Summary

• All satellites depend on cyber technology including software, hardware and other digital components. Any threat to a satellite’s control system or available bandwidth poses a direct challenge to national critical assets.
• NATO’s missions and operations are conducted in the air, land, cyber and maritime domains. Space-based architecture is fundamental to the provision of data and services in each of these contexts. The critical dependency on space has resulted in new cyber risks that disproportionately affect mission assurance. Investing in mitigation measures and in the resilience of space systems for the military is key to achieving protection in all domains.
• Almost all modern military engagements rely on space-based assets. During the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, 68 per cent of US munitions were guided utilizing space-based means (including laser-, infrared- and satellite-guided munitions); up sharply from 10 per cent in 1990–91, during the first Gulf war. In 2001, 60 per cent of the weapons used by the US in Afghanistan were precision-guided munitions, many of which had the capability to use information provided by space-based assets to correct their own positioning to hit a target.
• NATO does not own satellites. It owns and operates a few terrestrial elements, such as satellite communications anchor stations and terminals. It requests access to products and services – such as space weather reports and satellite overflight reports provided via satellite reconnaissance advance notice systems – but does not have direct access to satellites: it is up to individual NATO member states to determine whether they allow access.
• Cyber vulnerabilities undermine confidence in the performance of strategic systems. As a result, rising uncertainty in information and analysis continues to impact the credibility of deterrence and strategic stability. Loss of trust in technology also has implications for determining the source of a malicious attack (attribution), strategic calculus in crisis decision-making and may increase the risk of misperception.

After President Trump decided to halt a missile attack on Iran in response to the downing of a US drone, it was revealed that the US had conducted cyberattacks on Iranian weapons systems to prevent Iran launching missiles against US assets in the region.

This ‘left-of-launch’ strategy – the pre-emptive action to prevent an adversary launch missiles – has been part of the US missile defence strategy for some time now. President George W Bush asked the US military and intelligence community to infiltrate the supply chain of North Korean missiles. It was claimed that the US hacked the North Korean ballistic missile programme, causing a failed ballistic missile test, in 2012.

It was not clear then – or now – whether these ‘left-of-launch’ cyberattacks aimed at North Korea were successful as described or whether they were primarily a bluff. But that is somewhat irrelevant; the belief in the possibility and the understanding of the potential impact of such cyber capabilities undermines North Korean or Iranian confidence in their abilities to launch their missiles. In times of conflict, loss of confidence in weapons systems may lead to escalation.

In other words, the adversary may be left with no option but to take the chance to use these missiles or to lose them in a conflict setting. ‘Left of launch’ is a dangerous game. If it is based on a bluff, it could be called upon and lead to deterrence failure. If it is based on real action, then it could create an asymmetrical power struggle. If the attacker establishes false confidence in the power of a cyber weapon, then it might lead to false signalling and messaging.

This is the new normal. The cat-and-mouse game has to be taken seriously, not least because missile systems are so vulnerable.

There are several ways an offensive cyber operation against missile systems might work. These include exploiting missile designs, altering software or hardware, or creating clandestine pathways to the missile command and control systems.

They can also be attacked in space, targeting space assets and their link to strategic systems.

Most missile systems rely, at least in part, on digital information that comes from or via space-based or space-dependent assets such as: communication satellites; satellites that provide position, navigation and timing (PNT) information (for example GPS or Galileo); weather satellites to help predict flight paths, accurate targeting and launch conditions; and remote imagery satellites to assist with information and intelligence for the planning and targeting.

Missile launches themselves depend on 1) the command and control systems of the missiles, 2) the way in which information is transmitted to the missile launch facilities and 3) the way in which information is transmitted to the missiles themselves in flight. All these aspects rely on space technology.

In addition, the ground stations that transmit and receive data to and from satellites are also vulnerable to cyberattack – either through their known and unknown internet connectivity or through malicious use of flash drives that contain a deliberate cyber infection.

Non-space-based communications systems that use cable and ground-to-air-to-ground masts are likewise under threat from cyberattacks that find their way in via internet connectivity, proximity interference or memory sticks. Human error in introducing connectivity via phones, laptops and external drives, and in clicking on malicious links in sophisticated phishing lures, is common in facilitating inadvertent connectivity and malware infection.

All of these can create a military capacity able to interfere with missile launches. Malware might have been sitting on the missile command and control system for months or even years, remaining inactivated until a chosen time or by a trigger that sets in motion a disruption either to the launch or to the flight path of the missile. The country that launches the missile that either fails to launch or fails to reach the target may never know if this was the result of a design flaw, a common malfunction or a deliberate cyberattack.

States with these capabilities must exercise caution: cyber offence manoeuvres may prevent the launch of missile attacks against US assets in the Middle East or in the Pacific regions, but they may also interfere with US missile launches in the future. Even, as has recently been revealed, US cyber weapons targeting an adversary may blow back and inadvertently infect US systems. Nobody is invulnerable.

Summary

• The application of ‘security by design’ in nuclear new builds could provide operators with the opportunity to establish a robust and resilient security architecture at the beginning of a nuclear power plant’s life cycle. This will enhance the protection of the plant and reduce the need for costly security improvements during its operating life.
• Security by design cannot fully protect a nuclear power plant from rapidly evolving cyberattacks, which expose previously unsuspected or unknown vulnerabilities.
• Careful design of security systems and architecture can – and should – achieve levels of protection that exceed current norms and expectations. However, the sourcing of components from a global supply chain means that the integrity of even the most skilfully designed security regime cannot be guaranteed without exhaustive checks of its components.
• Security by design may well include a requirement for a technical support organization to conduct quality assurance of cyber defences and practices, and this regime should be endorsed by a facility’s executive board and continued at regular intervals after the new build facility has been commissioned.
• Given the years it takes to design, plan and build a new nuclear power plant, it is important to recognize that from the point of ‘design freeze’ onwards, the operator will be building in vulnerabilities, as technology continues to evolve rapidly while construction fails to keep pace with it. Security by design cannot be a panacea, but it is an important factor in the establishment of a robust nuclear security – and cybersecurity – culture.

With the increased use of armed drones in recent years, ethical and legal concerns have been raised in regard to civilian casualties, secrecy and lack of transparency and accountability for drone strikes.

This project brings together experts on the use of armed drones, including current and former military officials, academia, think-tanks and NGOs, to discuss and exchange perspectives based on their different experiences, with the aim of sharing knowledge and increasing understanding on these issues, and to inform and provide input into the European debate. The experts explore the issues and controversies surrounding the use of drones outside formal armed conflict and study the broader policy implications in detail, particularly with regards to what this means for the UK and other European countries.

Building on the findings from the workshops, this project will hold a simulation exercise to stress test critical areas of concern around the use of armed drones that are relevant for the UK and other EU member states.

The discussions and the simulation exercise will provide opportunities for policy input on areas of mutual concern and feed into practical policy recommendations on the use of armed drones.

This project builds on previous work on armed drones by the International Security Department and is funded by the Open Society Foundations.

This roundtable is part of a series under the project, 'Implementing the Commonwealth Cybersecurity Agenda', funded by the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO). The roundtable aims to provide a multi-stakeholder, pan-Commonwealth platform to discuss how to implement the Commonwealth Cyber Declaration with a focus on its third pillar 'To promote stability in cyberspace through international cooperation'.

In particular, the roundtable focuses on points 3 and 4 of the third pillar which revolve around the commitment to promote frameworks for stability in cyberspace including the applicability of international law, agreed voluntary norms of responsible state behaviour and the development and implementation of confidence-building measures consistent with the 2015 report of the UNGGE. 

The workshop also focuses on the commitment to advance discussions on how existing international law, including the Charter of the United Nations and applicable international humanitarian law, applies in cyberspace.

The roundtable addresses the issue of global cyber governance from a Commonwealth perspective and will also include a discussion around the way forward, the needed capacity of the different Commonwealth countries and the cooperation between its members for better cyber governance.

Participants include UNGGE members from Commonwealth countries in addition to representatives to the UN Open-Ended Working Group from African countries as well as members from academia, civil society and industry.

Summary

• The use of predictive artificial intelligence (AI) in countering terrorism is often assumed to have a deleterious effect on human rights, generating spectres of ‘pre-crime’ punishment and surveillance states. However, the well-regulated use of new capabilities may enhance states’ abilities to protect citizens’ right to life, while at the same time improving adherence to principles intended to protect other human rights, such as transparency, proportionality and freedom from unfair discrimination. The same regulatory framework could also contribute to safeguarding against broader misuse of related technologies.
• Most states focus on preventing terrorist attacks, rather than reacting to them. As such, prediction is already central to effective counterterrorism. AI allows higher volumes of data to be analysed, and may perceive patterns in those data that would, for reasons of both volume and dimensionality, otherwise be beyond the capacity of human interpretation. The impact of this is that traditional methods of investigation that work outwards from known suspects may be supplemented by methods that analyse the activity of a broad section of an entire population to identify previously unknown threats.
• Developments in AI have amplified the ability to conduct surveillance without being constrained by resources. Facial recognition technology, for instance, may enable the complete automation of surveillance using CCTV in public places in the near future.
• The current way predictive AI capabilities are used presents a number of interrelated problems from both a human rights and a practical perspective. Where limitations and regulations do exist, they may have the effect of curtailing the utility of approaches that apply AI, while not necessarily safeguarding human rights to an adequate extent.
• The infringement of privacy associated with the automated analysis of certain types of public data is not wrong in principle, but the analysis must be conducted within a robust legal and policy framework that places sensible limitations on interventions based on its results.
• In future, broader access to less intrusive aspects of public data, direct regulation of how those data are used – including oversight of activities by private-sector actors – and the imposition of technical as well as regulatory safeguards may improve both operational performance and compliance with human rights legislation. It is important that any such measures proceed in a manner that is sensitive to the impact on other rights such as freedom of expression, and freedom of association and assembly.

