority,
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it is disciplined perception under pressure.
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And because we are living in extraordinary complexity.
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And in that extraordinary complexity, understandably so, maybe,
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binary framings are deeply seductive.
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They're easier to communicate, easier to commercialize, easier to mobilize around.
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You know, you have these, you know, you will hear people saying innovation or
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restrictions, safe or unsafe, open or closed, under pressure.
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Our sensibility narrows when you are sort of confronted with these binary framings.
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And prediction hardens into inevitability, speed substitutes clarities.
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And these are all threats to what allows a diplomat in my personal view and
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my experience to really fully do their job and fully kind of embrace that,
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you know, going back to poetry, that attention, that superpower in diplomacy.
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And if diplomacy adapts to that logic uncritically, it loses a space in which
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negotiation is possible.
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And this is not only an intellectual narrowing, but that nuance,
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and I think this is why I'm emphasizing this, when that disappears,
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trust also erodes with it.
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And when everything is framed as binary legitimacy weakens and the ground on
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which compromise gradually forms becomes highly unstable.
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And for me, beginning the conversation
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means starting with a question that unsettles rather than reassures.
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And if you allow me, because I'm a bit of an etymology nerd and have been since
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I was a little girl, I remember getting, I wanted, I probably,
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my parents were probably thinking I was a bit nuts at the time.
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But I really wanted, you know, this dictionary of etymology that I,
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of course, as a young studious girl was reading from page one to page whatever
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it was, which is, of course, not how it's supposed to be read.
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But I often return to etymology when you're trying to work through concepts.
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I find it deeply instructive because words describe context as well as content,
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and they reveal how concepts first entered institutional life and what assumptions
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quietly accompany them.
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And I think with the onset, because we're going to be talking about technology
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in this conversation a while, and the reason I'm mentioning this kind of going
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back to the etymological origin of words is very important, is that with the
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onset of large language models, for example, this feels even more visible.
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These systems surface patterns at scale, and what is statistically dominant becomes amplified.
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What is repeated becomes normalized.
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Language shapes the field of interpretation.
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And etymology also reminds us that institutions like the UN really carry their own memory.
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The world multilateral comes from many sides.
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It does not imply uniformity. It implies structure that allows difference to
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coexist. And I think these days with all the us and them narratives and the
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divisions and the skirmishes, it's really important to come back to this.
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Like, what does multilateral mean at its core?
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And the same thing with diplomacy, which historically involved mediation across
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distance. It was about negotiating meaning, careful translation between worlds and between languages.
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And today that distance is not only political, it's technological.
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Words therefore matter not just as ornaments, but as actual architecture.
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And same thing with paradigms. These are not abstract intellectual categories.
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They're operating environments.
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They shape what can be us without penalty, what counts as evidence,
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what is treated as noise.
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And if our paradigm of intelligence shift, then our paradigms of governance
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will also not remain static.
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And diplomacy to me, that's core, and this is coming back to that kind of grounding
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force that you started off with, what's beneath our feet. You know,
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it really depends on shared understanding.
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And when that understanding itself becomes unsettled, the burden on discernment increases.
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So to me, multilateralism, which is, you know, in a UN context,
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is rooted in this notion of many-sidedness.
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And it does not imply sameness. I sometimes get quite worried when I hear this
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increasing use of this word like-mindedness, which is to me not many-sidedness.
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Very much a multilateralist at heart. And despite, you know,
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all the talk about multilateralism being under pressure, I think this is the
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one thing we have to pursue, we have to invest in.
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The opposite advice is us and them dynamic, which I rather would avoid.
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And I would rather speak of differently-minded actors able to operate together.
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And I will leave it at that for now and then we can continue.
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Well, Anja, if that is your way of starting the conversation,
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I don't know where we're going to go by the end of it. It's absolutely amazing.
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Yes, I don't think I've ever heard
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anyone explain this in such a rich and wholehearted way that brought out,
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particularly in what you were saying at the beginning, the phenomenology of
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actually being in those moments.
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So very interesting.
Anja, how do you encourage diplomats and people who don't
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feel knowledgeable about technology to find the ground beneath their feet and
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enter these conversations?
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I love the phrasing of this question, by the way, to go back to the poem,
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The ground beneath their feet.
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I often come back to this because it is a question that I get a lot.
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You know, how do we engage? How do we educate ourselves?
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How do we become literate? How do we ask good questions? And,
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you know, this notion of asking good questions is something that's very important
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to me, I'm sure we'll return to.
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You know, I remind them that diplomacy, and that's why I spent a little bit
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of time in the kind of introduction, you know, to really talk about the words themselves.
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And diplomacy in practice contain a lot of the tools required.
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Negotiation, verification, compliance, institutional design,
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building confidence, building trust.
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This notion of, you know, what does it mean to integrate, you know,
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multiple perspectives?
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You know, many sides, not the same side. And the management of disagreement
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without collapse. I think that's a very important one.
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These are foundational to any conversation about governance.
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And I think particularly to technology governance, I find that the hesitation
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is often psychological because technology is perceived as a close domain
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belonging exclusively to technical experts.
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And, you know, maybe the technical experts should also be blamed for maybe making
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this kind of conversation that doesn't allow people to easily access it and to enter it.
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I would also say this, though, that many diplomats in Geneva,
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particularly in Geneva, I find, and elsewhere are actually trained scientists and engineers.
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And they employ these skills and this knowledge in their day-to-day work.
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And maybe sometimes we don't see that, you know, enough and sort of create that
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space for them to engage in more technical terms and in helping others to grow in that space.
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What I will say is that this is not about competence. I think it's more about
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confidence and posture. and sometimes a sense that a technical room,
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if I may call it that, belongs to someone else.
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I also want to say something which is very important. I see this in a lot of
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conversations that I'm in, that just as much as engineers cannot engineer away
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political complexity, diplomats also cannot and should not abstract away technical constraint.
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I think the work is very much in the translation aspects.
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Often when people ask me, so what is it you really do? So, you know,
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I may be flippantly, you know, saying this, but I often say that I'm like the chief translator.
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I try to translate between these worlds because I had the benefit,
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as you said, in the introduction of me of working in these different domains,
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you know, working, you know, kind of cross-disciplinary, challenging myself,
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but trying to be in a completely new community,
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you know, adapting to new vernacular, nomenclature, worldviews,
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perceptions, experience, etc.
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And what that has done for me is not because I'm the smartest person or I know
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everything or that I portray myself as an expert in anything,
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but I become particularly good at trying to do that translational work to kind
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of connect the dots of where common ground may be found.
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So finding the ground beneath one's feet, like the David Whyte poem refers to,
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in this context to me means identifying what is already within diplomatic competence.
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It means recognizing that asking structural questions about,
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redundancy, standards, verification, is not venturing into engineering territory.
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It is actually exercising diplomatic craft, governance craft.
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The ground is not technical mastery. It is institutional literacy.
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I think this is very important to say. Diplomats do not need to become engineers.
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They need to remain present at the table.
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They need to ask what I would call architectural questions. And under,
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you know, any circumstances refuse to be in the passenger seat.
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I've seen this too many times, especially in human contexts,
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where people would put themselves in the passenger seat and ask technology companies
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and maybe experts in the field, what do we do?
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How can you tell us what we should be thinking in this space as opposed to taking
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their knowledge and presenting it out there and asking the technologists and
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the technology companies to then explain how's the impact? What's the interface?
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How does, you know, is there, you know, something that needs to be thought about?
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Well, I have a unique expertise to make sure that people that are vulnerable,
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that are in conflict situations, that have dire or humanitarian needs are protected.
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So I think that kind of coming into the driver's seat is very important.
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And, you know, if I were to encourage some of the listeners,
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because they might be asking now, it's like, well, what are the questions that I should be asking?
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And it could be something so simple as what are the single points of failure?
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What redundancies exist? And in this case, redundancies means safeguards.
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Who defines the standards or the benchmarks that we are operating with?
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Who adopts it? Who makes decisions about it? What assumptions about risks are
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embedded in the narratives that we're being presented?
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And who bears responsibility when systems fail? These are just examples.
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This is not a conclusive list by all means. It depends on what the context is.
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But, you know, very simple questions that one would ask in any diplomatic negotiation,
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you know, really kind of going into the efficiency.
