Tech Diplomacy News: join us at the 2nd Tech Diplomacy Global Forum
| Martin Rauchbauer, Austria’s first Tech Ambassador to Silicon Valley and Co-Director/Founder of the Tech Diplomacy Network, will speak at the Tech Diplomacy Global Forum at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris on July 2nd, session on “AI in foreign policy: both as an instrument and as a geopolitical force”. President and emerging technology policy strategist Christina Steinbrecher-Pfandt will be part of the session “Digital Sovereignty for Open Societies” to explore how governments can strengthen digital control while protecting rights, openness, public trust, and international cooperation. Register to watch online here, or to attend the in-person forum here! News Roundup Global Geneva will host the UN’s inaugural Dialogue on AI Governance from July 6th to 7th, bringing together stakeholders to “discuss international cooperation, share best practices and lessons learned, and facilitate open, transparent and inclusive discussions on artificial intelligence governance.” The event will feature keynotes from Secretary-General António Guterres and presentations from the Independent International Scientific Panel on AI. The UN Institute for Disarmament Research is convening a two-day conference in Geneva starting tomorrow, bringing together diplomats, military strategists, tech executives, and researchers to look at how AI development shapes international security, with sessions spanning technological foundations, industry best practices, and regional governance approaches. Top executives from AI startups and tech giants like Anthropic, OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and Mistral AI sat down with G7 leaders during this week’s summit in the French Alps to tackle issues like regulatory frameworks and network development amid growing tension between innovation and governance. A panel of experts convened at New York Tech Week earlier this month warned that AI development has become a two-country monopoly as the U.S. and China command roughly 90% of global computing resources and most investment capital, leaving middle powers vulnerable to geopolitical leverage. Countries seeking alternatives face difficult trade-offs: pooling resources with allies remains prohibitively expensive, building independent models requires relying on U.S.-designed chips and overseas infrastructure, and aligning closely with either superpower risks giving up autonomy if these nations weaponize technology access. The one bright spot emerges from countries with strategic leverage through semiconductor expertise, critical minerals, and talent that can help in negotiating harder with AI leaders, Rina Chandran writes for Rest of World. Read the May global digital policy roundup from Tech Policy Press here. North America While global electric vehicle sales surged 20% in 2025, the U.S. market contracted only 2%because heavy tariffs on Chinese vehicles priced out budget-conscious buyers as oil prices climbed, leaving American consumers with fewer affordable options. Canada and the EU took opposite approaches, opening their borders to Chinese manufacturers with modest tariffs or price minimums, triggering sales growth of 75 to 80% in their markets, while U.S. fourth-quarter 2025 EV sales plummeted 36% year-over-year after the government eliminated purchase subsidies and tightened import restrictions. SpaceX’s debut on the Nasdaq as the world’s largest initial public offering catapulted the rocket company past Amazon in market value to become the fifth most valuable firm globally, with shares jumping 50% in days to reach 2.78 trillion USD despite generating 18.67 billion in annual revenue and losing 4.3 billion last year, a stark contrast to Amazon’s 716.9 billion USD in sales and 30.3 billion in quarterly profit. The valuation surge reflects investors betting on Musk’s vision of orbital AI data centers and Mars colonization rather than current business fundamentals, and analysts warn the frothy pricing carries real risks: only 4% of SpaceX shares trade freely on the open market, meaning smaller investors could face dilution if institutional holders eventually cash out, Archie Mitchell and Osmond Chia report for the BBC. Canada’s government is committing 200 billion CAD in economic stimulus aimed at turning the country into an AI powerhouse, targeting 250k new tech jobs and pushing AI adoption from just over 12% to 60% by 2034 through a combination of worker training, public investment in computing infrastructure, and protections against harmful applications like deepfakes and surveillance pricing. The “AI for All” strategy treats AI development as a sovereignty issue, with plans to build a national supercomputer and establish partnerships with 12 allied nations. The initiative reflects Canada’s recognition that the country has been slower than comparable economies to adopt AI at scale, risking brain drain and control of critical infrastructure slipping to American or Chinese firms. President Trump signed an executive order requiring tech companies to grant federal agencies 30 days of advance access to powerful new AI systems before commercial release for cybersecurity testing. This move is responding to growing concern that models like Anthropic’s