Technological progress in neurotechnology and its military use is proceeding apace. As early as the 1970s, brain-machine interfaces have been the subject of study. By 2014, the UK’s Ministry of Defence was arguing that the development of artificial devices, such as artificial limbs, is ‘likely to see refinement of control to provide… new ways to connect the able-bodied to machines and computers.’ Today, brain-machine interface technology is being investigated around the world, including in Russia, China and South Korea.

Recent developments in the private sector are producing exciting new capabilities for people with disabilities and medical conditions. In early July, Elon Musk and Neuralink presented their ‘high-bandwidth’ brain-machine interface system, with small and flexible electrode threads packaged into a small device containing custom chips and to be inserted and implanted into the user’s brain for medical purposes.

In the military realm, in 2018, the United States’ Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) put out a call for proposals to investigate the potential of nonsurgical brain-machine interfaces to allow soldiers to ‘interact regularly and intuitively with artificially intelligent, semi-autonomous and autonomous systems in a manner currently not possible with conventional interfaces’. DARPA further highlighted the need for these interfaces to be bidirectional – where information is sent both from brain to machine (neural recording) and from machine to brain (neural stimulation) – which will eventually allow machines and humans to learn from each other.

This technology may provide soldiers and commanders with a superior level of sensory sensitivity and the ability to process a greater amount of data related to their environment at a faster pace, thus enhancing situational awareness. These capabilities will support military decision-making as well as targeting processes.

Neural recording will also enable the obtention of a tremendous amount of data from operations, including visuals, real-time thought processes and emotions. These sets of data may be used for feedback and training (including for virtual wargaming and for machine learning training), as well as for investigatory purposes. Collected data will also feed into research that may help researchers understand and predict human intent from brain signals – a tremendous advantage from a military standpoint.

Legal and ethical considerations

The flip side of these advancements is the responsibilities they will impose and the risks and vulnerabilities of the technology as well as legal and ethical considerations.

The primary risk would be for users to lose control over the technology, especially in a military context; hence a fail-safe feature is critical for humans to maintain ultimate control over decision-making. Despite the potential benefits of symbiosis between humans and AI, users must have the unconditional possibility to override these technologies should they believe it is appropriate and necessary for them to do so.

This is important given the significance of human control over targeting, as well as strategic and operational decision-making. An integrated fail-safe in brain-machine interfaces may in fact allow for a greater degree of human control over critical, time-sensitive decision-making. In other words, in the event of incoming missiles alert, while the AI may suggest a specific course of action, users must be able to decide in a timely manner whether to execute it or not.

Machines can learn from coded past experiences and decisions, but humans also use gut feelings to make life and death decisions. A gut feeling is a human characteristic that is not completely transferable, as it relies on both rational and emotional traits – and is part of the ‘second-brain’ and the gut-brain axis which is currently poorly understood. It is however risky to take decisions solely on gut feelings or solely on primary brain analysis—therefore, receiving a comprehensive set of data via an AI-connected brain-machine interface may help to verify and evaluate the information in a timely manner, and complement decision-making processes. However, these connections and interactions would have to be much better understood than the current state of knowledge. 

Fail-safe features are necessary to ensure compliance with the law, including international humanitarian law and international human rights law. As a baseline, human control must be used to 1) define areas where technology may or may not be trusted and to what extent, and 2) ensure legal, political and ethical accountability, responsibility and explainability at all times. Legal and ethical considerations must be taken into account from as early as the design and conceptualizing stage of these technologies, and oversight must be ensured across the entirety of the manufacturing supply chain.  

The second point raises the need to further explore and clarify whether existing national, regional and international legal, political and ethical frameworks are sufficient to cover the development and use of these technologies. For instance, there is value in assessing to what extent AI-connected brain-machine interfaces will affect the assessment of the mental element in war crimes and their human rights implications.

In addition, these technologies need to be highly secure and invulnerable to cyber hacks. Neural recording and neural stimulation will be directly affecting brain processes in humans and if an adversary has the ability to connect to a human brain, steps need to be taken to ensure that memory and personality could not be damaged.

Future questions

Military applications of technological progress in neurotechnology is inevitable, and their implications cannot be ignored. There is an urgent need for policymakers to understand the fast-developing neurotechnical capabilities, develop international standards and best practices – and, if necessary, new and dedicated legal instruments – to frame the use of these technologies.

Considering the opportunities that brain-machine interfaces may present in the realms of security and defence, inclusive, multi-stakeholder discussions and negotiations leading to the development of standards must include the following considerations:

• What degree of human control would be desirable, at what stage and by whom? To what extent could human users be trusted with their own judgment in decision-making processes?
• How could algorithmic and human biases, the cyber security and vulnerabilities of these technologies and the quality of data be factored into these discussions?
• How can ethical and legal considerations be incorporated into the design stage of these technologies?
• How can it be ensured that humans cannot be harmed in the process, either inadvertently or deliberately?
• Is there a need for a dedicated international forum to discuss the military applications of neurotechnology? How could these discussions be integrated to existing international processes related to emerging military applications of technological progress, such as the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) Group of Governmental Experts on Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems?

Summary

• Space situational awareness (SSA) and space traffic management (STM) are essential for sustainable near-Earth orbit. International cooperation in SSA and STM is vital with the growing number of satellite operators and the increasingly complex space environment.
• The various definitions of SSA and STM are ambiguous. Understanding the activities that fall under each term can better assist in finding areas for cooperation and collaboration.
• SSA has historically been a military activity, leading to an incomplete public catalogue of its use and barriers to sharing information with other states and the commercial sector. The rise in private space actors has increased the number of commercial STM providers and, with plans in the US to move responsibility for STM to civilian control, there will likely be more opportunities for international collaboration, particularly through the EU Space Surveillance and Tracking (SST) programme.
• Individual EU member states possess developed STM capabilities, but overall these are still some way behind those of allies such as the US. Further investment in STM infrastructure and programmes is required for the EU and individual European states to be an essential partner to the US and add value to the global effort.
• There are worldwide challenges, both political and technical, to providing STM coverage, which may lead to a lack of collaboration and gaps in understanding of activities in orbit. Existing sensors have limitations in terms of the size of objects that can be detected and the precision with which their movements can be predicted. These capability gaps represent opportunities for the EU to contribute.
• The EU can build on its tradition of support for openness and civil society by creating a system that fosters an environment of cooperation and collaboration involving industry, commercial STM providers and the wider international community.
• Although collaboration in STM is vital, the EU should also aim to tackle issues within the wider definition of SSA including space weather, intelligence and the security of ground stations.
• The EU is well placed to become a global leader in SSA and STM. However, it needs to take into consideration the current political and technical landscape when making decisions regarding investment in capabilities and the pursuit of international partnerships.

Strategic systems that depend on space-based assets, such as command, control and communication, early warning systems, weapons systems and weapons platforms, are essential for conducting successful NATO operations and missions. Given the increasing dependency on such systems, the alliance and key member states would therefore benefit from an in-depth analysis of possible mitigation and resilience measures.

This workshop is part of the International Security Department’s (ISD) project on space security and the vulnerability of strategic assets to cyberattacks, which includes a recently published report. This project aims to create resilience in NATO and key NATO member states, building the capacity of key policymakers and stakeholders to respond with effective policies and procedures. This workshop will focus on measures to mitigate the cyber vulnerabilities of NATO’s space-dependent strategic assets. Moreover, participants will discuss the type of resilience measures and mechanisms required.

Attendance at this event is by invitation only. 

As countries move towards the fifth generation of mobile broadband, 5G, the United States has been loudly calling out Huawei as a security threat. It has employed alarmist rhetoric and threatened to limit trade and intelligence sharing with close allies that use Huawei in their 5G infrastructure.

While some countries such as Australia have adopted a hard line against Huawei, others like the UK have been more circumspect, arguing that the risks of using the firm’s technology can be mitigated without forgoing the benefits.

So, who is right, and why have these close allies taken such different approaches?

The risks

Long-standing concerns relating to Huawei are plausible. There are credible allegations that it has benefitted from stolen intellectual property, and that it could not thrive without a close relationship with the Chinese state.

Huawei hotly denies allegations that users are at risk of its technology being used for state espionage, and says it would resist any order to share information with the Chinese government. But there are questions over whether it could really resist China’s stringent domestic legislation, which compels companies to share data with the government. And given China’s track record of using cyberattacks to conduct intellectual property theft, there may be added risks of embedding a Chinese provider into critical communications infrastructure.

In addition, China’s rise as a global technological superpower has been boosted by the flow of financial capital through government subsidies, venture and private equity, which reveal murky boundaries between the state and private sector for domestic darlings. Meanwhile, the Belt and Road initiative has seen generous investment by China in technology infrastructure across Africa, South America and Asia.

There’s no such thing as a free lunch or a free network – as Sri Lanka discovered when China assumed shares in a strategic port in return for debt forgiveness; or Mexico when a 1% interest loan for its 4G network came on the condition that 80% of the funding was spent with Huawei.

Aside from intelligence and geopolitical concerns, the quality of Huawei’s products represents a significant cyber risk, one that has received less attention than it deserves.

On top of that, 5G by itself will significantly increase the threat landscape from a cybersecurity perspective. The network layer will be more intelligent and adaptable through the use of software and cloud services. The number of network antennae will increase by a factor of 20, and many will be poorly secured ‘things’; there is no need for a backdoor if you have any number of ‘bug doors’.

Finally, the US is threatening to limit intelligence sharing with its closest allies if they adopt Huawei. So why would any country even consider using Huawei in their 5G infrastructure?

Different situations

The truth is that not every country is free to manoeuvre; 5G technology will sit on top of existing mobile infrastructure.

Australia and the US can afford to take a hard line: their national infrastructure has been largely Huawei-free since 2012. However, the Chinese firm is deeply embedded in other countries’ existing structures – for example, in the UK, Huawei has provided telecommunications infrastructure since 2005. Even if the UK decided tomorrow to ditch Huawei, it cannot just rip up existing 4G infrastructure. To do so would cost a fortune, risk years of delay in the adoption of 5G and limit competition in 5G provisioning.

