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The United States’ International Cyberspace and Digital Policy Strategy [1]

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Date: 2024-05 

THE WASHINGTON FOREIGN PRESS CENTER, WASHINGTON, D.C.

MODERATOR: Hello. Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the Washington Foreign Press Center’s virtual briefing today. My name is Jake Goshert. I’m the moderator for today’s briefing on the United States International Cyberspace and Digital Policy Strategy. This briefing will be on the record, and we will post a transcript of the briefing on our website, fpc.state.gov, later today when it’s available. For all the journalists joining us on Zoom today, please take a moment now to rename yourself in the chat window with your name, your outlet, and country so we know who is joining us. But with that quick opening, it’s my pleasure to introduce Ambassador Nate Fick the Ambassador at Large for State Department’s Bureau of Cyberspace and Digital Policy for his opening remarks today. I’ll hand it over to Ambassador Fick.

AMBASSADOR FICK: Thank you very much, and thanks, everybody, for making time to join today. I thought I would just offer maybe five minutes of summary comments on the strategy, and then we can make this interactive. And I’m happy to field your questions for the balance of the time we have together.

So earlier this month on the main stage at the RSA cyber security conference in San Francisco, Secretary Blinken released the United States International Cyberspace and Digital Policy Strategy. The strategy was tasked to my organization, the CDP Bureau, in the National Defense Authorization Act last year. And we’ve been working for more than a year across the U.S. Government in order to release this document, the first refresh of the United States international strategy on these issues in more than a decade. And having Secretary Blinken at RSA was also quite meaningful. It was the first time that a sitting Secretary of State spoke at that conference.

And the strategy itself offers a roadmap, an intellectual framework, as we go about making truly generational decisions in the technology space. And it’s north star – it’s organizing principle – is the concept of digital solidarity. If we want to build a vibrant and secure tech future, then none of us – not the most powerful or largest countries in the world, not the biggest and most capable tech companies, none of us – can afford to go it alone. Standing shoulder to shoulder with partners and allies is essential. And only together can we truly advance a shared vision for a rights-respecting, innovative, and secure tech ecosystem.

Definitionally, we think we about digital solidarity as a willingness to work together on shared goals, a willingness to stand together to help partners build capacity to provide mutual support. It recognizes – digital solidarity recognizes that everybody who seeks to use digital tech in a rights-respecting manner is more secure, more resilient, and more prosperous when we work together to shape the international environment in order to innovate, in order to collaborate on everything from norms to regulations to technical standards.

And in order to build this broad concept of digital solidarity, this strategy lays out three guiding principles. The first of them is an affirmative vision for a secure and inclusive cyberspace. And we are quite deliberate about this. It is incumbent upon the United States not to force a choice between different tech ecosystems, but rather to provide a more compelling option for others to choose. So what we’re trying to do here is truly integrate cybersecurity, sustainable development, and tech innovation across everything that we do, and a comprehensive policy approach in this area uses all the appropriate tools of diplomacy and statecraft across the full digital ecosystem. So those principles – first, an affirmative vision; second, this full integration of cybersecurity, sustainable development, and innovation; and third, the whole digital ecosystem, not only cyber security as traditionally defined but everything from the cloud to cables – right – every aspect of that architecture of the internet is important to what we’re doing.

And building on those three principles, we have four areas of action in the strategy. The first of them is to promote, build, and maintain an open, inclusive, secure, and resilient digital ecosystem. That’s something that the United States has championed for decades now. The second is to align rights-respecting approaches to digital and data governance with our international partners around the world. The third is to advance responsible state behavior in cyberspace. Recall that every UN member state has repeatedly now endorsed the framework for responsible state behavior in cyberspace at the United Nations. And to counter threats to cyberspace and the critical infrastructure by building coalitions and working with partners. And then fourth, to build international partner capacity in these areas, cyber security and digital issues, including the capacity to combat cyber crime, which is a scourge for so many people around the world.