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And if you allow me just one word that I think is very important,
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you know, well, three words, which is that of redundancy and resilience and interoperability.
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And because they have such different meaning, whether you are talking about
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them in a technical context and in a diplomatic context.
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So redundancy, and I've seen this happen in working groups that I've been part
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of, you know, where we speak completely.
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And it's like, you know, a poem who's, I can't remember the author at this point
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in time, but talking about passing ships in the night.
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You know when you know words are
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being used in one context but understood very differently
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with everyone in the room depending on what background you bring
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into it and redundancy is one
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such word and i heard in a conversation where the whole room for at least you
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know an hour or so was operating with the assumption that redundancy was about
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bureaucratic inefficiencies but it's not about inefficiency when it's used in
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a technical format it is survivability for example in nuclear command and control,
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it means when you have parallel confirmation processes and fail-safe mechanisms in place.
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In energy systems, it means backup grids and alternative routing pathways.
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In digital systems, it may mean segmented architecture or layered monitoring
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and human override authority.
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So it's very important to understand what is meant with this word as you enter
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into negotiations and also what forms, the decisions you make,
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the literacy that you try to evolve and who you bring in and the questions you ask.
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Resilience is another such word, which is the capacity to recover after disruption.
00:17:11.364 --> 00:17:15.464
And redundancy then sustains continuity during shock.
00:17:15.764 --> 00:17:18.804
So the resilience enables restoration afterwards.
00:17:19.044 --> 00:17:22.864
And both of these are strategic choices. Again, really comes down to this issue
00:17:22.864 --> 00:17:25.664
of, you know, words and how words matter.
00:17:25.904 --> 00:17:30.464
And then the last one, which is interoperability. which in some ways reflects
00:17:30.464 --> 00:17:35.084
coalition coordination, but it's also a window into asymmetry.
00:17:35.717 --> 00:17:40.137
It ensures that systems built in different jurisdictions can function together,
00:17:40.437 --> 00:17:42.937
yet interoperability is never neutral.
00:17:43.137 --> 00:17:47.157
And I see this a lot in the conversations I'm engaging with that it's kind of
00:17:47.157 --> 00:17:51.697
now tried to be applied onto every single segment of governance,
00:17:51.857 --> 00:17:56.517
but without maybe having a clear grounding in the technical understanding of
00:17:56.517 --> 00:18:00.577
it that will then inform whether it is actually an issue of interoperability,
00:18:00.917 --> 00:18:02.737
whether it's an issue of coordination,
00:18:03.257 --> 00:18:04.857
whether it's an issue of compatibility.
00:18:04.857 --> 00:18:07.697
Interability where there's an issue of allowing things to
00:18:07.697 --> 00:18:10.557
coexist but still have those you
00:18:10.557 --> 00:18:13.337
know mechanisms for resilience and redundancy in
00:18:13.337 --> 00:18:16.197
place and once it comes into this
00:18:16.197 --> 00:18:19.397
issue of of asymmetry it also reveals
00:18:19.397 --> 00:18:25.097
who defines the baseline and who must adjust to it and and it helps us as as
00:18:25.097 --> 00:18:31.197
kind of exposing whose architecture you are engaging with and you adapt to and
00:18:31.197 --> 00:18:34.777
and these are really important thing is because interoperability can strengthen
00:18:34.777 --> 00:18:36.977
lines, but it can also entrench dependency.
00:18:37.697 --> 00:18:43.097
So from that point of view, interoperability is not just operational coordination,
00:18:43.097 --> 00:18:49.537
it's a test of whether differently-minded actors, going back to this core definition of multilateralism,
00:18:49.957 --> 00:18:54.197
can remain connected even when strategic priorities diverge.
00:18:54.837 --> 00:18:58.617
And then the last thing, if I want to just focus on this, kind of what helps
00:18:58.617 --> 00:19:04.777
you kind of find a ground, you know, beneath your feet is kind of our thinking around friction.
00:19:04.777 --> 00:19:09.537
A lot of times in conversations about digital resilience, we talk about how
00:19:09.537 --> 00:19:12.317
dangerous it is to remove friction from our lives,
00:19:12.537 --> 00:19:16.637
that all this convenience, what does it actually do with us and how important
00:19:16.637 --> 00:19:21.937
is friction to define what it means to be human and define how we evolve as
00:19:21.937 --> 00:19:24.617
humans and how we adapt and how we, you know,
00:19:24.757 --> 00:19:27.917
display compassion and empathy for one another.
00:19:28.237 --> 00:19:33.237
And in the diplomatic context, I think often friction is seen as failure.
00:19:34.276 --> 00:19:37.776
And friction between disciplines, between states, between public and private
00:19:37.776 --> 00:19:42.316
actors, it looked at it differently. It can also help sharpen understanding.
00:19:43.096 --> 00:19:47.596
I think it becomes destructive when it's allowed to harden into entrenchment.
00:19:47.756 --> 00:19:51.276
But if you anchor it in what the UN is very good at, you know,
00:19:51.376 --> 00:19:56.056
into kind of procedural commitment, and it can actually become formative and
00:19:56.056 --> 00:19:58.016
full of growth rather than in action.
00:19:58.316 --> 00:20:02.436
So not unlike how we speak about it in daily life and how big part it is to
00:20:02.436 --> 00:20:04.756
kind of shape who we are and how we engage with one another.
00:20:05.076 --> 00:20:06.236
It's important to kind of.
00:20:07.126 --> 00:20:11.126
Look at these terms and kind of flex our diplomatic muscles,
00:20:11.666 --> 00:20:12.906
you know, like to train those.
00:20:13.086 --> 00:20:16.066
I think the diplomatic muscles has to be like, you know, our bodies,
00:20:16.406 --> 00:20:21.246
you know, they have to be trained on a daily basis to really remain too strong.
00:20:21.546 --> 00:20:27.086
And I think in that is this ability to agree to a disagree without rupture.
00:20:27.086 --> 00:20:30.506
I know rupture has been talked about a lot lately because of,
00:20:30.626 --> 00:20:35.066
you know, this now quite famous speech that was given not too long ago with,
00:20:35.166 --> 00:20:38.046
you know, referring to the rupture of society.
00:20:38.386 --> 00:20:42.506
But I think this patient to remain engaged, even when outcomes are uncertain
00:20:42.506 --> 00:20:50.186
and navigating uncertainty, not as a weakness of diplomacy, is going to become a core skill and,
00:20:50.266 --> 00:20:54.026
you know, should be much more part of, you know, the diplomatic dialogue going forward.
00:20:54.026 --> 00:20:58.986
So I would say that's an important part to finding that ground beneath us.
00:20:59.786 --> 00:21:04.926
Have you seen a change over time in science diplomacy in action?
00:21:06.046 --> 00:21:10.706
Absolutely. Actually, before I go into your question, I just want to say something
00:21:10.706 --> 00:21:14.606
referencing what I just talked about in terms of flexing it,
00:21:14.806 --> 00:21:16.486
sort of training the diplomatic muscle.
00:21:17.026 --> 00:21:21.826
And, you know, this podcast is hosted by the UN libraries and the archives.
00:21:21.826 --> 00:21:24.006
And I think this is quite fitting.
00:21:24.346 --> 00:21:28.626
And that's, in my experience, and without prejudice to reinventing history or
00:21:28.626 --> 00:21:32.346
attempting to retrofit every new development into old paradigms,
00:21:32.406 --> 00:21:33.786
which is a big danger that we do,
00:21:34.046 --> 00:21:40.606
I want to just emphasize the role of libraries and archives and the role it plays in creating.
00:21:41.154 --> 00:21:44.154
Playing a quiet but indispensable role in diplomatic
00:21:44.154 --> 00:21:47.234
practice in that muscle training of the
00:21:47.234 --> 00:21:50.314
diplomatic muscle training because they anchor memory
00:21:50.314 --> 00:21:55.614
they preserve deliberation they document how institutions have grappled with
00:21:55.614 --> 00:21:59.554
novelty before so when you're asking me what am I seeing as a change. That's
00:21:59.554 --> 00:22:02.874
why it came to mind kind of like, what am I seeing? Where we have the anchoring?
00:22:02.874 --> 00:22:07.934
and a lot of times you know the role of libraries and archives prevents us from
00:22:08.754 --> 00:22:10.794
confusing velocity with originality.