As a result, the UK has adopted a pragmatic approach resulting from years of oversight and analysis of Huawei equipment, during which it has never found evidence of malicious Chinese state cyber activity through Huawei.

At the heart of this process is the Huawei Cyber Security Evaluation Centre, which was founded in 2010 as a confidence-building measure. Originally criticized for ‘effectively policing itself’, as it was run and staffed entirely by Huawei, the governance has now been strengthened, with the National Cyber Security Centre chairing its oversight board.

The board’s 2019 report makes grim reading, highlighting ‘serious and system defects in Huawei’s software engineering and cyber security competence’. But it does not accuse the company of serving as a platform for state-sponsored surveillance.

Similar evidence-based policy approaches are emerging in other countries like Norway and Italy. They offer flexibility for governments, for example by limiting access to some contract competition through legitimate and transparent means, such as security reviews during procurement. The approaches also raise security concerns (both national and cyber) to a primary issue when awarding contracts – something that was not always done in the past, when price was the key driver.

The UK is also stressing the need to manage risk and increase vendor diversity in the ecosystem to avoid single points of failure. A further approach that is beginning to emerge is to draw a line between network ‘core’ and ‘periphery’ components, excluding some providers from the more sensitive ‘core’. The limited rollouts of 5G in the UK so far have adopted multi-provider strategies, and only one has reportedly not included Huawei kit.

Managing the risks to cyber security and national security will become more complex in a 5G environment. In global supply chains, bans based on the nationality of the provider offer little assurance. For countries that have already committed to Huawei in the past, and who may not wish to be drawn into an outright trade war with China, these moderate approaches offer a potential way forward.

But there is more to be done to understand how these approaches can adapt – responding quickly to changing politics and overcoming obstacles that block progress.

Smart Peace is a global initiative led by Conciliation Resources, which combines the varied expertise of different consortium partners to address the challenges of building peace – focusing on the Central African Republic, Nigeria and Myanmar.

This work combines peacebuilding techniques, conflict analysis, rigorous evaluation and behavioural insights. The resulting lessons will help communities, international organisations and governments to implement peace strategies with greater confidence.

This project is funded with UK aid from the UK government.

Smart Peace Partners

• Behavioural Insights Team
• Conciliation Resources
• Chatham House
• International Crisis Group
• The Asia Foundation
• The Center for Security Studies at ETH Zurich
• The Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue

New technology such as 5G, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology and robotics have become, now more than ever, intertwined with geopolitical, economic and trade interests. Leading powers are using new technology to exert power and influence and to shape geopolitics more generally.

The ongoing race between the US and China around 5G technology is a case in point. Amid these tensions, the impact on developing countries is not sufficiently addressed.

Arguably, the existing digital divide will increase leading developing countries to the early, if not hasty, adoption of new technology for fear of lagging behind. This could create opportunities but will also pose risks.

This panel discusses how new technology is changing the geopolitical landscape. It also discusses the role that stakeholders, including governments, play in the creation of standards for new technologies and what that means for its deployment in key markets technically and financially.

Finally, the panel looks at the issue from the perspective of developing countries, addressing the choices that have to be made in terms of affordability, development priorities and security concerns.

This event was organized with the kind support of DXC Technology.

• EU and US cooperation on tackling disinformation needs to be grounded in an international human rights framework in order to bridge the differences of both parties and include other countries facing this challenge.
• The disinformation debate needs to be reformulated to cover systemic issues rather than merely technical or security concerns. A lag in regulatory development has led to systemic vulnerabilities. In this context, policymakers need to push for more evidence-based analysis, which is only attainable if technology companies engage in honest debate and allow meaningful access to data – as determined by government appointed researchers rather than the companies themselves – taking into account and respecting users’ privacy.
• Data governance needs to be the focus of attempts to tackle disinformation. Data’s implications for information, market and power asymmetries, feed into and exacerbate the problem.
• Policymakers should focus on regulating the distribution of online content rather than the subject matter itself, which may have implications for freedom of speech.
• Disinformation is mainly the result of inefficient gatekeeping of highly extractive digital companies. The old gatekeepers, journalists and their respective regulators, need to be actively engaged in devising the new regulatory framework.
• Legacy media need to urgently consider the issue of ‘strategic silence’ and avoid being co-opted by political actors aiming to manipulate the accelerated, reactive news cycle by engaging in divisive ‘clickbait’ rhetoric verging on disinformation and propaganda. When strategic silence is not an option, contextual analysis is fundamental.
•  The EU delegation should assist the coordination of EU–US efforts to tackle disinformation by drawing on the work and expertise at the G7 Rapid Response Mechanism (RRM), the Transatlantic Commission on Election Integrity (TCEI), the European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats (Hybrid CoE), the High-level Panel on Digital Cooperation, and work with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) to foster a long-term interdisciplinary forum to harness technological innovation to protect and support democracy from threats such as disinformation.
• The EU and US must avoid rushed regulation that may condone enhanced surveillance or vilify journalism that scrutinizes those in power in the name of security.

In recent years, there has been a growing debate around the influence of a few large internet technology companies on the internet’s infrastructure and over the popular applications and social media platforms that we use every day.

The internet which was once widely viewed as a collective platform for limitless, permissionless innovation, competition and growth, is now increasingly viewed as a consolidated environment dominated by a few. Such market dominance threatens to undermine the internet’s fundamental benefits as a distributed network in which no single entity has control.  

The panel examines the risks of consolidation throughout the internet’s technology stack such as the impact on complex supply chains that support applications, including cloud provisions, ‘as a service’.

It also explores the potential benefits, for example, when building out essential infrastructure to support faster and cheaper internet services in developing economies, consolidation can create economies of scale that bring the resource-intensive building blocks of the internet economy within the reach of new start-ups and innovators.

The panel provides an interdisciplinary perspective exploring the relationship between consolidation and evolutions in the internet infrastructure as well as unpacking its policy implications.

This event supports a special issue of the Journal of Cyber Policy as part of a collaboration between Chatham House and the Internet Society which explores the impact of the consolidation on the internet’s fundamental architecture.

• Political, economic, sociological and technological factors are poised to challenge EU and US ideological positions on internet governance, which will make it difficult to find consensus and common ground in the years to come.
• The EU and US share core values and perspectives relating to internet governance, such as openness, freedom and interoperability, as well as a human rights framework for cybersecurity. There have been many examples of successful multi-stakeholder cooperation between the EU and US, including the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) transition and the European Dialogue on Internet Governance (EuroDIG).
• There are also subtle differences between the EU and US, and each has different reasons to support multi-stakeholderism. Cases that highlight growing tensions in EU–US coordination on internet governance include the controversies surrounding the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the WHOIS system that governs domain name registration data, and the board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which undermined an independent cybersecurity review.
• Internet governance is becoming more complex, with a multiplicity of actors and no obvious authority for important emerging issues. Additionally, the rise of China and its authoritarian vision for the future of the internet is a threat to the current internet governance institutions that have been shaped by and reflect Western values.
• To bridge ideological gaps the EU and US should build capacity between likeminded stakeholders, create a taskforce on effective multi-stakeholder internet governance, and work through non-governmental stakeholders to improve participation.

Summary

• Machine learning (ML)-driven personalization is fast expanding from social media to the wider information space, encompassing legacy media, multinational conglomerates and digital-native publishers: however, this is happening within a regulatory and oversight vacuum that needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency.
• Mass-scale adoption of personalization in communication has serious implications for human rights, societal resilience and political security. Data protection, privacy and wrongful discrimination, as well as freedom of opinion and of expression, are some of the areas impacted by this technological transformation.
• Artificial intelligence (AI) and its ML subset are novel technologies that demand novel ways of approaching oversight, monitoring and analysis. Policymakers, regulators, media professionals and engineers need to be able to conceptualize issues in an interdisciplinary way that is appropriate for sociotechnical systems.
• Funding needs to be allocated to research into human–computer interaction in information environments, data infrastructure, technology market trends, and the broader impact of ML systems within the communication sector.
• Although global, high-level ethical frameworks for AI are welcome, they are no substitute for domain- and context-specific codes of ethics. Legacy media and digital-native publishers need to overhaul their editorial codes to make them fit for purpose in a digital ecosystem transformed by ML. Journalistic principles need to be reformulated and refined in the current informational context in order to efficiently inform the ML models built for personalized communication.
• Codes of ethics will not by themselves be enough, so current regulatory and legislative frameworks as they relate to media need to be reassessed. Media regulators need to develop their in-house capacity for thorough research and monitoring into ML systems, and – when appropriate –proportionate sanctions for actors found to be employing such systems towards malign ends. Collaboration with data protection authorities, competition authorities and national electoral commissions is paramount for preserving the integrity of elections and of a political discourse grounded on democratic principles.
• Upskilling senior managers and editorial teams is fundamental if media professionals are to be able to engage meaningfully and effectively with data scientists and AI engineers.

As tensions escalate in the Middle East, US President Donald Trump has threatened to strike targets in Iran should they seek to retaliate over the killing of Qassem Soleimani. According to the president’s tweet, these sites includes those that are ‘important to Iran and Iranian culture’.

Defense Secretary Mark Esper was quick on Monday to rule out any such action and acknowledged that the US would ‘follow the laws of armed conflict’. But Trump has not since commented further on the matter.

Any move to target Iranian cultural heritage could constitute a breach of the international laws protecting cultural property. Attacks on cultural sites are deemed unlawful under two United Nations conventions; the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property during Armed Conflict, and the 1972 UNESCO World Heritage Convention for the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage.

These have established deliberate attacks on cultural heritage (when not militarily necessary) as a war crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court in recognition of the irreparable damage that the loss of cultural heritage can have locally, regionally and globally.