And so the strategy does all of this in an environment where repressive regimes and other actors have misused cyber and digital tools in order to threaten peace and stability, in order to harm others, in order to exert malign influence, and really foundationally to undermine human rights. So this is a clear statement that the United States will work with allies, partners, and stakeholders – companies, civil society, and others – all around the world in order to shape the design, the development, the governance, and the use of cyber and digital infrastructure in order to advance economic prosperity, in order to advance the inclusion of all people, in order to enhance security and combat crime in the digital arena, to promote and protect human rights, and to address transnational challenges together.

So that is fundamentally what we’re trying to do in the strategy. We have an implementation framework now to make sure that we are taking those ideas and fully translating them into our policies at the State Department and across the different agencies of the U.S. Government. So maybe with that, just by way of introduction, I’m happy to pause and take any questions you may have. Thank you.

MODERATOR: Thank you, Ambassador. So we’ll take questions. Journalists, please make sure to rename yourself in the Zoom room with your name, your outlet, and your country. If you have a question, please click the “raise hand” icon. We’ll start with our first question I see from Alex. Alex, if you could unmute yourself and introduce yourself and ask your question.

QUESTION: Hey, Jake. Thank you so much for doing this. Ambassador, thank you so much for your time. This is Alex Raufoglu from Turan News Agency. I want to ask about Russian – increasing cyber attacks coming from Russia within Europe. It got heightened. There’s a heightened action that we have seen in Europe over suspected Russian hackers, spies, since, if you want, the brutal invasion of Ukraine. And also I should mention we are in a run-up to European elections. Germany’s accusations from last week and also followed by Czech Republic’s accusations, and then we had British statements about particular Russian spies and targeting their entities. Why is this happening now? And how much do you think Russian cyber attacks could fall under war crimes? Thanks so much.

AMBASSADOR FICK: Yeah, thank you. So first of all, I don’t think there’s much new here. Russia has been an egregious violator of the framework for responsible state behavior in cyberspace in many ways, for a long time, including clearly documented interference in the U.S. election back in 2016. So obviously, in the wake of Russia’s further invasion of Ukraine, tension in Europe has only become more acute. Russia launched – has used significant cyber attacks and disruption inside Ukraine.

Now, thankfully, public-private partnership among the Ukrainian Government, the U.S. Government, and others, and technology companies has gone a long way toward blunting or mitigating the effects of those attacks. And a couple of concrete examples I would give you are the migration of the Ukrainian Government’s enterprise to the cloud and the threat intel feedback sharing loop among the U.S. Government and the Ukrainian Government, NATO governments, and technology providers with a lot of infrastructure on the ground in Ukraine that has enabled them to push patches and updates and to blunt the effects of Russian cyber attacks in Ukraine.

Now, beyond the borders of Ukraine and in Europe, it’s – to other parts of Europe, we did, of course, see the Russian attack on the ViaSat satellite network back around the time of the further invasion. And the United States and its NATO partners, of course, are vigilant in observing, watching out for any other Russian cyber attack activity in Europe. And I think the U.S. and the NATO Alliance have made very clear that cyber attacks on NATO Allies are completely unacceptable and would potentially trigger significant consequences.

So I think the bottom line: nothing new here. Russia has been a destabilizing cyber actor for some time. They’ve launched really significant cyber attacks in Ukraine, many of which have been blunted or minimized thanks to collaboration between the public and private sectors. And NATO stands ready to defend every inch of NATO territory, both in the physical world and also in the digital domain. Thank you.

MODERATOR: Okay. Again, journalists, if you have a question, please click the “raise hand” icon. We’ll go to Axel. Axel, if you can unmute yourself and introduce yourself and ask your question.

