ウィスパリング同時通訳研究会コミュのTrusted Connectivity: Securing digital infrastructure in an era of strategic competition with China

FREDERICK KEMPE: Hello and welcome. I’m Fred Kempe, president and CEO of the Atlantic Council, and I’d like to welcome you to the latest event in the Council’s Trusted Connectivity Forum.
Just a couple of weeks ago, we had the privilege of hosting the President of Estonia, Her Excellency Kersti Kaljulaid, and Deputy National Security Adviser for Cyber and Emerging Technology Anne Neuberger for a discussion on the need for the United States and its democratic allies and partners to work toward trusted connectivity. Trusted connectivity provides a basis for working across borders to build and secure the digital and physical infrastructure that is increasingly binding our world together.
Today, we have the distinct honor of hosting Prime Minister of the Republic of Estonia Her Excellency Kaja Kallas to advance our discussion on securing infrastructure in an era of strategic competition with China. Nothing could be more timely. Prime Minister Kallas, thank you so much for joining us this afternoon.
Co-hosted by the Council’s Scowcroft Center and its Forward Defense practice, the Digital Forensic Research Lab, the Europe Center, the GeoEconomics Center, and the GeoTech Center—so, so many parts of the Atlantic Council are involved today—today’s conversation will cover how secure digital infrastructure can and must be built through close cooperation between US and allied governments and across industry. In an era defined by both revolutionary technological advancements and accelerating geopolitical competition, modernizing global infrastructure is not only a profound economic opportunity; it’s also a security imperative.
Global leaders recognize this and are working to effectively leverage emerging technological advancements. Internationally, the G-7 leaders recently reached consensus on countering Chinese predatory infrastructure partnerships, establishing the Build Back Better World initiative, and likewise the Three Seas Initiative where Estonia has been a leader, where the Atlantic Council has worked very, very hard to advance it. The Three Seas Initiative remains a strong model for global cooperation on digital and data-driven issues.
Domestically, policy initiatives such as the US Innovation and Competition Act of 2021 are designed to strengthen US leadership in critical technologies. And discussions like the Tallinn Digital Summit, which Estonia is preparing to host this September, similarly advance our global thinking on digitalization.
As President Kaljulaid and Ms. Neuberger addressed at our last event, trusted connectivity may offer a viable strategic framework for democratic nations to incentivize ambitious and interconnected infrastructure projects among the private sector to secure that infrastructure against incursions by malign actors and to counter Chinese technological investments by providing a viable infrastructure alternative to the Belt and Road Initiative. However, there remain significant obstacles to implementing this framework.
Most critically, technological and legal standards, industries and the products they develop, and visions for the future of economic vitality, societal resilience, and national security are not aligned among many democratic nations. This dissonance challenges the creation of a unified approach, and that increases vulnerabilities that malign actors can and will exploit, and do exploit.
If trusted connectivity is to serve as a key pillar of a multilateral and multistakeholder approach to addressing twenty-first-century technological challenges alongside existing initiatives like Build Back Better World, the Blue Dot Network, and the US Innovation and Competition Act, then the United States, Estonia, and likeminded democratic nations and their industrial partners must collaborate to overcome these obstacles.
We are so fortunate to be joined by Prime Minister Kallas, an esteemed political leader but also digital leader who deeply knows and understands these issues. Elected in January 2021, Prime Minister Kallas is the first woman to hold the position of prime minister in the history of the Republic of Estonia. Throughout her career she has been a staunch defender of digital privacy and personal information, a proponent of innovation and emerging technology, and a believer in the importance of the revolutionary technological change as demonstrated by her pivotal role on the European Parliament’s Committee on Industry, Research, and Technology, which is, I believe, when we first hosted her here at the Atlantic Council. In 2017, Politico acknowledged Prime Minister Kallas as a tech titan for her distinguished work on digital issues in the European Parliament and listed her as one of that year’s women who shape Brussels. Madam Prime Minister, thank you very much for being with us today.
Joining the prime minister is Congressman Ro Khanna—and we’re so delighted to have him here—representing the 17th District of California and a champion himself of twenty-first-century digital world and particularly infrastructure security. He serves as a member of the Armed Services Committee, the Agriculture Committee, and the Oversight Committee, and as chair of the Oversight environmental subcommittee in the US House of Representatives. Most notable for today’s discussion, Representative Khanna introduced the Endless Frontiers Act, now the US Innovation and Competition Act, which makes bold investments in research, development, and manufacturing of critical technologies to preserve American innovation and leadership worldwide. Congressman, thank you for joining us and sharing your insights with us in a few minutes.
Our third speaker today—and this is quite a trifecta—is Peter Harrell, senior director for international economics and competitiveness on the US National Security Council. He previously served as deputy assistant secretary for state for Counter Threat Finance and Sanctions within the Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs under the Obama administration.
And moderating this discussion will be Dr. Kaush Arha, the nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center. He was senior advisor on strategic engagement at the US Agency for International Development, or USAID, and in 2020 he served as the G-7 sherpa for the Blue Dot Network.
Before I turn it over to Kaush for this timely discussion, let me remind you all that this event is public and on the record. We encourage our audience on Zoom to direct any questions to Prime Minister Kallas using the Q&A tab, which you can find at the bottom of your screen—and I would say directing your questions to any of the speakers. Be sure to identify yourself and your affiliation in your questions. We will be collecting them throughout the event and Kaush will pose some to our guests at the end. We also encourage our online audience to join the conversation on Twitter by following @AtlanticCouncil and using the hashtag #ForwardDefense.
Thank you all for joining the Atlantic Council for what I know will be a captivating conversation. And, Kaush, without further ado, over to you.