These conventions were established in the aftermath of the Second World War, in reaction to the legacy of the massive destruction of cultural property that took place, including the intense bombing of cities, and systematic plunder of artworks across Europe. The conventions recognize that damage to the cultural property of any people means ‘damage to the cultural heritage of all mankind’. The intention of these is to establish a new norm whereby protecting culture and history – that includes cultural and historical property – is as important as safeguarding people.

Such historical sites are important not simply as a matter of buildings and statues, but rather for their symbolic significance in a people’s history and identity. Destroying cultural artefacts is a direct attack on the identity of the population that values them, erasing their memories and historical legacy. Following the heavy bombing of Dresden during the Second World War, one resident summed up the psychological impact of such destruction in observing that ‘you expect people to die, but you don’t expect the buildings to die’.

Targeting sites of cultural significance isn’t just an act of intimidation during conflict. It can also have a lasting effect far beyond the cessation of violence, hampering post-conflict reconciliation and reconstruction, where ruins or the absence of previously significant cultural monuments act as a lasting physical reminder of hostilities.

For example, during the Bosnian War in the 1990s, the Old Bridge in Mostar represented a symbol of centuries of shared cultural heritage and peaceful co-existence between the Serbian and Croat communities. The bridge’s destruction in 1993 at the height of the civil war and the temporary cable bridge which took its place acted as a lasting reminder of the bitter hostilities, prompting its reconstruction a decade later as a mark of the reunification of the ethnically divided town.

More recently, the destruction of cultural property has been a feature of terrorist organizations, such as the Taliban’s demolition of the 1,700-year-old Buddhas of Bamiyan in 2001, eliciting international condemnation. Similarly, in Iraq in 2014 following ISIS’s seizure of the city of Mosul, the terrorist group set about systematically destroying a number of cultural sites, including the Great Mosque of al-Nuri with its leaning minaret, which had stood since 1172. And in Syria, the ancient city of Palmyra was destroyed by ISIS in 2015, who attacked its archaeological sites with bulldozers and explosives.

Such violations go beyond destruction: they include the looting of archaeological sites and trafficking of cultural objects, which are used to finance terrorist activities, which are also prohibited under the 1954 Hague Convention.

As a war crime, the destruction of cultural property has been successfully prosecuted in the International Criminal Court, which sentenced Ahmad Al-Faqi Al-Mahdi to nine years in jail in 2016 for his part in the destruction of the Timbuktu mausoleums in Mali. Mahdi led members of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb to destroy mausoleums and monuments of cultural and religious importance in Timbuktu, irreversibly erasing what the chief prosecutor described as ‘the embodiment of Malian history captured in tangible form from an era long gone’.

Targeting cultural property is prohibited under customary international humanitarian law, not only by the Hague Convention. But the Convention sets out detailed regulations for protection of such property, and it has taken some states a lot of time to provide for these.

Although the UK was an original signatory to the 1954 Hague Convention, it did not ratify it until 2017, introducing into law the Cultural Property (Armed Conflicts) Act 2017, and setting up the Cultural Protection Fund to safeguard heritage of international importance threatened by conflict in countries across the Middle East and North Africa.

Ostensibly, the UK’s delay in ratifying the convention lay in concerns over the definition of key terms and adequate criminal sanctions, which were addressed in the Second Protocol in 1999. However, changing social attitudes towards the plunder of antiquities, and an alarming increase in the use of cultural destruction as a weapon of war by extremist groups to eliminate cultures that do not align with their own ideology, eventually compelled the UK to act.

In the US, it is notoriously difficult to get the necessary majority for the approval of any treaty in the Senate; for the Hague Convention, approval was achieved in 2008, following which the US ratified the Convention in 2009.

Destroying the buildings and monuments which form the common heritage of humanity is to wipe out the physical record of who we are. People are people within a place, and they draw meaning about who they are from their surroundings. Religious buildings, historical sites, works of art, monuments and historic artefacts all tell the story of who we are and how we got here. We have a responsibility to protect them.

The new UK government will conduct a review of foreign, security and defence policy in 2020. If the UK decides to use values as a framework for foreign policy this needs to be reflected in its armed forces. One area where this is essential is continuing to deepen inclusivity for LGBTIQ+ personnel, building on the progress made since the ban on their service was lifted in 2000.

I witnessed the ban first-hand as a young officer in the British Army in 1998. As the duty officer I visited soldiers being held in the regimental detention cells to check all was well. One day a corporal, who I knew, was there awaiting discharge from the army having been convicted of being gay. On the one hand, here was service law in action, which was officially protecting the army’s operational effectiveness and an authority not to be questioned at my level. On the other, here was an excellent soldier in a state of turmoil and public humiliation. How extreme this seems now.

On 12 January 2000 Tony Blair’s Labour government announced an immediate lifting of the ban for lesbian, gay and bisexual personnel (LGB) and introduced a new code of conduct for personal relationships. (LGB is the term used by the armed forces to describe those personnel who had been banned prior to 2000.) This followed a landmark ruling in a case taken to the European Court of Human Rights in 1999 by four LGB ex-service personnel – supported by Stonewall – who had been dismissed from service for their sexuality.

Up to that point the Ministry of Defence's long-held position had been that LGB personnel had a negative impact on the morale and cohesion of a unit and damaged operational effectiveness. Service personnel were automatically dismissed if it was discovered they were LGB, even though homosexuality had been decriminalized in the UK by 1967.

Proof that the armed forces had been lagging behind the rest of society was confirmed by the positive response to the change among service personnel, despite a handful of vocal political and military leaders who foresaw negative impacts. The noteworthy service of LGBTIQ+ people in Iraq and Afghanistan only served to debunk any residual myths.

Twenty years on, considerable progress has been made and my memories from 1998 now seem alien. This is a story to celebrate – however in the quest for greater inclusivity there is always room for improvement.

Defence Minister Johnny Mercer last week apologized following recent calls from campaign group Liberty for a fuller apology. In December 2019, the Ministry of Defence announced it was putting in place a scheme to return medals stripped from veterans upon their discharge.

The armed forces today have a range of inclusivity measures to improve workplace culture including assessments of workplace climate and diversity networks supported by champions drawn from senior leadership.

But assessing the actual lived experience for LGBTIQ+ people is challenging due to its subjectivity. This has not been helped by low participation in the 2015 initiative to encourage people to declare confidentially their sexual orientation, designed to facilitate more focused and relevant policies. As of 1 October 2019, only 20.3 per cent of regular service people had declared a sexual orientation.

A measure of positive progress is the annual Stonewall Workplace Equality Index, the definitive benchmarking tool for employers to measure their progress on LGBTIQ+ inclusion in the workplace; 2015 marked the first year in which all three services were placed in the top 100 employers in the UK and in 2019 the Royal Navy, British Army and Royal Air Force were placed 15th=, 51st= and 68th respectively.

Nevertheless, LGBTIQ+ service people and those in other protected groups still face challenges. The 2019 Ministry of Defence review of inappropriate behaviour in the armed forces, the Wigston Report, concluded there is an unacceptable level of sexual harassment, bullying and discrimination. It found that 26-36% of LGBTIQ+ service people have experienced negative comments or conduct at work because of their sexual orientation.

The Secretary of State for Defence accepted the report’s 36 recommendations on culture, incident reporting, training and a more effective complaints system. Pivotal to successful implementation will be a coherent strategy driven by fully engaged leaders.

Society is also expecting ever higher standards, particularly in public bodies. The armed forces emphasise their values and standards, including ‘respect for others’, as defining organisational characteristics; individuals are expected to live by them. Only in a genuinely inclusive environment can an individual thrive and operate confidently within a team.

The armed forces also recognize as a priority the need to connect to and reflect society more closely in order to attract and retain talent from across all of society. The armed forces’ active participation in UK Pride is helping to break down barriers in this area.

In a post-Brexit world, the UK’s values, support for human rights and reputation for fairness are distinctive strengths that can have an impact on the world stage and offer a framework for future policy. The armed forces must continue to push and promote greater inclusivity in support. When operating overseas with less liberal regimes, this will be sensitive and require careful handling; however it will be an overt manifestation of a broader policy and a way to communicate strong and consistent values over time.

The armed forces were damagingly behind the times 20 years ago. But good progress has been made since. Inclusion initiatives must continue to be pushed to bring benefits to the individual and the organization as well as demonstrate a values-based foreign policy.

In the late 1980s, with the 1995 decision on the future of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) looming, Joseph Pilat wrote an essay on "A World without the NPT?" which was published in The International Nuclear Non-Proliferation Regime in the 1990s, edited by John Simpson (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1986). In this piece, the speaker attempted to think through the effects of a limited or no agreement on extension to the treaty and regime, to nuclear non-proliferation, arms control and energy and to the broader geopolitical landscape. The purpose was not a prediction, but a cautionary tale of the value of the treaty.

Now, nearly 25 years after indefinite extension and 50 years after the NPT's entry into force, the treaty and the regime are facing serious challenges. In this roundtable meeting, the speaker will revisit the questions he addressed thirty years ago.

In April 2018, the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM), held in London, saw the creation and the adoption of the Commonwealth Cyber Declaration. The declaration outlines the framework for a concerted effort to advance cybersecurity practices to promote a safe and prosperous cyberspace for Commonwealth citizens, businesses and societies. 

The conference will aim to provide an overview on the progress made on cybersecurity in the Commonwealth since the declaration was announced in 2018. In addition, it will examine future challenges and potential solutions going forward.

This conference is part of the International Security Programme's project on Implementing the Commonwealth Cybersecurity Agenda and will convene a range of senior Commonwealth representatives as well as a selection of civil society and industry stakeholders. This project aims to develop a pan-Commonwealth platform to take the Commonwealth Cyber Declaration forward by means of a holistic, inclusive and representative approach.

Please see below meeting summaries from previous events on Cybersecurity in the Commonwealth:  

• A cyberspace that supports economic and social rights online (London)
• Build the foundations of an effective national cybersecurity response (Barbados)
• Promote stability in cyberspace through international cooperation (Addis Ababa)

Attendance at this event is by invitation only. 

