Technology and Diplomacy: The Rise of Multilateralism in the Bay Area

Join Us

Join us on April 13, 2023 as we officially launch the report ‘Tech Diplomacy Practice in the San Francisco Bay Area’ and explore some of the thematics around it.

We will explore the practice of tech diplomacy and the impacts of geopolitics, the opportunities and challenges it represents both for diplomatic representations and tech companies, and their mutual interactions.
The event is hosted by Swissnex in San Francisco and Diplo, and supported by the Republic and Canton of Geneva.

More about the mapping report ‘Tech Diplomacy Practice in the San Francisco Bay Area’

In 2018, Diplo, in cooperation with Swissnex in San Francisco, the Consulate General of Switzerland in San Francisco, and the Geneva Internet Platform (GIP) conducted a techplomacy mapping exercise to explore how different diplomatic representations interact with the San Francisco Bay Area ecosystem.

Since the publication of the report, a lot has changed in the practice of tech diplomacy. The digital foreign policy of governments has matured, and recent events have propelled global digital policy issues as a topic on the diplomatic agenda. The COVID-19 crisis accelerated the use of digital technologies by everyone and the conflict in Ukraine shifted the narrative on neutrality used by global technology companies.

Additionally, the growth of US security concerns over Chinese based technology companies, and the bottlenecks around the regionalisation of the semiconductor supply chain have put the interactions between tech companies and governments into the forefront and brought Silicon Valley closer to the global debate.

These considerations brought us to update the 2017 mapping. The research done over the past few months led to the following key observations:

Tech diplomacy has matured, moving from informal engagements to more structured, formal engagements, which brings both benefits and issues to the parties involved
Governmental representations in the San Francisco Bay Area, and the structures within tech companies that act as partners to the conversation have both become more diverse and complex, adding challenges in reaching one another
There is an important culture and language divide between the tech and diplomatic world, which calls for specific support
Over the past few years, San Francisco is seeing more and more collaborations between diplomatic representations and tech companies to achieve common goals, thus bringing multilateralism into the Bay Area.

If you are interested in learning more about technology diplomacy, please check out this exclusive workshop happening on April 13 with Diplo.

Thursday, April 13, 2023
9–11:30am
Register

Bios

Bio

Jovan Kurbalija
Executive Director, Diplo
Dr Jovan Kurbalija is the Executive Director of DiploFoundation and Head of the Geneva Internet Platform (GIP). He was a member of the UN Working Group on Internet Governance (2004‒2005), special advisor to the Chairman of the UN Internet Governance Forum (2006‒2010), and a member of the High Level Multistakeholder Committee for NETmundial (2013‒2014). In 2018-2019, he served as co-Executive Director of the Secretariat of the United Nations (UN) High-level Panel on Digital Cooperation.

A former diplomat, Jovan has a professional and academic background in international law, diplomacy, and information technology. He has been a pioneer in the field of cyber diplomacy since 1992 when he established the Unit for Information Technology and Diplomacy at the Mediterranean Academy of Diplomatic Studies in Malta, and later, DiploFoundation.

Since 1997, Jovan’s research and articles on cyber diplomacy have shaped research and policy discussion on the impact of the Internet on diplomacy and international relations. His book, An Introduction to Internet Governance, has been translated into 9 languages and is used as a textbook for academic courses worldwide. He lectures on e-diplomacy and Internet governance in academic and training institutions in many countries, including Austria (Diplomatic Academy of Vienna), Belgium (College of Europe), Switzerland (University of St Gallen), Malta (University of Malta), and the United States (University of Southern California).
His publishes regular articles on Diplo’s blog, and the Huffington Post.