KAUSH ARHA: Thank you very much, Fred. And so, Fred and Prime Minister, welcome. We were delighted to have the president here and we’re honored to have you here.
Now, as you became—and Estonia is the proud country today to have two elected women as the leaders, both the president and the prime minister, so I think it’s a distinct honor. And as you became the prime minister, you had to deal with the COVID issue. And dealing with the COVID issue in a country like Estonia, with the strong record of e-governance that you have and the trust that you’ve built in the digital sphere, it would be great to hear your perspective on how dealing with COVID and talking about trusted connectivity, how does Estonia see this and where does Estonia go from here. Over to you.

PRIME MINISTER KAJA KALLAS: Yes, thank you. I think, first of all, this was a situation where we suddenly found ourselves, and some kind of—this crisis gave us opportunity to look at things in a different way. It is true that in Estonia we have considered ourselves to be the e-country. So, we had e-government. We also had e-health, e-education. So, I think we were most prepared for going online. But still, I mean, such issues that we see in other countries as, you know, fighting with fake news, what kind of information you can really trust and where do you get the information, these are the issues that are common everywhere.
And when it comes to trusted connectivity, then this COVID crisis has shown us that, you know, we need this kind of global trust network because right now we have vaccines, we have vaccinations, but how can you really trust that, you know, the certificates that the countries issue are proving that these people are vaccinated? How can you really trust each other? And this just brings this example how important it is that we discuss these issues on a global scale.
And of course, the other part of this is also the trusted connectivity when it comes to infrastructure investments that we do. What we see in all the different spheres, there’s not a single thing that doesn’t need a digital component to it. And when there is a digital component, how can we, you know, really, secure this when we have the fight between the democratic regimes and authoritarian regimes?
So, I welcome these discussions. I think there are different platforms addressing these issues, and the question to us is how to bring it all together.

MR. ARHA: Thank you very much, Prime Minister.

Representative Khanna, sir, you hail from the great state of California, which is, what, the seventh-largest economy, perhaps fifth-largest in the Indo-Pacific. Not only that; you are also hailing from Silicon Valley and the South Bay area. And you have been a leader in the Congress on issues related to technology and in particular making sure that the United States does not lose the competitive edge on technology, and also that our research and development funds for the emerging technologies don’t get lagging behind from our adversaries.
And so, thank you for all your good work on the Endless Frontiers and the US Innovation and Competition Act. It would be great to hear your perspective in what were the thinking behind this Act and where do we go with it and important issues that therein lie on the democratic response to connectivity globally.