00:22:11.294 --> 00:22:14.754
Like in my personal experience, the amount of times that as a young diplomat,
00:22:14.874 --> 00:22:17.934
I've run to, you know, some gifted librarian or archivist, it's like,
00:22:18.014 --> 00:22:19.434
oh, I have this amazing new idea!
00:22:19.994 --> 00:22:22.634
And then with a little bit of help digging into the archives,
00:22:22.854 --> 00:22:26.014
realizing that that new idea was actually an old idea.
00:22:26.514 --> 00:22:31.194
And then my task is not really to try to, you know, celebrate my own hubris,
00:22:31.374 --> 00:22:36.314
but to figure out, you know, what exactly was the framing of that old idea that
00:22:36.314 --> 00:22:38.114
might have changed. What has changed?
00:22:38.294 --> 00:22:41.854
Is it more on fertile grounds now? Was it an issue of personalities,
00:22:42.154 --> 00:22:47.214
Was it an issue of political relations between state? Was it the maturity of the topic itself?
00:22:48.077 --> 00:22:53.217
I'm a huge fan of this really gifted podcast host and author called Maria Popova.
00:22:53.517 --> 00:22:57.697
I'm not sure if some of you are familiar with her. She has this blog called
00:22:57.697 --> 00:22:59.617
Brain Pickings, a few books, etc.
00:22:59.917 --> 00:23:04.577
And I find her stuff delightful. And I hope any of the listeners would visit
00:23:04.577 --> 00:23:05.937
her stuff if they listen to this.
00:23:06.337 --> 00:23:10.537
And she writes that when a library is open, democracy is open too.
00:23:11.137 --> 00:23:13.757
And I think that captures something really essential.
00:23:14.497 --> 00:23:18.677
Libraries and archives are not passive repositories. There are civil structures
00:23:18.677 --> 00:23:23.077
and they help sustain that long view that diplomacy requires.
00:23:23.437 --> 00:23:26.397
And that's why I'm so pleased to have this conversation with you.
00:23:26.777 --> 00:23:31.097
And that's also, yes, what we wanted to ask you about, because we know that
00:23:31.097 --> 00:23:35.337
you are such a fan of libraries and archives and this one in particular.
00:23:35.957 --> 00:23:39.377
Yeah, I can refer to Wouter's question now because now he's asking me to look
00:23:39.377 --> 00:23:41.977
ahead or sort of what has actually evolved.
00:23:41.977 --> 00:23:44.817
And what I'm saying is that so
00:23:44.817 --> 00:23:47.717
science diplomacy you know which is quite an interesting
00:23:47.717 --> 00:23:51.297
term, right? And it has traditionally encompassed cooperation
00:23:51.297 --> 00:23:54.577
through research and the integration of scientific
00:23:54.577 --> 00:23:58.837
evidence into foreign policy. That's how it's often been talked about. It has
00:23:58.837 --> 00:24:03.937
included was what was described as science and diplomacy, diplomacy for science
00:24:03.937 --> 00:24:08.037
and science for diplomacy. You know, you see this in all different, you know, kind
00:24:08.037 --> 00:24:14.097
of ways of presenting. But these distinctions are quite useful because over time,
00:24:14.277 --> 00:24:18.237
science diplomacy has also functioned as confidence infrastructure.
00:24:19.090 --> 00:24:24.730
Because it creates channels of communication that remain open even when political dialogue narrows.
00:24:25.430 --> 00:24:29.890
So scientific cooperation has historically persisted across geopolitical divides.
00:24:30.050 --> 00:24:33.330
And we've seen this happen. You know, you have CERN in Geneva,
00:24:33.350 --> 00:24:37.950
which is, of course, a very interesting example of exactly science diplomacy.
00:24:38.310 --> 00:24:44.070
And that continuity builds familiarity and the familiarity reduces miscalculation.
00:24:44.250 --> 00:24:47.570
That's a very important point, you know, talking about confidence and trust
00:24:47.570 --> 00:24:52.170
building, etc. And in the context of emerging technologies, revitalizing that
00:24:52.170 --> 00:24:54.630
function, I believe, is quite essential.
00:24:54.970 --> 00:24:58.310
And I think you see this, and you mentioned my previous role,
00:24:58.430 --> 00:25:01.270
and I've worked in the disarmament arms control space.
00:25:01.270 --> 00:25:07.950
And I think this is one area where that confidence infrastructure has often been quite literal.
00:25:07.950 --> 00:25:13.790
So technical expert groups have provided continuity across political cycles
00:25:13.790 --> 00:25:19.530
and have helped translate these sometimes abstract commitments into monitoring
00:25:19.530 --> 00:25:24.450
concepts and inspection protocols and shared evidentiary baselines.
00:25:24.750 --> 00:25:30.490
But when those channels thin out, the risk is that states not only lose their
00:25:30.490 --> 00:25:35.210
expertise, they also lose this shared technical language that can hold when
00:25:35.210 --> 00:25:37.130
politics becomes brittle.
00:25:37.890 --> 00:25:40.650
I think that's a conversation we're not having enough these days,
00:25:40.830 --> 00:25:45.670
which is also why I believe that there's a need for a new scientific track.
00:25:46.050 --> 00:25:49.870
It can't be improvised ad hoc. It has to be built over time.
00:25:50.050 --> 00:25:53.470
It needs a mandate, continuity, clear interfaces, etc.
00:25:53.930 --> 00:25:57.530
And it's not about idealizing the past of what it used to be,
00:25:57.630 --> 00:26:03.770
but it's about how do we rebuild that connective tissue between political negotiation
00:26:03.770 --> 00:26:05.210
and technical realities.
00:26:05.210 --> 00:26:09.570
And there's a second dimension that feels equally important when you ask me
00:26:09.570 --> 00:26:12.510
about sign diplomacy, which is that of technology diplomacy,
00:26:12.530 --> 00:26:17.810
which is also about what it now means to practice diplomacy in a digital reality.
00:26:18.613 --> 00:26:23.613
So diplomats operate in highly curated information environments where narratives
00:26:23.613 --> 00:26:26.073
are amplified algorithmically.
00:26:26.273 --> 00:26:30.373
And I'm still not seeing enough conversations happening in this space.
00:26:30.533 --> 00:26:33.753
There's a lot of conversations about what happens with deep fakes, etc.
00:26:34.053 --> 00:26:40.573
But much fewer about how does that impact on the narratives that we, diplomats,
00:26:40.733 --> 00:26:46.113
we, people in the multilateral system, engage with on a day to day basis.
00:26:46.113 --> 00:26:50.233
Because what we do know is that perception can outrun verification.
00:26:50.673 --> 00:26:53.253
You know, was it Reagan who said, trust, but verify?
00:26:54.193 --> 00:26:59.893
You know, and sometimes the scale and speed of how news, you know,
00:26:59.973 --> 00:27:03.253
gets generated, you know, challenges that notion.
00:27:03.613 --> 00:27:08.833
And strategic communication is no longer peripheral to diplomacy. It shapes in real time.
00:27:09.033 --> 00:27:12.353
And truth itself becomes, you know, a highly contested terrain.
00:27:12.353 --> 00:27:18.253
And so I don't think this is a communication issue per se, but it also alters
00:27:18.253 --> 00:27:23.333
how trust is sustained and how crises escalate, how legitimacy is perceived.
00:27:23.553 --> 00:27:28.093
Because when narratives are engineered at scale, part of the diplomatic work
00:27:28.093 --> 00:27:32.833
becomes about protecting the conditions under which the facts are established
00:27:32.833 --> 00:27:35.153
credibly and to protect.
00:27:35.573 --> 00:27:39.833
Make sure that disagreement does not automatically convert into antagonism.
00:27:40.253 --> 00:27:43.893
And there's a lot to be said about this. And, you know, we can embed issues
00:27:43.893 --> 00:27:47.053
around how do you make sure that ethics is structural to this?
00:27:47.253 --> 00:27:52.153
How do we make sure that the commercial logic, you know, which too often penetrate
00:27:52.153 --> 00:27:56.193
the way we talk about technology, does not kind of consume the conversation?
00:27:56.473 --> 00:27:59.353
But I think these are important framings to be had.