Claude Mythos can autonomously identify and exploit software vulnerabilities, and the framework attempts to give defenders a window to find and patch security holes before adversaries do. However, experts warn the government lacks the workforce and institutional capacity to coordinate a nationwide hardening effort, especially as patching vulnerable systems remains an unsolved problem across critical infrastructure, Matthew Ferren and Vinh Nguyen write for the Council on Foreign Relations. Google has revealed that a Chinese state-sponsored hacking group, which spent over two years embedded in U.S. and Canadian networks targeting medical institutions and government agencies, used custom backdoor malware to steal administrative credentials and sensitive data from clinical research systems. The group, tracked as UNC6508, exploited widely-used medical research software and employed sophisticated techniques to blend into legitimate traffic, remaining undetected for more than a year at some organizations and likely representing only a fraction of a much larger campaign. Africa Africa’s four largest tech economies, South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, and Egypt, are pushing for AI sovereignty in new national strategies that explicitly identify Western infrastructure monopolies as security risks, yet they remain fundamentally dependent on Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Meta for the computing power, funding, and expertise needed to build anything independently. The continent’s infrastructure gap is staggering, with Africa holding less than 1% of global data center capacity despite housing 18% of the world’s population. Recent initiatives include a 60 billion USD Africa AI Fund and the establishment of a continental AI council, and it seems Western companies are willing to help build African capacity primarily if it expands their own market reach and reduces adoption costs on their end. Kenya is receiving nearly 140 million Euros due to recent EU commitments to overhaul digital infrastructure, with 102 million Euros in backing aimed at expanding connectivity and innovation programs targeted at young entrepreneurs and small businesses, and another 37 million Euros financing Kenya’s share of the Blue Raman submarine cable linking the East African coast with Djibouti and Tanzania. The investments build on momentum from the EU-Kenya trade partnership that has driven Kenyan exports to Europe up 20% since launching, positioning the country to capitalize on its growing prominence as a regional business services hub and data center destination. Egyptian venture capital firm and software house Edafa has made acquisitions of two AI companies, construction-focused Kuadra and diagnostic platform IRRI Vision, signaling a maturation in Egypt’s tech sector from importing foreign solutions to developing and exporting homegrown technology. The deals reflect Edafa’s strategy of identifying high-potential startups and scaling them across the broader Middle East and African regions. African governments are methodically taxing foreign digital services as a way to capture revenue from their own users, with Guinea joining Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, and South Africa in imposing levies on Google, Meta, Netflix, and other platforms that operate without physical tax presence. This move reflects frustration that the continent attracts only 3% of global data center investment while its hundreds of millions of users generate profits flowing outside of the continent to Silicon Valley and Beijing. Asia India’s homegrown AI startups are successfully recruiting tech talent back from Silicon Valleyfor the first time at scale, capitalizing on mass layoffs and unpredictability around visas that have shattered the mystique of big tech jobs once representing a pinnacle career achievement for India’s engineers. While early-stage Indian companies offer roughly half what Google or Microsoft pays, a combination of faster access to cutting-edge work and freedom from immigration anxiety is compelling. The shift reflects a broader reordering of the global talent market where frontier research is no longer the exclusive domain of the Bay Area, with AI giants like OpenAI and Anthropic quietly expanding their India engineering teams to tap into a market where demand for AI specialists vastly outpaces supply. The U.S. and ASEAN convened digital ministers and tech executives from Amazon and Google in Singapore last month to chart a closer partnership on AI, with discussions centering on expanding computing infrastructure across Southeast Asia while building regional semiconductor expertise that allows member states to participate in the AI economy rather than simply consume it. Both sides identified an opportunity to integrate U.S. innovation capabilities with ASEAN’s scale and labor force, potentially unlocking cooperation in climate resilience, healthcare, agriculture, and disaster management while positioning the region as a meaningful node in global AI and semiconductor supply chains. South Korea’s SK Innovation is building a 2.3 billion USD liquefied natural gas power plant in central Vietnam designed to address an acute energy crisis that’s been holding back the country’s ambitions in AI, with