QUESTION: Hello, Ambassador. This is Axel Storm from German TV (inaudible). Also from me, thank you for your time. I have a question regarding the major threats in cyber security these days. Do you see that there has been a change in terms of what can happen in cyberspace? I mean, we also – we always hear about attacks on critical infrastructure, energy infrastructure, and all these things, so if you could update me on that. And maybe a second question regarding Germany. Germany is also facing an election next year. Has there been an update on the situation regarding Europe and/or Germany? Thank you so much.

AMBASSADOR FICK: Thank you for both of those questions. Let me address the question of broad themes first.

Look, I think broadly speaking, all of us have become more vulnerable to cyber attacks as every aspect of our lives has become more digitized, of course. As our education systems and energy systems and health care systems and financial systems become increasingly transformed by digital innovation, that brings enormous advances in all of those areas – advances in services and products for consumers, advances in speed, advances in security, et cetera. But it also brings with it some vulnerability and some costs. And so I think that is – the macro trend is one of increased exposure, larger attack surfaces as more and more of our governments and private enterprises, and by extension individual citizens’ lives, have gone online or have become digitized.

The attackers, of course, are incredibly innovative, but so are the defenders. And so we often hear scary claims about what AI is going to do to turbo-charge cyber attacks. But I would point out that it’s also going to turbo-charge cyber defense. The application of AI in order to, for example, build better software; for software developers using AI in order to dramatically reduce the number of bugs in their software. That kind of thing over time is going to dramatically increase cyber security as well. So I think that there are – as is usually the case, there are advantages and disadvantages in this domain. It continues to be something of an arms race.

With respect to Germany, I think obviously the United States, Germany, other European countries and democracies around the world that face elections this year are concerned about maintaining the integrity of those elections. And I think we’re not talking about constraining free speech domestically inside of any of our countries; we’re really talking about the need to ensure that there is no foreign malign influence, that foreign governments, foreign intelligence services, adversary services are not manipulating public opinion or interfering with the casting or tallying of votes themselves. It’s a concern for us in the U.S.; it’s obviously a concern that we have on behalf of our allies around the world, including Germany.

If I could go one step further on Germany in particular, I think that it – we believe that it’s really imperative that when we think about cyber security, we’re thinking about the security of the entire digital stack. And again, that’s one of the foundational principles of this strategy. We need to think about the security of cables, of data centers, of wireless networks. And so it’s really important – indeed, essential – that economies, governments like Germany take very seriously the need to deploy trusted technologies across every layer of that digital stack. And that’s obviously something that we’re in constant dialogue with our German counterparts about. Thank you.

MODERATOR: Okay. We’ll move next to a question from Holly. Holly, if you could unmute yourself, introduce yourself, and ask your question, please.

QUESTION: Thank you, Ambassador. This is Holly with the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong. I’d like to focus my question on China. And will – in the international cyber strategy released earlier this month, China was described as “the broadest, most active, and most persistent cyber threat” to the U.S. I’m just wondering if you can expand on this and tell us more about the threats from China.

And my second question is about AI collaborations. So earlier this month, Chinese and American officials met in Geneva, and they mainly talked about AI safety and risks. I’m just wondering if there were any talks on possible collaborations and how to foster joint research in – within the scientific community. Thank you.

AMBASSADOR FICK: Thanks very much. Let me – let me take the China question first. The strategy is quite clear, and public testimony by other U.S. officials recently, including the director of our Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, Jen Easterly; the director of our FBI, Christopher Wray; the recently retired commander of USCYBERCOM, U.S. Cyber Command, General Nakasone – all have said essentially the same thing: that the global community of security researchers – not only the United States, but truly a global community of security researchers – forensically, technically, empirically has determined that China is holding critical infrastructure in the United States and in other countries at risk, including things like power and water and logistics, and that this is dangerous, this is escalatory, and this is not in keeping with the framework for responsible state behavior in cyberspace that China has repeatedly affirmed.

So I was with Secretary Blinken in Beijing several weeks ago. He raised this point quite directly with Chinese counterparts in order to make clear, again, that we view this kind of behavior as dangerous, destabilizing, and escalatory.