00:27:59.513 --> 00:28:04.633
There are just multiple layers and shifts in how science diplomacy has evolved.
00:28:04.633 --> 00:28:11.113
And we're now much more into that space of, in my view, where scientists and
00:28:11.113 --> 00:28:14.393
technologists play an important role in amplifying diplomacy,
00:28:14.393 --> 00:28:16.833
as it has done traditionally and historically.
00:28:17.193 --> 00:28:21.733
And how do you revive that track? But also have a separate conversation,
00:28:21.753 --> 00:28:27.433
which is related but separate, of what does it mean to be operating in this digital reality?
00:28:27.433 --> 00:28:32.273
And how does that impact how we do diplomacy? that skill?
00:28:32.493 --> 00:28:35.953
What muscles do we have to train to operate in that environment?
00:28:36.213 --> 00:28:41.513
And does that require a different, going back to my point about attention, a different attention?
00:28:41.673 --> 00:28:47.113
Do we need to be attending to slightly different things in being able to operate in that new space?
00:28:47.433 --> 00:28:51.913
So Anja, you've worked on international security and geopolitics,
00:28:51.993 --> 00:28:58.213
and you have an amazing view of how emerging technologies are reshaping peace,
00:28:58.493 --> 00:28:59.553
conflict, and security.
00:28:59.813 --> 00:29:05.093
Could you tell us a bit about the most significant ways that AI and other technologies
00:29:05.093 --> 00:29:09.373
are changing the landscape of international security and arms control?
00:29:10.133 --> 00:29:13.733
So, I mean, this is, of course, a topic very near and dear to my heart.
00:29:13.973 --> 00:29:18.093
So if you're allowing me a little, a kind of like a deeper analysis of this.
00:29:18.273 --> 00:29:22.753
So let me begin with the discipline of asking two questions in parallel.
00:29:23.673 --> 00:29:27.613
You know, again, going back to David Whyte, this kind of notion of asking difficult
00:29:27.613 --> 00:29:32.493
questions. What has changed and equally what has not changed?
00:29:33.404 --> 00:29:38.924
The first question prevents complacency and the second prevents exaggeration.
00:29:39.584 --> 00:29:42.664
That's important because if you don't get the two in balance,
00:29:43.024 --> 00:29:49.204
you might get very caught up in a lot of hype and headlines and narrators that
00:29:49.204 --> 00:29:54.084
may not, going back to this notion of the importance of libraries and archives,
00:29:54.284 --> 00:29:57.464
that doesn't really have a foundation on its own.
00:29:58.324 --> 00:30:02.764
And international security in very simple terms, concerns, relations between
00:30:02.764 --> 00:30:09.204
states and their national security priorities, as well as fears and perceived or real threats.
00:30:09.684 --> 00:30:12.964
And technology has always, it's important to emphasize this,
00:30:13.144 --> 00:30:16.064
technology has always been integral to national security.
00:30:16.584 --> 00:30:21.824
Many of the underlying dynamics, fear, ambition, mistrust, miscalculation are
00:30:21.824 --> 00:30:24.404
as old as our civilizations.
00:30:24.404 --> 00:30:29.244
But what has changed, in my view, is the depth of embedding,
00:30:29.464 --> 00:30:36.204
the compression of time, the expansion of distance, and if I can say the material
00:30:36.204 --> 00:30:40.904
substrate on which strategic advantage increasingly rests.
00:30:42.084 --> 00:30:46.964
And artificial intelligence, we take that as an example, and I tend to not speak
00:30:46.964 --> 00:30:50.984
about it as a technology, as often as AI and technology systems,
00:30:51.144 --> 00:30:55.324
you know, because I see it more as a technique. Not the standalone technology.
00:30:56.024 --> 00:31:00.984
And so artificial intelligence and digital systems are woven into critical infrastructure.
00:31:01.684 --> 00:31:04.984
You know, just think about it, energy grids, telecommunications networks,
00:31:05.204 --> 00:31:10.304
financial systems, and all of these infrastructures are highly interdependent.
00:31:10.424 --> 00:31:13.824
So any failure in them can cascade rapidly.
00:31:14.833 --> 00:31:19.553
At the same time, there's another thing that's happening which is decision cycles are compressing.
00:31:20.053 --> 00:31:25.653
So automated systems can accelerate assessments, but when perception,
00:31:25.753 --> 00:31:31.053
going back to this notion perception, outruns verification, then the risk of
00:31:31.053 --> 00:31:33.773
misinterpretation becomes more likely.
00:31:34.133 --> 00:31:35.913
So when you have this,
00:31:36.600 --> 00:31:40.300
In reality, when perception outruns verification in crisis settings,
00:31:40.480 --> 00:31:43.120
for example, escalation risks increase.
00:31:44.020 --> 00:31:48.060
So algorithmically amplified narratives, rapid intelligence,
00:31:48.340 --> 00:31:54.180
fusion, and compressed response windows can create pressure to act before the
00:31:54.180 --> 00:31:56.060
full context itself is established.
00:31:57.020 --> 00:32:02.740
And speed, going back to the speed argument, can generate confidence that exceeds certainty.
00:32:02.740 --> 00:32:09.460
And again, one of my favorite things to sort of emphasize as a very core to
00:32:09.460 --> 00:32:14.540
diplomacy is that of discernment, that becomes then a stabilizing force.
00:32:15.300 --> 00:32:20.980
It's like the discipline of pulsing before interpretation hardens interaction.
00:32:21.420 --> 00:32:25.420
It means being willing to sit with incomplete information.
00:32:26.000 --> 00:32:31.420
It means resisting to pressure, to compress uncertainty into premature certainty.
00:32:31.420 --> 00:32:35.540
And in international security, and this is why I'm mentioning this,
00:32:36.140 --> 00:32:38.340
that capacity can prevent escalation.
00:32:39.200 --> 00:32:43.140
What is also shifting in more concrete terms is the texture of arms control
00:32:43.140 --> 00:32:49.120
itself, where traditional arms control of machines often centered on tangible
00:32:49.120 --> 00:32:53.160
hardware, countable systems, and observable deployments.
00:32:53.700 --> 00:32:58.260
Verification involved inspection, monitoring, material accounting.
00:32:58.260 --> 00:33:04.360
But with emerging technologies, particularly AI and advanced software systems,
00:33:04.880 --> 00:33:11.520
the objects of control has become less visible because this code can be updated
00:33:11.520 --> 00:33:16.640
remotely, capabilities can evolve through data retaining rather than physical modification,
00:33:17.000 --> 00:33:23.420
and the line between civilian and military infrastructure becomes increasingly porous.
00:33:24.069 --> 00:33:29.649
Fragile. And there's also this notion of dual use entanglement,
00:33:30.149 --> 00:33:36.489
things that have been developed for one purpose being repurposed into a new domain.
00:33:37.269 --> 00:33:41.029
And this is interesting thing with dual use, because traditionally that term
00:33:41.029 --> 00:33:46.429
was often used for where investments would go into military infrastructure that
00:33:46.429 --> 00:33:49.049
had to demonstrate a civilian application.
00:33:49.389 --> 00:33:52.629
Because these were large public acquisition processes.
00:33:53.229 --> 00:33:58.369
But increasingly we're seeing what is dual use and why it's sometimes a difficult
00:33:58.369 --> 00:34:03.009
term to use in this aspect is that more and more of the infrastructure is becoming
00:34:03.009 --> 00:34:05.709
very important for military purposes.
00:34:05.949 --> 00:34:10.069
So the perception of dealing with certain or the perception of threats and the
00:34:10.069 --> 00:34:14.869
appropriate responses is actually developed out of commercial applications that
00:34:14.869 --> 00:34:18.329
are now being retrofitted into military domains.
00:34:18.649 --> 00:34:23.729
So that's also something that has really shifted, how do you engage with these
00:34:23.729 --> 00:34:28.969
notions of dual use and who's in control and where do you put in those mechanisms,
00:34:29.389 --> 00:34:31.009
those oversight mechanisms.
00:34:32.129 --> 00:34:37.089
So I can go through a long list of how all of these things have changed,
00:34:37.229 --> 00:34:40.829
cyber physical systems, hardware storage and compute.