the facility expected to supply 1.5k megawatts by 2030 while creating an adjacent industrial complex where SK Telecom will construct data centers drawing power directly from the plant. Japan is moving to break its dependence on Chinese rare-earth supplies by launching geological surveys in Greenland this summer, with government-backed teams assessing deposit sizes and extraction costs to determine whether domestic companies can viably invest in mining operations on the autonomous Danish territory. The initiative reflects Tokyo’s broader effort to secure alternative sources for critical minerals essential to electronics manufacturing and semiconductor production, following sharp supply cuts from Beijing. South Korea’s Export-Import Bank is financing a 110 million USD copper-clad laminate plant that domestic conglomerate Doosan plans to build in Thailand, targeting AI infrastructure and networking equipment manufacturers seeking to diversify supply chains away from China as global demand for high-performance semiconductors surges. Copper-clad laminate offers higher margins than commodity electronics because it reduces signal loss and withstands extreme heat, making it essential for cutting-edge infrastructure, Hwang Sun-jun writes for The Korea Herald. Europe The U.K. government is moving to restrict social media access for anyone under 16 starting spring 2027, pushing beyond Australia’s model with additional safeguards like blocking contact with strangers and potentially enforcing overnight shutdowns and anti-scrolling limits. Prime Minister Keir Starmer framed the move as designed to “to give kids their childhood back,” though tech companies quickly countered that blanket restrictions drive teenagers toward less-moderated alternatives like VPNs and encrypted apps while preventing access to curated and supervised experiences. This is a concern that enforcement experts say will likely prove difficult once regulations expand beyond major platforms into livestreaming and chatbots accessible from overseas servers, Elsa Ohlen reports for CNBC. France’s financial regulator is issuing a final warning to cryptocurrency companies to secure a license under the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation by June 30, or face prosecution and blacklisting from operating in the bloc. The EU’s MiCA framework, agreed in 2023, requires companies to obtain licenses from regulators in individual member states that then function as permission to operate across all 27 nations, though France has signaled it will block licenses granted by other countries if it disagrees with their decisions. The European Commission has unveiled a comprehensive technology strategy aimed at breaking continental dependence on U.S. and Chinese companies, targeting cloud infrastructure where Amazon, Microsoft, and Google control 80% of the European market by creating a four-tier purchasing system that would exclude non-European providers from sensitive government contracts in defense and healthcare. The broader push includes stimulating demand for domestically-produced computer chips while joining the U.S.-led Pax Silica initiative to secure supply chains, a pragmatic acknowledgment that Europe cannot immediately replace its reliance on Nvidia and Taiwan-designed semiconductors even as it tries to build alternatives. The European Commission’s digital sovereignty strategy aims to reduce reliance on U.S. cloud providers and tech giants, but the proposed Cloud and AI Development Act reveals a fundamental ambition gap: establishing preferential access for European cloud providers only for the most sensitive government data while allowing Amazon, Microsoft, and Google to dominate the much larger and less-restricted commercial and public-sector market. The practical enforcement problem runs deeper, as Europe is adopting Silicon Valley’s playbook rather than developing its own vision for how technology should serve society, Max von Thun opines for The Guardian. Italy’s competition authority is investigating whether Apple is giving its own iCloud service unfair advantages over rival cloud providers by restricting access to certain iOS and iPadOS features like device backup functions, marking the first enforcement action under the EU’s Digital Markets Act requiring gatekeepers to open their platforms on equivalent terms. The EU has granted Ukraine access to its Cybersecurity Reserve, enabling the nation to activate emergency incident response services from trusted providers when facing large-scale cyberattacks. This decision reflects deepening EU-Ukraine digital cooperation and positions the country to respond more rapidly to escalating cyber threats. Latin America Japan-based investment holding company SoftBank Group’s venture arm has largely retreated from Latin America, completing just two new deals over the past two years as the region’s once-booming startup scene struggles to produce companies that meet the Japanese conglomerate’s 50 million USD-plus investment threshold, particularly in the consumer AI space where SoftBank has increasingly concentrated its global capital. Regional funding collapsed from a peak of 16 billion USD in 2021 to 4.3 billion USD in 2025, with dealflow steadily declining since 2022. The EU and Brazil have formalized digital