Smart Peace brings together global expertise in conflict analysis and research, peacebuilding and mediation programming, and behavioural science and evaluation. Together, Smart Peace partners are developing integrated and adaptive peace initiatives, working with local partners to prevent and resolve complex and intractable conflicts in Central African Republic, Myanmar and northern Nigeria.
 
This roundtable is an opportunity for Smart Peace partners to share the Smart Peace concept, approach and objectives, and experiences of the first phases of programme implementation. Roundtable discussions among participants from policy, practice and research communities will inform future priorities and planning for Smart Peace learning, advocacy and communication.
 
Smart Peace partners include Conciliation Resources, Behavioural Insights Team, The Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, Chatham House, ETH Zurich, International Crisis Group and The Asia Foundation.

The GCC states have invested significantly in cybersecurity and have made large strides in protecting governments, businesses and individuals from cyber threats, with the aim of delivering on their ambitious national strategies and future visions. However, several challenges to cybersecurity and cyber resilience in the region persist, putting those ambitious plans at risk.

These challenges include the uneven nature of cybersecurity protections, the incomplete implementation of cybersecurity strategies and regulations, and the issues around international cooperation. Such challenges mean that GCC states need to focus on the more difficult task of cyber resilience, in addition to the simpler initial stages of cybersecurity capacity-building, to ensure they harness the true potential of digital technologies and mitigate associated threats.

Set against this background, this workshop will explore opportunities and challenges to cyber resilience in the GCC focusing on four main pillars:

1. Cyber resilience: in concept and in practice
2. Building an effective cybersecurity capacity
3. The potential of regional and international cooperation to cyber resilience
4. Deterrence and disruption: different approaches

This event will be held in collaboration with the Arab Regional Cybersecurity Centre (ARCC) and OMAN CERT.

PLEASE NOTE THIS EVENT IS POSTPONED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. 

Cyber security is a vital part of the national and international strategic infrastructure and weapons systems. The increasing cyber capabilities of countries such as China, Russia and North Korea put the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO’s) nuclear systems - capabilities that include nuclear command, control and communication, weapons systems and early warning systems - in danger.

There is an urgent need to study and address cyber challenges to nuclear assets within NATO and in key NATO countries. Greater awareness of the potential threats and vulnerabilities is key to improving preparedness and mitigating the risks of a cyber-attack on NATO nuclear weapons systems.

Chatham House produces research responding to the need for information on enhancing cybersecurity for command, control and communications. This project constitutes the beginning of the second phase of the Cyber Security of Nuclear Weapons Systems: Threats, Vulnerabilities and Consequences, a report published in January 2018 in partnership with the Stanley Foundation.

The project responds to the need both for more public information on cyber risks in NATO’s nuclear mission, and to provide policy-driven research to shape and inform nuclear policy within NATO member states and the Nuclear Planning Group.

This project is supported by the Ploughshares Fund and the Stanley Foundation.

Concerns about transatlantic security are high following the US 2018 Nuclear Posture Review and its interpretation of the Russian doctrine, the demise of the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), the uncertainty surrounding the potential extension of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), and Russian deployment of Avangard hypersonic, nuclear-capable missile systems.

Emerging technologies, especially quantum technologies, jeopardize the reliability of existing encryption measures. Some of the most sophisticated cyber attacks are already assisted by artificial intelligence. The possibility that nuclear weapons systems can be interfered with both during conflict and peacetime by these technologies, without the knowledge of the possessor state, raises questions on the reliability and integrity of these systems, with implications for military decision-making, particularly to deterrence policy.

These issues and more indicate the changes in the security landscape that have a bearing on the future of nuclear deterrence.

This project is supported by the Hiroshima Prefecture and Government of Ireland.

Examining obligations under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), and exploring new approaches that NATO could adopt to reconcile strategic stability with nuclear disarmament policies which could be introduced at the 2020 NPT Review Conference (RevCon).

The project facilitates the reconciliation of different positions in advance of the RevCon by providing a platform for stakeholders to communicate their respective positions and engage in constructive dialogue. Key research findings and contemporary analysis will be disseminated to officials and the policy community.

Through dialogue and research, the project aims to reduce polarisation in the nuclear field and consequently lay a foundation for increased collaboration during the discussions. It also provides a unique opportunity for NATO countries to explore specific new approaches, including in relation to identifying and analysing relevant geopolitical conditions for nuclear disarmament measures that will inform their inputs into the RevCon and related policy framework discussions.

This project is supported by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

Understanding the complexity and the wickedness of the situation allows analysts and strategic planners to approach these complex and intractable issues in new and transformative ways – with a better chance of coping or succeeding and reducing the divisions between experts.

Using complexity theory, a complex adaptive system representing the international system and its interaction with the environment can be represented through an interactive visualization tool that will aid thought processes and policy decision-making. 

Until recently, analysts did not have the tools to be able to create models that could represent the complexity of the international system and the role that nuclear weapons play. Now that these tools are available, analysts should use them to enable decision-makers to gain insights into the range of possible outcomes from a set of possible actions.

This programme builds on work by Chatham House on cyber security and artificial intelligence (AI) in the nuclear/strategic realms.

In order to approach nuclear weapons as wicked problems in a complex adaptive system from different and sometimes competing perspectives, the programme of work involves the wider community of specialists who do not agree on what constitutes the problems of nuclear weapons nor on what are the desired solutions.

Different theories of deterrence, restraint and disarmament are tested. The initiative is international and inclusive, paying attention to gender, age and other aspects of diversity, and the network of MacArthur Grantees are given the opportunity to participate in the research, including in the writing of research papers, so that the complexity modelling can be tested against a wide range of approaches and hypotheses.

In addition, a Senior Reference Group will work alongside the programme, challenging its outcome and findings, and evaluating and guiding the direction of the research.

This project is supported by the MacArthur Foundation.

Several governments have been moving towards a stronger sovereignty narrative when it comes to the internet with some trying to impose borders in cyberspace to extend their physical borders in cyberspace. From attempts to create isolatable domestic internets to data localization laws and to increased calls for sovereignty in the digital space, all these approaches are raising concerns regarding the fate of the internet.

While the impact of these approaches varies and the motivations behind them are arguably different too, all governments have been working towards the pursuit of greater technological independence and in some instances greater control.

The panellists will discuss the impact that these approaches have on the internet. They will address the question of whether the era of an 'open web' is drawing to an end and whether these territorialization efforts lead to a fragmentation of the internet, making a 'splinternet' inevitable?

This event is being organized with the kind support of DXC Technology.

This event will be followed by a reception. 

PLEASE NOTE THIS EVENT IS POSTPONED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.

Summary

• GCC states seek to be leaders in digital innovation, but this leaves them vulnerable to an increasing range of cyberthreats. Governments have invested significantly in cybersecurity but these measures have been unevenly implemented, makingit difficult for these states to be resilient against a large-scale cyber incident.
• Strategies, structures and processes (‘approaches’) for achieving cyber resilience can be conceptualized along a scale from centralized to distributed: centralized approaches maintain decision-making power in a single body, while distributed ones disperse power over many sites.
• Centralized approaches provide more resilience against unwanted influence, while distributed approaches provide more resilience against intrusions into infrastructure. The GCC states have so far prioritized centralized over distributed cyber resilience, seeking internet and social media control over sustainable network recovery.
• GCC governments should make a sustainable commitment to cyber resilience that provides clear guidance to organizations and makes best use of emerging cybersecurity structures. This may involve further engagement with international initiatives and partners to increase cyber resilience.
• Given limited resources, GCC governments should rebalance their efforts from centralized towards distributed approaches to resilience.
• GCC governments should examine the impact of relevant new technologies, discussing openly the risks of these technologies and appropriate solutions.

Complex systems models have played a significant role in informing and shaping the public health measures adopted by governments in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. For instance, modelling carried out by a team at Imperial College London is widely reported to have driven the approach in the UK from a strategy of mitigation to one of suppression.

Complex systems modelling will increasingly feed into policymaking by predicting a range of potential correlations, results and outcomes based on a set of parameters, assumptions, data and pre-defined interactions. It is already instrumental in developing risk mitigation and resilience measures to address and prepare for existential crises such as pandemics, prospects of a nuclear war, as well as climate change.

The human factor

In the end, model-driven approaches must stand up to the test of real-life data. Modelling for policymaking must take into account a number of caveats and limitations. Models are developed to help answer specific questions, and their predictions will depend on the hypotheses and definitions set by the modellers, which are subject to their individual and collective biases and assumptions. For instance, the models developed by Imperial College came with the caveated assumption that a policy of social distancing for people over 70 will have a 75 per cent compliance rate. This assumption is based on the modellers’ own perceptions of demographics and society, and may not reflect all societal factors that could impact this compliance rate in real life, such as gender, age, ethnicity, genetic diversity, economic stability, as well as access to food, supplies and healthcare. This is why modelling benefits from a cognitively diverse team who bring a wide range of knowledge and understanding to the early creation of a model.

The potential of artificial intelligence

Machine learning, or artificial intelligence (AI), has the potential to advance the capacity and accuracy of modelling techniques by identifying new patterns and interactions, and overcoming some of the limitations resulting from human assumptions and bias. Yet, increasing reliance on these techniques raises the issue of explainability. Policymakers need to be fully aware and understand the model, assumptions and input data behind any predictions and must be able to communicate this aspect of modelling in order to uphold democratic accountability and transparency in public decision-making.

In addition, models using machine learning techniques require extensive amounts of data, which must also be of high quality and as free from bias as possible to ensure accuracy and address the issues at stake. Although technology may be used in the process (i.e. automated extraction and processing of information with big data), data is ultimately created, collected, aggregated and analysed by and for human users. Datasets will reflect the individual and collective biases and assumptions of those creating, collecting, processing and analysing this data. Algorithmic bias is inevitable, and it is essential that policy- and decision-makers are fully aware of how reliable the systems are, as well as their potential social implications.