00:34:41.449 --> 00:34:47.249
But maybe a more helpful thing to tell the listeners is just one kind of very
00:34:47.249 --> 00:34:50.769
practical examples when I served in Geneva as director of disarmament and arms
00:34:50.769 --> 00:34:55.509
control. There was one very noticeable thing that relates to your question which
00:34:55.509 --> 00:34:58.649
is the absence, going back to your previous question of science diplomacy,
00:34:59.853 --> 00:35:05.253
And because arms control used to quite successfully integrate scientists around the table.
00:35:05.653 --> 00:35:10.813
And I, in my time, tried my very best to encourage delegations in Geneva and
00:35:10.813 --> 00:35:13.673
in New York to bring both scientists and technologists.
00:35:13.973 --> 00:35:18.033
And there are a lot of scientists and technologists out there that would also
00:35:18.033 --> 00:35:22.513
be comfortable in operating at that intersection between policy and science.
00:35:22.513 --> 00:35:27.713
But it was quite difficult, but it's so important because that parallel scientific
00:35:27.713 --> 00:35:32.513
dialogue is what is needed to build trust and to build common ground where there
00:35:32.513 --> 00:35:34.033
might be none sometimes.
00:35:34.293 --> 00:35:37.893
You know, these are national security imperatives and people come in already
00:35:37.893 --> 00:35:40.613
kind of feeling quite entrenched in their positions, naturally.
00:35:40.613 --> 00:35:44.513
So as an extension of their, you know, their foreign policy objectives.
00:35:45.253 --> 00:35:49.773
And how do you, you know, kind of create that space for dialogue?
00:35:49.953 --> 00:35:54.033
In some of the early disarmament treaties, there was actually a very,
00:35:54.173 --> 00:35:57.813
very strong parallel track of scientists coming together, you know,
00:35:58.133 --> 00:36:02.713
going through some of the issues around nomenclature and terminology, you know,
00:36:03.133 --> 00:36:06.433
different views of the world, making sure that we're looking at the same benchmark,
00:36:06.713 --> 00:36:09.653
you know, that we understood the same thing with the different words that were being used.
00:36:10.293 --> 00:36:15.473
And then eventually, you know, this kind of fizzled out a little bit and I looked
00:36:15.473 --> 00:36:19.593
into why was that, you know, why, you know, why was this,
00:36:19.693 --> 00:36:22.513
you know, kind of de-prioritization of that scientific dialogue?
00:36:22.713 --> 00:36:26.153
And one could look at it in many different ways. You know, there was an issue of prioritization.
00:36:26.553 --> 00:36:30.673
There was an issue of maybe not having the same sense of shared urgency.
00:36:30.673 --> 00:36:35.273
There was not maybe thinking that this was a good investment at a time,
00:36:35.453 --> 00:36:39.193
or maybe just that what was happening in the technology space,
00:36:39.213 --> 00:36:43.573
there was more of a clear division between the military and the commercials
00:36:43.573 --> 00:36:46.633
and maybe it was not felt as present.
00:36:46.633 --> 00:36:50.493
So I think that's a very important part to get back to.
00:36:50.633 --> 00:36:55.533
So what has shifted is that, you know, technology and maybe particularly artificial
00:36:55.533 --> 00:37:00.253
intelligence have sort of amplified a lot of the old...
00:37:00.799 --> 00:37:06.119
... paradigms, you know, at the same time creating a new set of paradigms and
00:37:06.119 --> 00:37:11.399
the ways of engaging with it is also bringing greater scientific and technical
00:37:11.399 --> 00:37:16.879
literacy to what really is at stake and to maybe look differently and internally
00:37:16.879 --> 00:37:18.799
into, you know, how to rebuild that.
00:37:18.799 --> 00:37:24.659
Yes, I was really struck by what you're saying about the way things have changed
00:37:24.659 --> 00:37:27.619
and particularly about the dual use.
00:37:28.079 --> 00:37:33.519
What's still missing also in terms of anticipatory knowledge from the way that
00:37:33.519 --> 00:37:38.539
we deal with AI and emerging tech in an institutional way?
00:37:38.539 --> 00:37:45.819
One of my great concerns in this space is that we remain too reactive rather than responsive.
00:37:46.299 --> 00:37:50.819
You know, we talk about anticipation and that reactiveness invites a type of
00:37:50.819 --> 00:37:57.679
hubris that blinds and paralyzes rather than invites engagement and action and inquiry and questions.
00:37:58.439 --> 00:38:03.519
You know, when Dr. Strangelove was, you know, the movie about sort of a nuclear
00:38:03.519 --> 00:38:09.859
doom and Stanley Kubrick was interviewed by a journalist right after the launch of the movie.
00:38:10.139 --> 00:38:13.159
He was famously asked, you know, if he was worried, you know,
00:38:13.199 --> 00:38:16.879
and you have to remember that these are very different times and the kind of
00:38:16.879 --> 00:38:22.699
fear of a nuclear, you know, end of the world was quite real for a lot of people.
00:38:22.699 --> 00:38:27.079
And he was asked, you know, but that was something following having done this
00:38:27.079 --> 00:38:28.279
movie he was worried about.
00:38:28.639 --> 00:38:33.399
And he responded saying that he was not worried about the nuclear collapse of
00:38:33.399 --> 00:38:35.859
the world. He was worried, more worried about human hubris.
00:38:36.853 --> 00:38:40.993
And I often come back to that because I do think that, you know,
00:38:41.353 --> 00:38:43.753
that is a real concern and a real danger.
00:38:44.053 --> 00:38:49.233
And I was speaking at an event not too long ago and someone was asking me,
00:38:49.353 --> 00:38:51.673
you know, what's my way, my personal ways of preparing?
00:38:52.193 --> 00:38:55.153
You know, how do you check in with yourself? And I said, well,
00:38:55.213 --> 00:38:57.793
I check in on my hubris multiple times a day.
00:38:57.793 --> 00:39:02.513
Like how many times haven't one of us, especially when we get enthusiastic about
00:39:02.513 --> 00:39:06.153
our topic or, you know, feel that we have something to convey,
00:39:06.733 --> 00:39:10.333
find ourselves, you know, talking and sort of displaying all that hubris,
00:39:10.393 --> 00:39:14.753
which is so wonderful about humans, but can be so dangerous if it goes unquestioned.
00:39:14.993 --> 00:39:17.953
And especially when we lose the ability to question it ourselves.
00:39:18.733 --> 00:39:23.033
So that's one kind of answer to your questions. The other one is,
00:39:23.173 --> 00:39:28.193
you know, this danger of like trying to govern after deployment rather than
00:39:28.193 --> 00:39:29.713
before embedding altogether.
00:39:30.113 --> 00:39:35.633
So we often treat harm as something to remedy after the fact rather than something
00:39:35.633 --> 00:39:39.453
to prevent through design constraints. I think that's very relevant.
00:39:39.653 --> 00:39:43.213
You know, we talk about AI systems and some of these larger models,
00:39:43.553 --> 00:39:48.893
et cetera, and technology that, you know, is highly reliant on these new systems
00:39:48.893 --> 00:39:50.293
and techniques, AI techniques.
00:39:50.293 --> 00:39:54.633
We also underestimate kind of second-order effects, you know,
00:39:54.713 --> 00:39:58.013
for example, interoperability, which I mentioned before, interoperability choices,
00:39:58.393 --> 00:40:02.373
procurement standards, data governance decisions, infrastructure dependencies.
00:40:03.033 --> 00:40:06.233
These can lock in pathways that are difficult to reverse.
00:40:07.290 --> 00:40:11.210
So, and sort of saying that, I also think we need more anticipatory governance,
00:40:12.190 --> 00:40:16.330
you know, scenario planning, stress testing, because sometimes I see this,
00:40:16.390 --> 00:40:19.310
you know, really brilliantly done, nicely.
00:40:19.330 --> 00:40:23.290
There's a consultant that created a great PowerPoint slide and they have all
00:40:23.290 --> 00:40:25.410
these like various scenarios, etc.
00:40:25.610 --> 00:40:28.750
So I'm not talking about that. And it makes you sort of choose.
00:40:28.890 --> 00:40:30.270
It can be one, two, three or four.
00:40:30.530 --> 00:40:34.030
And then it's like high likelihood or low likelihood.
