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

Anne Marie Engtoft Larsen
Tech Ambassador of Denmark
Anne Marie Engtoft Larsen is Denmark’s Tech Ambassador with responsibility for representing the Danish Government to the global tech industry and leading Danish efforts in global technology governance. TechPlomacy is a pioneering initiative elevating technology and digitalization to a crosscutting foreign and security policy priority of the Danish government. Anne Marie and her team have a global mandate and a physical presence in Silicon Valley, Copenhagen and Beijing, transcending borders and regions in rethinking the traditional understanding of a diplomatic representation.

Prior to her appointment, Anne Marie worked at World Economic Forum in Geneva (2017-2020) where she led the World Economic Forum’s work on the Fourth Industrial Revolution and Global Public Goods. Her focus was on mobilizing technology companies, governments and civil society to collaboratively tackle the barriers that prevent emerging technology from scaling responsibly to help solve society’s biggest challenges. Before joining the World Economic Forum, Anne Marie co-founded an innovation house for student entrepreneurship; co-founded Democratic Capital; worked as political advisor in the Danish Parliament; and served on the Board of Directors of Copenhagen Business School and The Danish Consumer Council.

Anne Marie Engtoft Larsen holds a M.Sc. in International Development from The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), a B.Sc. and M.Sc. in International Business & Politics from Copenhagen Business School and is a 2017 Global Leadership Fellow with the World Economic Forum.
Bio

Eric Loeb
Executive Vice President, Government Affairs, Salesforce
As Executive Vice President of Global Government Affairs, Eric Loeb is responsible for leading Salesforce’s government relations, public policy, and public affairs efforts. The global team he supports is the face of Salesforce with policymakers, policy influencers, diplomats, and civil society.

Salesforce is a cloud computing company covering customer relationship management and other enterprise-focused software to businesses, governments and other organizations around the world. Salesforce enables companies of every size and industry to take advantage of powerful technologies—cloud, mobile, social, blockchain, voice, and artificial intelligence—to connect in a whole new way.

Joining Salesforce in 2018, Eric brings significant experience in the geopolitical arena. His roles as AT&T’s International External Affairs SVP, Global Regulatory Counsel for Concert Communications plc, and U.S. Regulatory Counsel for British Telecommunications plc have fostered extensive experience with the policies and politics of governments across the globe.

Eric serves as a leader on Salesforce’s Racial Equality & Justice Task Force as the chair of the Policy Pillar, in addition to being the executive sponsor of WINDforce, an employee equality group representing a Worldwide Indigenous Network of Diversity. In the community, Eric is Chair of the Board, the United States Council of International Business, and an advisory board member of the SEED School of Maryland, and the Asia Society – Northern California Chapter. He is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

A graduate with honors of Georgetown University Law Center and Bowdoin College, Eric is an avid cyclist and outdoors enthusiast. He and his family share their time between San Francisco, California and Baltimore, Maryland.
Bio

Eugenio V. Garcia
Tech Diplomat, Deputy Consul General of Brazil in San Francisco
Eugenio V. Garcia is a Tech Diplomat at the Consulate General of Brazil in San Francisco and the Deputy Consul General and Head of Science, Technology, and Innovation. He has 30 years of professional experience in foreign policy and diplomacy and holds a PhD in International Relations.

He is an academic researcher on artificial intelligence and global governance and former senior adviser to the President of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, 2018-2020.
Bio

Jovan Kurbalija
Executive Director, DiploFoundation
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.
Bio

Martin Rauchbauer
Executive Director of the Djerassi Resident Artists Program and Co-Founder of the Tech Diplomacy Network
Martin Rauchbauer is the Executive Director of the Djerassi Resident Artists Program and Co-Founder of the Tech Diplomacy Network. He is the Senior Tech Diplomacy Fellow at DiploFoundation. Previously, he served for two years as Austria’s first Tech Ambassador in Silicon Valley.

During more than five years as Head of Open Austria and Austrian Consul in San Francisco, Martin shaped the emerging field of tech diplomacy, engaged in transatlantic digital diplomacy and digital human rights. He initiated Open Austria’s “Art + Tech Lab”, and co-founded the European art + tech + policy initiative “The Grid”. Martin is a fellow at the Berggruen Institute focussing his research on how tech governance and diplomacy are conceptually based on our understanding of the human, nature, and technology.
Bio

Pavlina Ittelson
Executive Director, Diplo US
Ms Pavlina Ittelson joined Diplo in 2017 and currently serves as the executive director of Diplo US. She focuses on the legal aspects of internet governance in the fields of internet jurisdiction, cybersecurity, and alternative dispute resolution. She co-authored Diplo’s study on tech diplomacy in the San Francisco Bay Area: The Rise of TechPlomacy in the Bay area and on science diplomacy in the greater Boston area: Science & Diplomacy: How countries interact with the Boston innovation ecosystem.