The age of distrust

Increasing use of emerging technologies for data- and evidence-based policymaking is taking place, paradoxically, in an era of growing mistrust towards expertise and experts, as infamously surmised by Michael Gove. Policymakers and subject-matter experts have faced increased public scrutiny of their findings and the resultant policies that they have been used to justify.

This distrust and scepticism within public discourse has only been fuelled by an ever-increasing availability of diffuse sources of information, not all of which are verifiable and robust. This has caused tension between experts, policymakers and public, which has led to conflicts and uncertainty over what data and predictions can be trusted, and to what degree. This dynamic is exacerbated when considering that certain individuals may purposefully misappropriate, or simply misinterpret, data to support their argument or policies. Politicians are presently considered the least trusted professionals by the UK public, highlighting the importance of better and more effective communication between the scientific community, policymakers and the populations affected by policy decisions.

Acknowledging limitations

While measures can and should be built in to improve the transparency and robustness of scientific models in order to counteract these common criticisms, it is important to acknowledge that there are limitations to the steps that can be taken. This is particularly the case when dealing with predictions of future events, which inherently involve degrees of uncertainty that cannot be fully accounted for by human or machine. As a result, if not carefully considered and communicated, the increased use of complex modelling in policymaking holds the potential to undermine and obfuscate the policymaking process, which may contribute towards significant mistakes being made, increased uncertainty, lack of trust in the models and in the political process and further disaffection of citizens.

The potential contribution of complexity modelling to the work of policymakers is undeniable. However, it is imperative to appreciate the inner workings and limitations of these models, such as the biases that underpin their functioning and the uncertainties that they will not be fully capable of accounting for, in spite of their immense power. They must be tested against the data, again and again, as new information becomes available or there is a risk of scientific models becoming embroiled in partisan politicization and potentially weaponized for political purposes. It is therefore important not to consider these models as oracles, but instead as one of many contributions to the process of policymaking.

The World Health Organization, US Department of Health and Human Services, and hospitals in Spain, France and the Czech Republic have all suffered cyberattacks during the ongoing COVID-19 crisis.

In the Czech Republic, a successful attack targeted a hospital with one of the country’s biggest COVID-19 testing laboratories, forcing its entire IT network to shut down, urgent surgical operations to be rescheduled, and patients to be moved to nearby hospitals. The attack also delayed dozens of COVID-19 test results and affected the hospital’s data transfer and storage, affecting the healthcare the hospital could provide.

In the UK, the National Health Service (NHS) is already in crisis mode, focused on providing beds and ventilators to respond to one of the largest peacetime threats ever faced. But supporting the health sector goes beyond increasing human resources and equipment capacity.

Health services ill-prepared

Cybersecurity support, both at organizational and individual level, is critical so health professionals can carry on saving lives, safely and securely. Yet this support is currently missing and the health services may be ill-prepared to deal with the aftermath of potential cyberattacks.

When the NHS was hit by the Wannacry ransomware attack in 2017 - one of the largest cyberattacks the UK has witnessed to date – it caused massive disruption, with at least 80 of the 236 trusts across England affected and thousands of appointments and operations cancelled. Fortunately, a ‘kill-switch’ activated by a cybersecurity researcher quickly brought it to a halt.

But the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), has been warning for some time against a cyber attack targeting national critical infrastructure sectors, including the health sector. A similar attack, known as category one (C1) attack, could cripple the UK with devastating consequences. It could happen and we should be prepared.

Although the NHS has taken measures since Wannacry to improve cybersecurity, its enormous IT networks, legacy equipment and the overlap between the operational and information technology (OT/IT) does mean mitigating current potential threats are beyond its ability.

And the threats have radically increased. More NHS staff with access to critical systems and patient health records are increasingly working remotely. The NHS has also extended its physical presence with new premises, such as the Nightingale hospital, potentially the largest temporary hospital in the world.

Radical change frequently means proper cybersecurity protocols are not put in place. Even existing cybersecurity processes had to be side-stepped because of the outbreak, such as the decision by NHS Digital to delay its annual cybersecurity audit until September. During this audit, health and care organizations submit data security and protection toolkits to regulators setting out their cybersecurity and cyber resilience levels.

The decision to delay was made to allow the NHS organizations to focus capacity on responding to COVID-19, but cybersecurity was highlighted as a high risk, and the importance of NHS and Social Care remaining resilient to cyberattacks was stressed.

The NHS is stretched to breaking point. Expecting it to be on top of its cybersecurity during these exceptionally challenging times is unrealistic, and could actually add to the existing risk.

Now is the time where new partnerships and support models should be emerging to support the NHS and help build its resilience. Now is the time where innovative public-private partnerships on cybersecurity should be formed.

Similar to the economic package from the UK chancellor and innovative thinking on ventilator production, the government should oversee a scheme calling on the large cybersecurity capacity within the private sector to step in and assist the NHS. This support can be delivered in many different ways, but it must be mobilized swiftly.

The NCSC for instance has led the formation of the Cyber Security Information Sharing Partnership (CiSP)— a joint industry and UK government initiative to exchange cyber threat information confidentially in real time with the aim of reducing the impact of cyberattacks on UK businesses.

CiSP comprises organizations vetted by NCSC which go through a membership process before being able to join. These members could conduct cybersecurity assessment and penetration testing for NHS organizations, retrospectively assisting in implementing key security controls which may have been overlooked.

They can also help by making sure NHS remote access systems are fully patched and advising on sensible security systems and approved solutions. They can identify critical OT and legacy systems and advise on their security.

The NCSC should continue working with the NHS to enhance provision of public comprehensive guidance on cyber defence and response to potential attack. This would show they are on top of the situation, projecting confidence and reassurance.

It is often said in every crisis lies an opportunity. This is an opportunity for the UK government to show agility in how it deals with cyber threats and how it cooperates with the private sector in creating cyber resilience.

It is an opportunity to lead a much-needed cultural change showing cybersecurity should never be an afterthought.

Summary

• This collection of essays explores, from the perspectives of eight experts, four areas of deterrence theory and policymaking: the underlying assumptions that shape deterrence practice; the enduring value of extended deterrence; the impact of emerging technologies; and the ‘blurring’ of the lines between conventional and nuclear weapons.
• Nuclear deterrence theory, with its roots in the Cold War era, may not account for all eventualities in security and defence in the 21st century, given the larger number of nuclear actors in a less binary geopolitical context. It is clear that a number of present factors challenge the overall credibility of ‘classical’ nuclear deterrence, meaning that in-depth analysis is now needed.
• Uncertainty as to the appetite to maintain the current nuclear weapons policy architecture looms large in discussions and concerns on global and regional security. The demise of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, doubts over the potential extension of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, heightened regional tensions in Northeast and South Asia, together with the current and likely future risks and challenges arising from global technological competition, making it all the more urgent to examine long-held assumptions in the real-world context.
• Extended deterrence practices differ from region to region, depending on the domestic and regional landscape. Increased focus on diplomatic capabilities to reduce risks and improve the long-term outlook at regional level, including by spearheading new regional arms-control initiatives, may be a viable way forward. Addressing the bigger picture – notably including, on the Korean peninsula, Pyongyang’s own threat perception – and the links between conventional and nuclear missile issues will need to remain prominent if long-term and concrete changes are to take hold.
• Most states have long held nuclear weapons to be ‘exceptional’: their use would represent a dramatic escalation of a conflict that must never be attained. Latterly, however, some officials and scholars have made the case that the impact of the use of a low-yield nuclear weapon would not be entirely distinct from that of a large-scale conventional attack. This blurring of lines between conventional and nuclear deterrence strips nuclear weapons of their exceptional nature, in a context in which states are faced with diverse, complex and concurrent threats from multiple potential adversaries that are able to synchronize non-military and military options, up to and including nuclear forces. The use of nuclear weapons risks becoming a ‘new normal’, potentially reducing the threshold for use – to cyberattacks, for example. This has direct implications for discussions around strategic stability. 
• While emerging technologies may offer tremendous opportunities in the modernization of nuclear weapons, they also present major risks and destabilizing challenges. Artificial intelligence, automation, and other developments in the cyber sphere affect dynamics on both the demand and supply sides of the nuclear deterrence equation. States and alliance such as NATO must adapt their deterrence thinking in light of these technological developments, and define their primary purpose and priorities in this shifting security context. Resilience planning, adaptation to the evolving security environment, threat anticipation, and consistent crisis management and incident response – as well as thinking about the mitigation measures necessary to prevent conflict escalation should deterrence fail – will all be critical in upholding nuclear deterrence as both policy and practice.

A controversial debate during COVID-19 is the state of readiness within governments and health systems for a pandemic, with lines of the debate drawn on the issues of testing provision, personal protective equipment (PPE), and the speed of decision-making.

President Macron in a speech to the nation admitted French medical workers did not have enough PPE and that mistakes had been made: ‘Were we prepared for this crisis? We have to say that no, we weren’t, but we have to admit our errors … and we will learn from this’.

In reality few governments were fully prepared. In years to come, all will ask: ‘how could we have been better prepared, what did we do wrong, and what can we learn?’. But after every crisis, governments ask these same questions.

Most countries have put in place national risk assessments and established processes and systems to monitor and stress-test crisis-preparedness. So why have some countries been seemingly better prepared?

Comparing different approaches

Some have had more time and been able to watch the spread of the disease and learn from those countries that had it first. Others have taken their own routes, and there will be much to learn from comparing these different approaches in the longer run.

Governments in Asia have been strongly influenced by the experience of the SARS epidemic in 2002-3 and - South Korea in particular - the MERS-CoV outbreak in 2015 which was the largest outside the Middle East. Several carried out preparatory work in terms of risk assessment, preparedness measures and resilience planning for a wide range of threats.

Case Study of Preparedness: South Korea By 2007, South Korea had established the Division of Public Health Crisis Response in Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) and, in 2016, the KCDC Center for Public Health Emergency Preparedness and Response had established a round-the-clock Emergency Operations Center with rapid response teams. KCDC is responsible for the distribution of antiviral stockpiles to 16 cities and provinces that are required by law to hold and manage antiviral stockpiles.