00:40:35.050 --> 00:40:41.250
I mean, I've done a lot of that myself. And I used to believe in this very strongly
00:40:41.250 --> 00:40:42.690
that this was the pathway to go.
00:40:42.790 --> 00:40:47.810
And I still think it is like very important skills and important methodological
00:40:47.810 --> 00:40:49.130
approach to many of these things.
00:40:49.370 --> 00:40:55.290
But I often see that people are not able to really engage with it because it
00:40:55.290 --> 00:40:57.950
becomes abstract. It becomes theorized.
00:40:58.150 --> 00:41:00.910
It's not something that really sits with your own reality.
00:41:01.170 --> 00:41:05.250
So a lot of times it's like, how do you do that? How do you plan for scenarios?
00:41:05.250 --> 00:41:07.850
How do you stress test those scenarios?
00:41:08.310 --> 00:41:14.150
How do you do those, you know, you really invite inquiry about not just how
00:41:14.150 --> 00:41:18.190
a system works or what scenario will play out, but what will it do with institutions?
00:41:18.190 --> 00:41:19.670
What will it do with incentives?
00:41:20.050 --> 00:41:24.230
How would it impact societal resilience, you know, over time in the short term?
00:41:24.410 --> 00:41:29.110
How would it impact on your engagement with one another, our ability to feel
00:41:29.110 --> 00:41:33.490
and, you know, kind of demonstrate empathy? And even, you know,
00:41:33.590 --> 00:41:37.410
like I said before, even asking questions or display discernment.
00:41:37.670 --> 00:41:41.150
And I think by doing it, what you're doing is that you're taking those scenarios,
00:41:41.410 --> 00:41:44.550
that anticipatory governance, and you kind of bring it back.
00:41:44.590 --> 00:41:49.050
So I always say that I like to do scenarios planning where you take people forward
00:41:49.050 --> 00:41:54.070
in time, and then you bring it back to the brutal reality of where you are right now.
00:41:54.786 --> 00:41:58.086
Like so if we play all of those things out what does
00:41:58.086 --> 00:42:01.406
that mean for the decisions you make right here and now because
00:42:01.406 --> 00:42:04.306
that's one of the dangers that we are facing right now and
00:42:04.306 --> 00:42:08.486
which I was trying to do initially with your questions is kind of to push
00:42:08.486 --> 00:42:12.986
back on this deterministic framings that are constantly being pushed especially
00:42:12.986 --> 00:42:18.626
when we talk about technology and ai you know if not us they will you know
00:42:18.626 --> 00:42:23.626
it will happen no matter what it's inevitable you know innovation at all cost.
00:42:24.086 --> 00:42:28.946
But not once in history, you know, has there had to be a clear boundary,
00:42:28.966 --> 00:42:35.166
like good governance, good regulations, you know, good standards actually improves
00:42:35.166 --> 00:42:37.906
how innovation is, improves the societal impact.
00:42:38.186 --> 00:42:43.306
I think what we're struggling now is the speed and scale issues that everyone feels is going so fast.
00:42:43.506 --> 00:42:48.966
And then you have these sort of tech deterministic scenarios being played that
00:42:48.966 --> 00:42:50.306
it would happen no matter what.
00:42:50.586 --> 00:42:56.386
So people are forgetting to come back to, it is not some doom and gloom ahead.
00:42:56.386 --> 00:43:01.846
It is about the decisions I make right here, right now. There's a trajectory to it.
00:43:02.106 --> 00:43:04.446
I'm part of influencing this trajectory.
00:43:04.826 --> 00:43:11.966
And so for me, a lot of the anticipation comes in helping people to change their
00:43:11.966 --> 00:43:14.186
inquiry right here and now.
00:43:14.726 --> 00:43:21.446
It is, but where are these conversations, these workshops, these forums for
00:43:21.446 --> 00:43:22.846
this type of work happening.
00:43:23.737 --> 00:43:28.257
It's a good question. I mean, there are, you know, groups that are doing this really well.
00:43:28.437 --> 00:43:31.217
There are, you know, I know there are educational programs, you know,
00:43:31.317 --> 00:43:35.037
some of the big universities, you know, do a lot of kind of scenario planning, etc.
00:43:35.817 --> 00:43:40.757
But I have to say, like, strictly speaking, in kind of my wearing my personal
00:43:40.757 --> 00:43:45.317
hat and bringing in my personal experiences, they don't happen enough.
00:43:45.317 --> 00:43:48.317
And I feel like I'm constantly every
00:43:48.317 --> 00:43:51.137
time I go into a public conversation about this I
00:43:51.137 --> 00:43:54.377
feel like I'm battling against these narratives that
00:43:54.377 --> 00:43:59.577
things are inevitable things that just kind of follow a certain trajectory and
00:43:59.577 --> 00:44:06.657
bringing people back into that space where you really question you allow yourself
00:44:06.657 --> 00:44:12.737
to fast forward 10 years or 15 years or even 5 years and then you backtrack,
00:44:13.377 --> 00:44:16.857
You know, because it's always we all been in a situation where we do something
00:44:16.857 --> 00:44:19.397
and then, you know, the benefit of hindsight, right?
00:44:19.537 --> 00:44:23.137
You're thinking, oh, if I had done it differently, and then you learn as a human
00:44:23.137 --> 00:44:27.117
being that you also have to, you know, accept that sometimes you make decisions
00:44:27.117 --> 00:44:31.497
and there's not much value in the benefit of hindsight, but with.
00:44:32.254 --> 00:44:38.014
With this kind of anticipatory planning or anticipatory governance done rightly,
00:44:38.574 --> 00:44:42.674
I think it can help us challenge some of that hubris that we base a lot of decisions
00:44:42.674 --> 00:44:49.014
on and also push back on these deterministic narratives that are allowed to
00:44:49.014 --> 00:44:51.094
fester too much in the discourse,
00:44:51.114 --> 00:44:56.234
especially around technology governance and why technology diplomacy and science
00:44:56.234 --> 00:44:58.194
diplomacy is becoming so important.
00:44:58.794 --> 00:45:04.074
Allowing us to go step by step back to saying, okay, where did we go wrong in that scenario?
00:45:04.354 --> 00:45:09.834
What would that, you know, kind of encourage from us in terms of changing how we make decisions?
00:45:10.174 --> 00:45:13.414
So this goes back to, you know, to this we talked about earlier,
00:45:13.554 --> 00:45:15.994
you know, you know, who's part of the conversation?
00:45:16.454 --> 00:45:19.194
You know, what is the questions that are being invited? You know,
00:45:19.294 --> 00:45:21.194
are you, you know, are you allowing
00:45:21.194 --> 00:45:25.614
that kind of inquiry to happen and not being in the passenger seat?
00:45:25.614 --> 00:45:32.054
You know, I would like to see people that are really experienced in dealing,
00:45:32.354 --> 00:45:37.794
you know, I remember my former boss, Peter Maurer, with the ICRC and sitting
00:45:37.794 --> 00:45:43.314
in conversations with leaders in the tech industry and people that are really pushing this,
00:45:43.854 --> 00:45:49.334
I will say, quite forcefully deterministic narratives, but he can bring it back
00:45:49.334 --> 00:45:54.334
to the person he had just met, you know, coming out of a horrific situation.
00:45:55.156 --> 00:45:58.696
You know, highly now reliant in sort of new conflicts, you know,
00:45:58.796 --> 00:46:03.636
people are very highly technological, they're highly reliant on digital infrastructure,
00:46:04.156 --> 00:46:07.656
but really addressing what were their needs and their concerns,
00:46:07.876 --> 00:46:10.096
their vulnerabilities, what it didn't mean to them,
00:46:10.816 --> 00:46:14.756
you know, how is context different, like really allow that kind of contextual,
00:46:15.416 --> 00:46:19.696
you know, the contextual reality also help us, you know,
00:46:20.436 --> 00:46:23.836
have better inquiries about some of the assumptions we'd make.
00:46:24.016 --> 00:46:26.436
I think this is really, really important. So your question about,
00:46:26.556 --> 00:46:29.776
you know, how do we distill more anticipatory governance?
00:46:30.396 --> 00:46:35.296
I often say that some of the things that I really miss in the overall kind of
00:46:35.296 --> 00:46:40.616
civil discourse is a trained ability to sit with contrasting realities.
