Submitting Written Evidence to UK Parliament Foreign Affairs Committee

It was an honor to be invited to contribute written evidence to the UK Parliament’s inquiry on “Encoding values: Putting tech at the heart of UK foreign policy.”

The report centers around how to regulate and adapt to advancing technologies as it relates to global security:

Technology companies are occupying new spaces and forming new power centres, notably by being increasingly central to the design and delivery of diplomatic services and functions. For example, Amazon Web Services now provides much of the Government’s critical cloud infrastructure.

Companies such as Google and Meta not only provide access to information, but their algorithms determine which information is seen and how foreign policy issues are perceived by people across the world.

The fight for a right-based future

This report finds that malign actors, including authoritarian states such as Russia and China, are trying to rewrite the rules underpinning our international systems and technology development, and technological standardisation provides them with the opportunity to do so. A battle between authoritarian and rights-based technological standards and values is being waged.

The report urges the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) to work with other states to ensure rights-based and human-centred technology standards are the global norm.

You can learn more about the report here, and you can read my full comments here.