cooperation through a new partnership, building on two decades of collaboration. The agreement reflects the EU’s broader strategy of using bilateral digital partnerships to extend trusted governance frameworks beyond Europe while promoting regulatory alignment on online platforms and digital public services. A four-day cybersecurity policy bootcamp, organized by the French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs, the Delegation of the European Union to the Dominican Republic, Expertise France, and LAC4, brought together policymakers, diplomats, regulators, and tech experts from 14 Latin American, Caribbean, and European countries in the Dominican Republic earlier this month to help governments develop stronger legislative frameworks and governance structures around key digital issues. The program combined a workshop on international best practices in cyber policy with a symposium on regulating commercial cyber intrusion capabilities, emphasizing the need for harmonized approaches across the region as threats continue to evolve. Policymakers and development experts convened in Santiago this month for a regional seminar warning that rapid technological transformation risks widening existing inequalitiesunless governments embed digital inclusion into public policy from the start. Argentina recorded over 5.7 billion cyberattack attempts in 2025, with cybercriminals increasingly leveraging AI systems, triggering a surge in ransomware incidents and data theft that exceeded previous years’ attacks. The weaponization of AI has dramatically compressed the time needed to identify and exploit security gaps, enabling criminal groups to launch larger campaigns against more targets with less human effort and resulting in widespread disruption across businesses and government infrastructure. The World Bank sees critical minerals as a pathway for Latin America to generate investment and industrial capacity, with copper and lithium offering the most immediate opportunities given the region’s existing production base and the global push toward electrification and energy storage. The real value creation happens not just in extraction but in the surrounding ecosystem, meaning countries that move fastest will be those combining geological advantages with stable regulatory frameworks. Read more in this interview from BNamericas with Namrata Thapar, the World Bank’s director for metals and minerals. Oceania New Zealand is criminalizing the creation and distribution of sexualized deepfakes through new legislation responding to the explosion of AI-generated fake sexual material targeting women, particularly after Elon Musk’s Grok chatbot on X was weaponized to generate millions of non-consensual images within weeks. While important, the legal response only addresses part of the problem, as existing New Zealand law wasn’t designed for synthetic abuse where no recording occurred. This makes deepfakes harder to prosecute than traditional intimate image abuse, but criminalization alone won’t stem the tide since “nudify” apps remain freely available in major app stores despite policies banning sexually explicit content, Cassandra Mudgway writes for The Conversation. Australia is stepping up its defense technology partnership with the U.S. and U.K. through an undersea drone program, marking the first concrete capability under AUKUS’s technology development track after facing skepticism about whether the alliance could move beyond announcements to actual deployments. The uncrewed underwater vehicles are designed for operations across the Indo-Pacific, where Canberra views advanced maritime capabilities as essential to deterring Chinese military expansion, with the systems expected to be deployed next year. An impact assessment of a digital literacy pilot across Fiji and Vanuatu found that training 2k+ participants, a majority of them women, in AI tools and online business basics produced measurable employment and entrepreneurship gains. Confidence emerged as the gateway outcome, with 96% reporting comfort using digital tools after training, one-third beginning to track finances digitally for the first time, and participants reporting improved livelihood prospects across the board. Australia and Japan are positioning themselves as filling a gap left by an increasingly inattentive U.S. as undersea cables become strategic targets and many island nations rely on a single connection for digital access. Australia has committed a significant investment to develop three subsea cables in Papua New Guinea, and signed bilateral defense agreements with Fiji, Vanuatu, Nauru, and Tuvalu, while Japan is providing unmanned aerial vehicles and engineering equipment to regional partners and recently lifted export restrictions on lethal weapons systems. Solomon Islands communities are building grassroots connectivity through shared Starlink arrangements, where local operators run satellite connections from their homes and charge neighbors small per-session fees. Scaling this approach will require governments to invest in digital literacy and accessibility, as well as regulatory frameworks that support community gateway models, Hilman Palaon and Samuel Warunima write for The Lowy Institute. |
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