And, at the international level, there are frameworks for preparedness for pandemics. The International Health Regulations (IHR) - adopted at the 2005 World Health Assembly and binding on member states - require countries to report certain disease outbreaks and public health events to the World Health Organization (WHO) and ‘prevent, protect against, control and provide a public health response to the international spread of disease in ways that are commensurate with and restricted to public health risks, and which avoid unnecessary interference with international traffic and trade’.

Under IHR, governments committed to a programme of building core capacities including coordination, surveillance, response and preparedness. The UN Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk highlights disaster preparedness for effective response as one of its main purposes and has already incorporated these measures into the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and other Agenda 2030 initiatives. UN Secretary-General António Guterres has said COVID-19 ‘poses a significant threat to the maintenance of international peace and security’ and that ‘a signal of unity and resolve from the Council would count for a lot at this anxious time’.

Case Study of Preparedness: United States The National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Center for Disease Control (CDC) established PERRC – the Preparedness for Emergency Response Research Centers - as a requirement of the 2006 Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act, which required research to ‘improve federal, state, local, and tribal public health preparedness and response systems’. The 2006 Act has since been supplanted by the 2019 Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness and Advancing Innovation Act. This created the post of Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) in the Department for Health and Human Services (HHS) and authorised the development and acquisitions of medical countermeasures and a quadrennial National Health Security Strategy. The 2019 Act also set in place a number of measures including the requirement for the US government to re-evaluate several important metrics of the Public Health Emergency Preparedness cooperative agreement and the Hospital Preparedness Program, and a requirement for a report on the states of preparedness and response in US healthcare facilities.

This pandemic looks set to continue to be a grave threat to humanity. But there will also be future pandemics – whether another type of coronavirus or a new influenza virus – and our species will be threatened again, we just don’t know when.

Other disasters too will befall us – we already see the impacts of climate change arriving on our doorsteps characterised by increased numbers and intensity of floods, hurricanes, fires, crop failure and other manifestations of a warming, increasingly turbulent atmosphere and we will continue to suffer major volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and tsunamis. All high impact, unknown probability events.

Preparedness for an unknown future is expensive and requires a great deal of effort for events that may not happen within the preparers’ lifetimes. It is hard to imagine now, but people will forget this crisis, and revert to their imagined projections of the future where crises don’t occur, and progress follows progress. But history shows us otherwise.

Preparations for future crises always fall prey to financial cuts and austerity measures in lean times unless there is a mechanism to prevent that. Cost-benefit analyses will understandably tend to prioritise the urgent over the long-term. So governments should put in place legislation – or strengthen existing legislation – now to ensure their countries are as prepared as possible for whatever crisis is coming.

Such a legal requirement would require governments to report back to parliament every year on the state of their national preparations detailing such measures as:

• The exact levels of stocks of essential materials (including medical equipment)
• The ability of hospitals to cope with large influx of patients
• How many drills, exercises and simulations had been organised – and their findings
• What was being done to implement lessons learned & improve preparedness

In addition, further actions should be taken:

• Parliamentary committees such as the UK Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy should scrutinise the government’s readiness for the potential threats outlined in the National Risk register for Civil Emergencies in-depth on an annual basis.
• Parliamentarians, including ministers, with responsibility for national security and resilience should participate in drills, table-top exercises and simulations to see for themselves the problems inherent with dealing with crises.
• All governments should have a minister (or equivalent) with the sole responsibility for national crisis preparedness and resilience. The Minister would be empowered to liaise internationally and coordinate local responses such as local resilience groups.
• There should be ring-fenced budget lines in annual budgets specifically for preparedness and resilience measures, annually reported on and assessed by parliaments as part of the due diligence process.

And at the international level:

• The UN Security Council should establish a Crisis Preparedness Committee to bolster the ability of United Nations Member States to respond to international crisis such as pandemics, within their borders and across regions. The Committee would function in a similar fashion as the Counter Terrorism Committee that was established following the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States.
• States should present reports on their level of preparedness to the UN Security Council. The Crisis Preparedness Committee could establish a group of experts who would conduct expert assessments of each member state’s risks and preparedness and facilitate technical assistance as required.
• Regional bodies such as the OSCE, ASEAN and ARF, the AU, the OAS, the PIF etc could also request national reports on crisis preparedness for discussion and cooperation at the regional level.

COVID-19 has been referred to as the 9/11 of crisis preparedness and response. Just as that shocking terrorist attack shifted the world and created a series of measures to address terrorism, we now recognise our security frameworks need far more emphasis on being prepared and being resilient. Whatever has been done in the past, it is clear that was nowhere near enough and that has to change.

Case Study of Preparedness: The UK The National Risk Register was first published in 2008 as part of the undertakings laid out in the National Security Strategy (the UK also published the Biological Security Strategy in July 2018). Now entitled the National Risk Register for Civil Emergencies it has been updated regularly to analyse the risks of major emergencies that could affect the UK in the next five years and provide resilience advice and guidance. The latest edition - produced in 2017 when the UK had a Minister for Government Resilience and Efficiency - placed the risk of a pandemic influenza in the ‘highly likely and most severe’ category. It stood out from all the other identified risks, whereas an emerging disease (such as COVID-19) was identified as ‘highly likely but with moderate impact’. However, much preparatory work for an influenza pandemic is the same as for COVID-19, particularly in prepositioning large stocks of PPE, readiness within large hospitals, and the creation of new hospitals and facilities. One key issue is that the 2017 NHS Operating Framework for Managing the Response to Pandemic Influenza was dependent on pre-positioned ’just in case’ stockpiles of PPE. But as it became clear the PPE stocks were not adequate for the pandemic, it was reported that recommendations about the stockpile by NERVTAG (the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group which advises the government on the threat posed by new and emerging respiratory viruses) had been subjected to an ‘economic assessment’ and decisions reversed on, for example, eye protection. The UK chief medical officer Dame Sally Davies, when speaking at the World Health Organization about Operation Cygnus – a 2016 three-day exercise on a flu pandemic in the UK – reportedly said the UK was not ready for a severe flu attack and ‘a lot of things need improving’. Aware of the significance of the situation, the UK Parliamentary Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy launched an inquiry in 2019 on ‘Biosecurity and human health: preparing for emerging infectious diseases and bioweapons’ which intended to coordinate a cross-government approach to biosecurity threats. But the inquiry had to postpone its oral hearings scheduled for late October 2019 and, because of the general election in December 2019, the committee was obliged to close the inquiry.

Despite face-to-face diplomatic meetings being increasingly rare during the current disruption, COVID-19 will ultimately force a redefinition of national security and defence spending priorities, and this could provide the possibility of an improved political climate at RevCon when it happens in 2021.

With US presidential elections due in November and a gradual engagement growing between the EU and Iran, there could be a new context for more cooperation between states by 2021. Two key areas of focus over the coming months will be the arms control talks between the United States and Russia, and Iran’s compliance with the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), also known as the Iran Nuclear Deal.

It is too early to discern the medium- and longer-term consequences of COVID-19 for defence ministries, but a greater focus on societal resilience and reinvigorating economic productivity will likely undercut the rationale for expensive nuclear modernization.

Therefore, extending the current New START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) would be the best, most practical option to give both Russia and the United States time to explore more ambitious multilateral arms control measures, while allowing their current focus to remain on the pandemic and economic relief.

Continuing distrust

But with the current treaty — which limits nuclear warheads, missiles, bombers, and launchers — due to expire in February 2021, the continuing distrust between the United States and Russia makes this extension hard to achieve, and a follow-on treaty even less likely.

Prospects for future bilateral negotiations are hindered by President Donald Trump’s vision for a trilateral arms control initiative involving both China and Russia. But China opposes this on the grounds that its nuclear arsenal is far smaller than that of the two others.

While there appears to be agreement that the nuclear arsenals of China, France, and the UK (the NPT nuclear-weapons states) and those of the states outside the treaty (India, Pakistan, North Korea, and Israel) will all have to be taken into account going forward, a practical mechanism for doing so proves elusive.

If Joe Biden wins the US presidency he seems likely to pursue an extension of the New START treaty and could also prevent a withdrawal from the Open Skies treaty, the latest arms control agreement targeted by the Trump administration.

Under a Biden administration, the United States would also probably re-join the JCPOA, provided Tehran returned to strict compliance with the deal. Biden could even use the team that negotiated the Iran deal to advance the goal of denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.

For an NPT regime already confronted by a series of longstanding divergences, it is essential that Iran remains a signatory especially as tensions between Iran and the United States have escalated recently — due to the Qassim Suleimani assassination and the recent claim by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps to have successfully placed the country’s first military satellite into orbit.

This announcement raised red flags among experts about whether Iran is developing intercontinental ballistic missiles due to the dual-use nature of space technology. The satellite launch — deeply troubling for Iran’s neighbours and the EU countries — may strengthen the US argument that it is a cover for the development of ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons.

However, as with many other countries, Iran is struggling with a severe coronavirus crisis and will be pouring its scientific expertise and funds into that rather than other efforts — including the nuclear programme.

Those European countries supporting the trading mechanism INSTEX (Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges) for sending humanitarian goods into Iran could use this crisis to encourage Iran to remain in compliance with the JCPOA and its NPT obligations.

France, Germany and the UK (the E3) have already successfully concluded the first transaction, which was to facilitate the export of medical goods from Europe to Iran. But the recent Iranian escalatory steps will most certainly place a strain on the preservation of this arrangement.

COVID-19 might have delayed Iran’s next breach of the 2015 nuclear agreement but Tehran will inevitably seek to strengthen its hand before any potential negotiations with the United States after the presidential elections.

As frosty US-Iranian relations — exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic — prevent diplomatic negotiations, this constructive engagement between the E3 and Iran might prove instrumental in reviving the JCPOA and ensuring Iran stays committed to both nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament.