With respect to AI, yes, members of my team met with Chinese counterparts in Geneva about 10 days ago in order to follow up on a commitment made between President Biden and President Xi at Woodside to engage in a dialogue on the safety of artificial intelligence. And I think the underlying philosophy here is that all of us on the planet face fantastic challenges around things like climate change and weather forecasting and agricultural productivity, and ensuring that we can feed everyone on Earth, and many of these challenges can perhaps be lessened with the applications of emerging technologies, including AI.

And so it’s imperative that the United States and China find ways to collaborate on uses of AI for the common good of humanity around the world. And this dialogue is, we hope, the beginning of a communications channel in support of that objective that will allow the United States and China to find areas to collaborate and work together, even as they compete in other areas. And we think that that’s essential, given how important AI will be to solving these sorts of global challenges. Thank you.

MODERATOR: Okay. Ambassador, we have a question in the chat. I’ll go ahead and read that from Hugo Séneca in Portugal. The question is: “If you as an ambassador have the same diplomatic status of a regular ambassador, do digital ambassadors meet with other digital ambassadors?”

AMBASSADOR FICK: It’s a funny organizational question. I’m happy to elaborate. So as technology issues have become more central to foreign policy, not only in the United States but everywhere around the world, many governments have begun building organizations, creating roles, in order to mainstream these tech issues in their foreign policy.

The United States was not the first to create the role of tech ambassador. Many countries created these roles in the years before we did, about two years ago. And most of us cover cybersecurity or digital policy or both. My role happens to encompass cyber, digital, and emerging tech. So many ministries organize a little bit differently around it. And we do, in fact, meet on a fairly regular basis with counterparts. Some countries have digital ministers and some have digital ambassadors. And so I tend to interact on the digital minister track at places like the G7 or the G20 or ASEAN, alongside a mix of digital ambassadors and digital ministers.

Just a couple weeks ago in San Francisco, about almost four dozen digital ambassadors or their counterparts from around the world got together for an annual retreat, co-sponsored by the governments of Denmark and Australia, in order to continue to build the relationships among the group, in order to share lessons learned. Because all of us are, in some respects, trying to accomplish the same objective of ensuring that technology issues are mainstreamed in our foreign policy. Thank you.

MODERATOR: We have two questions here. We’ll go to Venkat first. Venkat, if you can please unmute yourself, introduce yourself, and ask your question.

Did we lose Venkat? We’ll move on to Mohamed. Mohamed, if you could please unmute yourself and introduce yourself and ask your question.

QUESTION: Thank you, Jake. Thank you, Ambassador. I have just two questions. First question, sir – there are some reports of Israel using AI weapons in Gaza. Could you provide us a little bit information on this issue? And how the U.S. plans to address to use such technologies in conflict zones like Gaza? And my second question, sir: Can you tell us a little more about the cybersecurity cooperation between the United States and UAE? Thank you so much.

AMBASSADOR FICK: Mohamed, I’m going to ask you to repeat, if you don’t mind, a part of your first question. I heard you asking about Israeli use of AI weapons in Gaza, and then before you moved on to the second question about UAE, I did not hear the rest of what you said. Could you repeat that, please?

QUESTION: Yes, sir. Can you hear me okay now?

AMBASSADOR FICK: Yes, thank you.

QUESTION: Okay. My first question again – there is some reports of Israel using AI weapons in Gaza. Could you provide information on these issues and how the U.S. plans to address the use of such technologies in conflict zone like Gaza or in Middle East? Thank you, sir.

AMBASSADOR FICK: Thank you. I think that obviously the applications of artificial intelligence are changing every aspect of national power. We can expect that they are going to be – that AI is going to be integrated into weapons systems of all kinds by countries all around the world. And as we do with every other use of technology, the United States believes very strongly that the integrations of critical and emerging technologies into military systems must be done in ways that are in keeping with other international commitments that are fundamentally rights-respecting and that we sustain that open dialogue on these topics among allies and partners. Beyond that, I don’t have any specifics to share about any particular applications of AI and weapon systems by Israel or by any other country.