00:46:41.476 --> 00:46:46.036
You know, skills in doing kind of deep discernment, even when it makes us feel
00:46:46.036 --> 00:46:47.336
really, really uncomfortable.
00:46:48.076 --> 00:46:52.956
This ability of being able to disagree with other people. But without allowing,
00:46:53.076 --> 00:46:57.196
as I was saying before, not allowing things to collapse as a result.
00:46:57.776 --> 00:47:00.616
I've seen too many times that we're losing that skill a bit.
00:47:00.836 --> 00:47:05.736
You know, people will go into conversations and they have a disagreement and they will walk out.
00:47:06.517 --> 00:47:08.697
You know, because they don't know how to engage with that disagreement.
00:47:09.057 --> 00:47:12.957
I also think that one of the things that I feel really passionate about is actually
00:47:12.957 --> 00:47:15.557
listening to what is not being spoken about.
00:47:15.917 --> 00:47:20.597
And I think this goes to the anticipatory governance. There's Pierre Bourdieu,
00:47:20.777 --> 00:47:22.137
which is a French sociologist.
00:47:22.337 --> 00:47:26.297
He had a lot of really good writing in the 50s and the 60s, and he spoke about
00:47:26.297 --> 00:47:29.157
dogmas and kind of a new anthropological literature.
00:47:29.417 --> 00:47:32.737
We speak about this as social silences, but also strategic silences.
00:47:33.397 --> 00:47:38.397
So social silences might be, you know, silences that are curated by some that
00:47:38.397 --> 00:47:42.177
will try to preserve a certain narrative, strategic silences,
00:47:42.337 --> 00:47:46.177
there are many types of silences and you can add different kind of buzzwords to it.
00:47:46.337 --> 00:47:50.597
Strategic silence is more of an intentional way of shaping narratives.
00:47:51.737 --> 00:47:56.037
But this notion of social silences, what is not being spoken about,
00:47:56.517 --> 00:48:02.557
often tells us more about what's going on than if you are just paying attention
00:48:02.557 --> 00:48:05.757
to the noise. So this goes back to my point about attention.
00:48:06.751 --> 00:48:11.851
You know, which I think is a superpower. Being attentive, but listen to what is not being said.
00:48:12.051 --> 00:48:16.791
And that sometimes tells you more about what's required for that anticipatory
00:48:16.791 --> 00:48:19.231
governance than anything else.
00:48:19.971 --> 00:48:24.171
Yeah, it goes back also to what you were saying about speed and this ability
00:48:24.171 --> 00:48:27.851
to slow down and not be in the space of reaction.
00:48:28.911 --> 00:48:33.591
Exactly. Like, how do you pause? And I'm not saying people need to pause and
00:48:33.591 --> 00:48:36.391
going on a 10-day meditation retreat pause.
00:48:36.751 --> 00:48:42.371
I'm talking about taking a deep breath and pausing and actually listening,
00:48:43.331 --> 00:48:45.691
you know, so going back to this, what's beneath your ground?
00:48:46.031 --> 00:48:48.491
What am I seeing? What am I feeling?
00:48:48.751 --> 00:48:53.491
What am I hearing? And maybe even as important, what am I not hearing?
00:48:54.031 --> 00:48:57.571
So it's like kind of really focusing your attention.
00:48:58.631 --> 00:49:02.271
And sitting with that uncertainty. and sitting with uncertainty,
00:49:02.271 --> 00:49:04.691
which we are actually becoming terrible at.
00:49:05.311 --> 00:49:08.831
You know, because, and this goes back to kind of my cautionary tale about this,
00:49:08.991 --> 00:49:10.671
you know, world and kind of binary,
00:49:11.571 --> 00:49:15.631
you know, seeing the world in terms of binary realities, is that,
00:49:16.011 --> 00:49:19.531
and we see this across the board in any domain across the world,
00:49:19.651 --> 00:49:23.111
that people are kind of clinging on to these binary realities,
00:49:23.191 --> 00:49:28.891
not because of lack of knowledge or competence or whatever, because there's some comfort in it.
00:49:29.760 --> 00:49:35.240
And it's deeply exhausting to feel that you're constantly uncomfortable.
00:49:36.740 --> 00:49:40.100
You know, so you want to cling on to something binary, it's either good or it's
00:49:40.100 --> 00:49:43.580
bad, you know, if it's something in the middle, what does that mean?
00:49:43.800 --> 00:49:45.140
What does that require of me?
00:49:45.380 --> 00:49:48.900
How does that change what I'm doing? How does it change what I'm doing as a
00:49:48.900 --> 00:49:53.100
diplomat? How does it change what the UN is doing in a certain space and how
00:49:53.100 --> 00:49:57.960
it's positioning and posturing and what is encouraging or discouraging?
00:49:58.500 --> 00:50:03.920
So very important, kind of very human traits to bring us back to.
00:50:04.340 --> 00:50:07.580
And that's what I'm seeing. We talked about what changes in these various fields.
00:50:08.260 --> 00:50:12.840
That investment into the human side of things, the human skills.
00:50:12.840 --> 00:50:18.260
I see a massive investment happening, you know, in capabilities and infrastructures
00:50:18.260 --> 00:50:22.440
and hardware and computational structures and compute.
00:50:23.040 --> 00:50:27.520
Where we're seeing a massive drop is that investment in what does this mean
00:50:27.520 --> 00:50:29.740
for building human skills?
00:50:29.940 --> 00:50:32.980
What does it mean to build literacy among people?
00:50:33.080 --> 00:50:37.260
What does it mean in terms of building more protective layers around those who
00:50:37.260 --> 00:50:38.740
are more vulnerable in society?
00:50:39.180 --> 00:50:43.820
And I'm thinking particularly now of children. But also people that are coming
00:50:43.820 --> 00:50:47.980
from the aging population or people that might find themselves in conflict in
00:50:47.980 --> 00:50:49.680
highly contentious environments.
00:50:50.080 --> 00:50:52.240
How do we build those protective layers?
00:50:53.760 --> 00:50:59.200
And that requires a lot of deep thinking and sitting with a lot of uncertainty
00:50:59.200 --> 00:51:06.180
and facing up to both the discomfort of these conflicting realities and also
00:51:06.180 --> 00:51:09.960
the discomfort of that there is no such thing as full certainty.
00:51:09.960 --> 00:51:12.620
And I think technology has just amplified that.
00:51:12.900 --> 00:51:17.800
But it's also very exciting, all that possibility for growth and learning.
00:51:18.040 --> 00:51:21.980
I just wondered, going back to the poem that we started with,
00:51:22.260 --> 00:51:24.620
you know, finding the ground beneath our feet.
00:51:25.220 --> 00:51:32.300
Also, perhaps to close, I was wondering what would be the step you would invite us to take first?
00:51:33.245 --> 00:51:37.705
So I will go back to where I started off, which is this notion around discernment.
00:51:38.525 --> 00:51:43.265
You know, I would strengthen discernment as a, for lack of a better word,
00:51:43.345 --> 00:51:44.505
as a sustained practice.
00:51:44.965 --> 00:51:52.945
So this willingness to remain with complexity without collapsing it into simplified frames.
00:51:54.045 --> 00:51:59.705
And I would say to really try to instill this, you know, in people,
00:51:59.925 --> 00:52:04.985
in institutions, this courage to protect nuance, even when it's very inconvenient.
00:52:07.005 --> 00:52:11.765
And back to the poem, you know, begin close in. You know, that's the phrase
00:52:11.765 --> 00:52:13.565
that Whyte uses and suggests.
00:52:14.005 --> 00:52:17.925
And to me, that means staying attentive to the ground beneath your feet.
00:52:18.185 --> 00:52:22.365
And it means, going back to what I said earlier, like involve all your senses.
00:52:22.925 --> 00:52:28.465
You know, what are you seeing? What are you sensing? If something feels off, it probably is.
00:52:29.245 --> 00:52:33.225
And the ground is not certainty. I don't think that's what he's referring to
00:52:33.225 --> 00:52:37.305
and it's certainly not what I read from the poem. It is actual responsibility.
00:52:38.065 --> 00:52:44.365
It is a discipline of asking what we know, what we do not know, how we know it.
00:52:44.485 --> 00:52:49.985
So going back to their hermeneutics and heuristics, what meaning do we attach to it?