REPRESENTATIVE RO KHANNA (D-CA): Well, thank you. Thank you to the Atlantic Council for having me. An honor to be here with the prime minister and Director Harrell.
It’s important to begin with what the United States federal government partnership with academia and the private sector has given the world. I mean, literally, our investment led to the creation of the internet. If you look at Vint Cerf, who was the creator of the IP protocol and the TCP protocol which allows for data to transmit from one place to the other, which allows for Estonia to have the e-government, us to have the internet, that was funded at DARPA. Vint Cerf was there for ten years, and that entire project was created with DARPA, with our research universities. That’s not just about American leadership in the world; that’s about the advancement of human civilization.
And so, what Endless Frontiers—which is a bipartisan effort with Senator Schumer, Senator Young, Representative Gallagher, which President Biden championed when he was on the campaign trail—is about is about in a Kennedyesque way exploring the next places of scientific research to improve humanity. And one—and the view is that if America does that, that’s what will allow us—which will earn us the leadership of the world.
And so, you look at a few places. Artificial intelligence. You know, we’re leading at MIT in thinking about how we do AI without massive amounts of data. Josh Tenenbaum at MIT is leading that. How do we fund those kind of initiatives? How do we fund quantum computing and understand how quantum computing may break encryption, and still understand what the challenges of encryption may be? How do we lead in clean technology and synthetic biology, and how do we do that in a way that’s collaborative with research universities and the private sector?
Last point I’ll say on this. I still believe that our research universities are unparalleled. We’re the only immigrant nation—truly immigrant nation in the world. When people start saying I want to go to China I’ll start worrying more, but right now they all want to come to the United States. And so, if we have this fundamental investment, I believe we will lead the twenty-first century in innovation. And who knows what we may find? We may discover something new, like we did the internet.

MR. ARHA: Thank you very much, Congressman.
And a pleasure to have you, Director Harrell. Now, Director Harrell, and talking about international economics and competitiveness, is dual-hatted—both in the National Economic Council and in the National Security Council. And thanks for you and the president’s leadership at the G-7, talking about meeting the global demand through democratic values, I think mobilizing the US-Europe technology-trade sort of council. It would be great to hear from you what the administration is thinking about these issues, where the next steps are, and how can we push the democratic response to meeting global connectivity demands.

PETER HARRELL: Thank you very much. It’s a pleasure to be here on this distinguished, distinguished panel.
I actually want to bring these two themes together because I think for the Biden administration and for President Biden part of having a trusted connected ecosystem is maintaining our competitive edge. You know, we are in an era of geopolitical strategic competition today, and as we look out around the world we think it is very important for projects around the world, development projects—whether they’re digital infrastructure or physical infrastructure—to be built by trusted providers.
You know, I think, obviously, over the last couple of years there’s been a lot of focus—I think very justified focus—on making sure that as we build 5G networks, you know, we as democratic countries are not using Huawei and other untrusted vendors in those networks. But there’s really a lot more to trusted connectivity than just 5G telecommunications. It’s about subsea cables. It’s about cloud data servers. It’s about who controls the data from apps, who controls the data that comes up through connected smart city sensors, through the devices all of us have at home. And so we, from a US government perspective, really think we need to be doing two things in order to have a trusted connected global ecosystem.
The first is really what can we do to help finance and support the development of trusted providers. So the president, for example, along with his G-7 partners, announced the Build Back Better World initiative at the G-7 summit, which is going to mobilize hundreds of billions of dollars of both government and private-sector capital to help provide an alternative for countries around the world to Chinese investment, making sure that if you’re in Southeast Asia or in Africa or Latin America you have an alternative where financing is available for trusted providers to come in and build your network infrastructure.
But over the long term, if we want to have trusted—a trusted ecosystem we need to maintain our competitive edge over China. We need to be making foundational investments to make sure that we continue to lead in next-generation technologies. Because we can provide financing for the technologies today—that’s important—but if we don’t maintain our edge five, eight years from now, the rest of the world is going to be turning to other technologies to build out their digital and physical infrastructure.
So for us, it’s both about financing and about making sure we have that competitive edge over the long term.

MR. ARHA: Really appreciate that. I think one of the important issues which was a long time coming was the G-7 announcement—one, the recognition that there is a global demand for infrastructure, maybe in $4 trillion – (inaudible) – once you go, or 1 trillion (dollars) it becomes a lot; and then that there will be a democratic response to meeting this demand. So, I think we talk a lot about countering authoritarian, but recognizing that there is a demand and that there needs to be a democratic response to meet it.
And when you talk about democracies inherently, the essence of democracies is public trust—you are eminent lawyers sitting around here—that we hold our government and we act as elected leaders in and on public trust from the governed, and once we lose the trust we get voted out. And so, the element of trusted connectivity, which you rightly point out goes beyond 5G, goes to all elements of connectivity—digital and physical infrastructure—is not just the technical trust part, but also the legal-political trust part of it, that it is a[n] organizing framework that recognizes individual rights and public trust and does not take them.
So, as we go forward in that exercise, it’ll be very useful for, I think, audience in here to understand the Estonian experience of it and how you set up addressing all the digital framework that Estonia did with full trust of the Estonian citizenry. So, it would be great to hear from you and what can we sort of learn from you as—from your experience. Over to you, Prime Minister.

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