With respect to cyber cooperation between the United States and the UAE, I would say that the United Arab Emirates is a robust technology economy. The UAE was the first country in the world to appoint an AI minister, a minister whose portfolio covers artificial intelligence exclusively. And the U.S. and UAE have a deep collaboration across many facets of technology, including cyber security, where the UAE has been an active leader in the Counter Ransomware Initiative stood up by the White House here in the United States over the last several years. The UAE hosted the last meeting of the world radio conference – the every-four-year gathering, where radio spectrum issues are worked out and agreed to among all UN member states.

I was in Dubai late last year for that meeting. And most recently, of course, Microsoft has announced an investment in G42, the really world-leading artificial intelligence business that is based in UAE. And we’ve been in close contact with UAE Government, with G42, and with Microsoft to help ensure that that investment, that partnership and collaboration furthers are goal of responsible development, deployment, and use of AI around the world. Thanks.

MODERATOR: Okay. I think we have time for one last question, so we’ll go back to Venkat. Venkat, if you can unmute yourself and ask your question – introduce yourself and ask your question, please.

QUESTION: Hi, I am Venkat from city of Hyderabad in India. Sir, I have – thanks for your time. I have one question for you. Does United States have any collaboration with India in cyberspace and digital technologies, and what are your plans for India? Thank you.

AMBASSADOR FICK: Thank you, Venkat. Yes. Certainly, the United States and India agree that the way to which technology is designed and developed and governed and used should be shaped by our shared democratic values, by respect for universal human rights. We are committed – I think both committed – to fostering an open, accessible, and secure technology ecosystem that’s based on mutual trust and confidence, that will reinforce our democratic values and democratic institutions.

We – I was in – I was in India last year over the course of India’s leadership of the G20, and last year we also elevated the U.S.-Indian Strategic Partnership by convening a bilateral initiative on critical and emerging technologies. And that collaboration has resulted already in a number of deliverables, including a new implementation arrangement for a research agency partnership between the National Science Foundation in the United States and Indian science agencies in order to expand international collaboration in a whole range of areas, including AI, quantum, and advanced wireless technologies.

A second deliverable was the establishment of a joint Indo-U.S. Quantum Coordination Mechanism, and that includes participation from industry, from academia, and from government in order to facilitate research and development of cutting-edge quantum science. A third deliverable from that elevation of the U.S.-Indian Strategic Partnership has been advancing cooperation on R&D in 5G and 6G, facilitating the deployment of open radio access networks, open RAN in India, and trying to build quickly to globally economies of scale in that sector. So yes, I think a rich – a rich and multifaceted technology partnership exists between the United States and India.

Thank you.

MODERATOR: Okay. We’ll go ahead and end the Q&A session there. Ambassador Fick, I want to turn it over to you if you have any last thoughts you wanted to share.

AMBASSADOR FICK: I want to thank you all for your interest in the strategy, your attention to it. I would encourage you, please, to now watch as we go about implementing it, ensuring that digital solidarity, close partnership broadly on these topics remains our guiding principle – and that as we implement that principle of digital solidarity, you’ll see us taking a whole-ecosystem approach across the full technology spec. You’ll see us looking at the integration of security, development, and tech innovation. And we are always going to lead with the affirmative vision, the idea of the reality that we are not trying to force anyone to choose but rather we’re trying to provide a better and more compelling choice. So thank you all very much for the opportunity to spend time with you, and I look forward to following up in the year ahead.

MODERATOR: So thank you for your time, Ambassador, and thank you to all the journalists joining us today. This ends today’s briefing. Thank you very much.

AMBASSADOR FICK: Thank you.

[END]
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