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Do we give to it? Who's saying it?
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Whose story are we listening to and who gets to tell the story?
00:52:56.725 --> 00:52:59.865
And maybe very importantly who
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may be affected by the systems we are embedding and
00:53:02.985 --> 00:53:07.725
what are the differentiated impacts you know as they call it because not no
00:53:07.725 --> 00:53:13.265
system and no trajectory no political decision is going to impact on people
00:53:13.265 --> 00:53:21.685
in the same way are we sufficiently ready to kind of engage with those differentiated impacts on people and.
00:53:22.676 --> 00:53:25.976
You know, I said this in the beginning, you know, to kind of return to Whyte,
00:53:26.296 --> 00:53:31.336
one of his other poems, and I won't read it out here, but he kind of really
00:53:31.336 --> 00:53:36.236
emphasizes this notion of asking difficult and what he says, beautiful questions.
00:53:37.296 --> 00:53:42.076
And I mentioned earlier Maria Popova, and she has written that questions we
00:53:42.076 --> 00:53:45.576
ask shape the size of the world we inhabit. it.
00:53:45.616 --> 00:53:50.576
And I really come to believe that in diplomacy, the capacity to ask such questions
00:53:50.576 --> 00:53:54.116
is not a liability, but a kind of superpower.
00:53:54.556 --> 00:53:59.176
And we need to become unafraid of it, because the right question asked with
00:53:59.176 --> 00:54:01.576
the right intention can really shift the room.
00:54:01.696 --> 00:54:04.976
And I've seen this happen time and time again in my career.
00:54:05.316 --> 00:54:09.756
But I'm also seeing that that courage, you know, sometimes to do it is,
00:54:09.756 --> 00:54:13.236
you know, for a variety of reasons, maybe very natural reasons,
00:54:13.456 --> 00:54:15.876
is not as commonplace anymore.
00:54:16.436 --> 00:54:20.216
And because it can really lower defenses, you know, we spoke about disarmament,
00:54:20.276 --> 00:54:25.136
it can really disarm a room, and it can invite thought where there was only
00:54:25.136 --> 00:54:28.096
posture in the beginning. It can create common ground where,
00:54:28.096 --> 00:54:30.976
you know, where none seemed available at the same time.
00:54:31.156 --> 00:54:34.236
So this is going back to this kind of notion of how do we listen?
00:54:34.776 --> 00:54:38.516
And I've seen time and time again that, you know, and I'm a trained diplomat,
00:54:38.656 --> 00:54:43.376
and as a trained diplomat, you often come into a room with a very clear position,
00:54:43.576 --> 00:54:44.736
with a very clear posture.
00:54:45.176 --> 00:54:49.236
But when you get very embedded into that, I need to get that across.
00:54:49.516 --> 00:54:52.876
You know, I'm going to win this argument. I'm going to get people to agree with
00:54:52.876 --> 00:54:55.956
me. This is the posture. This is the position I need people to agree with.
00:54:56.796 --> 00:55:02.476
Your sense of hearing disappears. So you're not listening to where there might be convergence.
00:55:03.176 --> 00:55:09.436
You are constantly on alert. Your whole, you know, amygdala is kind of fired
00:55:09.436 --> 00:55:13.456
up and is listening to where there might be divergences.
00:55:13.976 --> 00:55:18.056
And I've seen people come out of negotiations, you know, and all they heard
00:55:18.056 --> 00:55:19.376
was where there were disagreements.
00:55:20.129 --> 00:55:22.609
And when I pointed out, I was like, oh, but that's really interesting because
00:55:22.609 --> 00:55:25.409
I heard you actually have agreement on this.
00:55:25.909 --> 00:55:29.269
And they didn't hear it because it was not part of the posturing.
00:55:29.269 --> 00:55:32.149
So they kind of failed to see where the agreement might lie.
00:55:32.629 --> 00:55:35.729
Now, that doesn't always invite that there will be, you know,
00:55:35.929 --> 00:55:38.129
treaty or consensus around anything.
00:55:38.129 --> 00:55:41.429
But it kind of allows you at a kind of very human level,
00:55:41.589 --> 00:55:46.589
maybe build on something that allows you to go into the more difficult questions
00:55:46.589 --> 00:55:53.429
where, you know, disagreement and divergence might exist and will continue to exist.
00:55:53.429 --> 00:55:56.809
But it allows you to maybe embrace it slightly differently.
00:55:57.049 --> 00:56:01.069
The other thing I would say is that caution against is what I said earlier.
00:56:01.249 --> 00:56:03.429
Don't lean into binaries too quickly.
00:56:04.509 --> 00:56:08.609
Ask whose narrative is shaping the frame. Get out of the passenger seat.
00:56:08.829 --> 00:56:13.649
Ask who benefits, who bears a risk, what is being normalized,
00:56:13.929 --> 00:56:17.529
you know, through the language that is being chosen for this particular debate.
00:56:18.029 --> 00:56:23.069
And I would just bring my attention to one person that really impacted on my
00:56:23.069 --> 00:56:27.229
entire career and my scholarship and my thinking, which is my late professor,
00:56:27.429 --> 00:56:28.809
Professor Christopher Coker.
00:56:29.249 --> 00:56:33.749
And he wrote his talk about humane warfare, obviously arguing that there's no
00:56:33.749 --> 00:56:34.929
such thing as humane warfare.
00:56:34.929 --> 00:56:38.649
He wrote it in 2001, so it's a long time ago,
00:56:38.829 --> 00:56:42.229
and I really recommend people to read it because it was way ahead of his time
00:56:42.229 --> 00:56:46.449
addressing some of these dilemmas and ethical conundrums,
00:56:46.449 --> 00:56:50.869
etc., we face with now in terms of how technology impacts on international security
00:56:50.869 --> 00:56:56.089
and our thinking about war and warfare and the ethos of war, the ethos of conflict.
00:56:56.469 --> 00:57:03.109
And he warned that real danger lies in how we are distancing ourselves from our own humanity.
00:57:03.844 --> 00:57:09.464
So in governing powerful technologies there is a risk that that distance can grow quietly,
00:57:10.164 --> 00:57:13.604
and the stewardship that is required
00:57:13.604 --> 00:57:19.704
is in that we notice it and then we resist it and not only for ourselves but
00:57:19.704 --> 00:57:23.964
for those who will you know have to live with and are impacted by or even inherit
00:57:23.964 --> 00:57:30.684
the systems that that we're shaping so i think this kind of notion of asking difficult questions,
00:57:30.984 --> 00:57:36.744
for me, is not about sharpening divisions, but is to deepen understanding.
00:57:37.184 --> 00:57:42.044
And the more we deepen understanding, the more it allows us to be mindful of
00:57:42.044 --> 00:57:43.924
the assumptions that we bring into it.
00:57:44.064 --> 00:57:49.764
As I said, we challenge our own hubris, the frames that we adopt,
00:57:50.084 --> 00:57:53.884
the paradigms that we like to kind of apply to everything we see,
00:57:54.064 --> 00:57:57.384
and the histories that we shape with our interpretations.
00:57:57.384 --> 00:58:01.304
And just going back, this is why I think it's so important with libraries and
00:58:01.304 --> 00:58:05.764
archives, you know, this kind of at the core of how democracy works,
00:58:05.884 --> 00:58:11.424
because libraries and archives really allows us to challenge those assumptions.
00:58:11.424 --> 00:58:17.104
And I think also becomes wildly important as we are needing to deal more with
00:58:17.104 --> 00:58:20.564
more and more with content that gets generated.
00:58:21.324 --> 00:58:26.544
How do we know what we're looking at is historically accurate and how do we
00:58:26.544 --> 00:58:34.464
protect the archives from being tampered with or being used in ways that they shouldn't be used?
00:58:34.464 --> 00:58:43.144
And I always say we need to keep a very physical copy of our lived experiences
00:58:43.144 --> 00:58:45.464
to fully be able to live our experiences.
00:58:46.004 --> 00:58:51.184
What a wonderful way to end. I think you have really very much shown us the way,
00:58:51.364 --> 00:58:55.984
our first steps forward and given us so much food for thought.
00:58:56.164 --> 00:59:00.984
Thank you so much, Anja. Thank you so much, Anja. Thank you so much for having me.