While countries focus their efforts on tackling the coronavirus pandemic, it is understandable resources may be limited for other global challenges, such as the increasing risk of nuclear weapons use across several regions.

But the potential ramifications of the COVID-19 crisis for the NPT regime are profound. Ongoing tensions between the nuclear-armed states must not be ignored while the world’s focus is elsewhere, and the nuclear community should continue to work together to progress nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament, building bridges of cooperation and trust that can long outlast the pandemic.

It is nearly 30 years since Rudiger Dornbusch and Sebastian Edwards published a seminal book, The Macroeconomics of Populism. Their conclusion back then was that the economic policies of populist leaders were quintessentially irresponsible. These governments, blinded by an aim to address perceived social injustices, specialised in profligacy, unbothered by budget constraints or whether they might run out of foreign exchange.

Because of this disregard for basic economic logic, their policy experiments inevitably ended badly, with some combination of inflation, capital flight, recession and default. Salvador Allende’s Chile in the 1970s, or Alan García’s Peru in the 1980s, capture this story perfectly.

These days, the macroeconomics of populism looks different. Of course there are populist leaders out there whose policies follow, more or less, the playbook of the 1970s and 1980s. Donald Trump may prove to be one of those, with a late-cycle fiscal expansion that seemed to have no basis in economic reasoning; Recep Tayyip Erdogan, by some accounts, may be another.

But a much more interesting phenomenon is the apparent surge in populist leaders whose economic policies are remarkably disciplined.

Take Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. When it comes to fiscal policy, it is odd indeed that this fiery critic of neoliberalism seems fully committed to austerity. His budget for 2019 targets a surplus before interest payments of 1 per cent of GDP, and on current plans he intends to increase that surplus next year to 1.3 per cent of GDP. He has upheld the autonomy of the central bank and, so far at least, his overall macroeconomic framework is anything but revolutionary.

Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orban offers another example of conservative populism. Under his watch, budget deficits have been considerably lower than they had been previously, helping to push the stock of public debt down from 74 per cent of GDP in 2010, the year Orban took over, to 68 per cent last year.

This emphasis on the virtues of fiscal prudence is also visible in Poland, where Jaroslaw Kaczynski’s PiS has managed public finances with sufficient discipline in the past few years to push the debt/GDP ratio below 50 per cent last year, the first time this has happened since 2009.

The obvious question is: what has changed in the decades since Dornbusch and Edwards went into print?

One answer is that today’s populists tend to strive for national self-reliance, which encourages them to avoid building up any dependence on foreign capital. And since that goal is achieved by keeping a tight rein on macro policy, fiscal indiscipline is avoided in order to limit vulnerability to foreign influences.

Perhaps this is because the 'them', or the perceived enemy, for many of today’s populists tends to be outside the country rather than inside. Broadly speaking, it is the forces of globalisation — and global capital in particular — that are the problem for these leaders, and self-reliance is the only way to keep those forces at arm’s length. This helps to explain why, for example, Orban has been so keen to repay debt to Hungary’s external creditors. He has relied instead on selling bonds to Hungarian households to finance his deficits, even though the interest rates on those bonds are much higher than he would pay to foreign creditors. It also helps explain why the PiS in Poland has presided over a decline in foreign holdings of its domestic bonds. Foreign investors owned 40 per cent of Poland’s domestic government debt back in 2015, but only 26 per cent now.

In other words, among many of today’s populists there is a blurring of the distinction between populism and nationalism. And the nationalistic urge to keep the rest of the world off your back seems to dominate the populist urge to spend money. The perfect example of that instinct is Vladimir Putin: not necessarily a populist, but his administration has been emphatic about the need to keep public spending low and to build solid financial buffers. National self-reliance is an economic obsession for the Russian government, and provides a model for other countries who wish to insulate themselves from international finance.

One of the reasons why the macroeconomics of populism have changed in this way is the historical legacy of economic disaster. If you are a populist leader in a country where financial crisis is part of living memory — as it is in Mexico, Hungary and Russia, say — you might do well to err on the side of conservatism for fear of repeating the mistakes of your predecessors.

But another reason why populism looks different for countries like Poland, Hungary, Mexico and Russia has to do with mere luck. Hungary and Poland, in particular, enjoy the luck of geography: having been absorbed into the EU, they have received financial transfers from Brussels averaging some 3-4 per cent of GDP in the past few years, so that populism in these countries has been solidly underpinned by the terms of their EU membership. López Obrador is enjoying the inheritance of his predecessor’s sound macro policy, together with a buoyant US economy and low US interest rates. Russia has had the good fortune of oil exports to rely on.

The thing about luck is that it can run out. So maybe it’s not quite time yet to bury the old macroeconomics of populism. But for the time being, it seems true to say that many of today’s populists have an unexpectedly robust sense of economic discipline.

This article was originally published in the Financial Times.

The 2007-08 financial crisis wreaked havoc on the lives of millions of people across the globe, and upended the faith of many in the prevailing economic system, with many countries still recovering a decade on.

Drawing on extensive research in his new book, Narrative Economics: How Stories Go Viral and Drive Major Economic Events, Professor Shiller will draw on a rich array of historical examples and data and outline a new way to think about economic change, and the narratives that shape it, to provide answers to questions such as whether lessons have been learned since the last financial crisis, are the same dislocations likely to occur again and what toolkits, if any, are there for anticipating the next financial crisis or recession?

Attendance at this event is by invitation only.

The renminbi seems to be back in business as a Chinese tool of retaliation against US tariffs. A 1.5 per cent fall in the currency early this month in response to proposed new US tariffs was only a start. Since the middle of August the renminbi has weakened further, and the exchange rate is now 4 per cent weaker than at the start of the month. We may well see more of a ‘weaponized’ renminbi, but there are four good reasons why Beijing might be wise to think before shooting.

The first has to do with how China seeks to promote its place in the world. China has been at pains to manage the collapse of its relations with the US in a way that allows it to present itself as an alternative pillar of global order, and as a source of stability in the international system, not to mention moral authority. This has deep roots.

Anyone investigating the history of Chinese statecraft will quickly come across an enduring distinction in Chinese thought: between wang dao, the kingly, or righteous way, and ba dao, the way of the hegemon. Since Chinese thinkers and officials routinely describe US behaviour since the Second World War as hegemonic, it behoves Chinese policymakers to do as much as possible to stay on moral high-ground in their behaviour towards Washington. Only in that way would President Xi be able properly to assert China’s claim to leadership.

Indeed, China has a notable track record of using exchange rate stability to enhance its reputation as a force for global stability. Both in the aftermath of the Asian crisis in 1997, and of the Global Financial Crisis in 2008, Chinese exchange rate stability was offered as a way of demonstrating China’s trustworthiness and its commitment to multilateral order.

Devaluing the renminbi in a meaningful way now might have a different rationale, but the cost to China’s claim to virtue, and its bid to offer itself as a guardian of global stability, might be considerable.

That’s particularly true because of the second problem China has in thinking about a weaker renminbi: it may not be all that effective in sustaining Chinese trade. One reason for this is the increasing co-movement with the renminbi of currencies in countries with whom China competes.

As the renminbi changes against the dollar, so do the Taiwan dollar, the Korean won, the Singapore dollar and the Indian rupee. In addition, the short-run impact of a weaker renminbi is more likely to curb imports than to expand exports, and so its effects might be contractionary. 

An ineffective devaluation of the renminbi would be particularly useless because of the third risk China needs to consider, namely the risk of retaliation by the US administration. Of this there is already plenty of evidence, of course.

The US Treasury’s declaration of China as a ‘currency manipulator’ on 5 August bears little relationship to the actual formal criteria that the Treasury uses to define that term, but equally the US had warned the Chinese back in May that these criteria don’t bind its hand. By abandoning a rules-based approach to the definition of currency manipulation, the US has opened wide the door to further antagonism, and Beijing should have no doubt that Washington will walk through that door if it wants to.

The fourth, and possibly most self-destructive, risk that China has to consider is that a weaker renminbi might destabilize China’s capital account, fuelling capital outflows that would leave China’s policymakers feeling very uncomfortable.

Indeed, there is already evidence that Chinese residents feel less confident that the renminbi is a reliable store of value, now that there is no longer a sense that the currency is destined to appreciate against the dollar. The best illustration of this comes from the ‘errors and omissions’, or unaccounted-for outflows, in China’s balance of payments.

The past few years have seen these outflows rise a lot, averaging some $200 billion per year during the past four calendar years, or almost 2 per cent GDP; and around $90 billion in the first three months of 2019 alone. These are scarily large numbers.

The risk here is that Chinese expectations about the renminbi are ‘adaptive’: the more the exchange rate weakens, the more Chinese residents expect it to weaken, and so the demand for dollars goes up. In principle, the only way to deal with this risk would be for the People's Bank of China (PBOC) to implement a large, one-off devaluation of the renminbi to a level at which dollars are expensive enough that no one wants to buy them anymore.

This would be very dangerous, though: it presupposes that the PBOC could know in advance the ‘equilibrium’ value of the renminbi. It would take an unusually brave central banker to claim such foresight, especially since that equilibrium value could itself be altered by the mere fact of such a dramatic change in policy.

No one really knows precisely by what mechanism capital outflows from China have accelerated in recent years, but a very good candidate is tourism. The expenditure of outbound Chinese tourists abroad has risen a lot in recent years, and that increase very closely mirrors the rise in ‘errors and omissions’. So the suspicion must be that the increasing flow of Chinese tourists – nearly one half of whom last year simply travelled to capital-controls-free Hong Kong and Macao – is just creating opportunities for unrecorded capital flight.

This raises a disturbing possibility: that the most effective way for China to devalue the renminbi without the backfire of capital outflows would be simultaneously to stem the outflow of Chinese tourists. China has form in this regard, albeit for differing reasons: this month it suspended a programme that allowed individual tourists from 47 Chinese cities to travel to Taiwan.

A more global restriction on Chinese tourism might make a devaluation of the renminbi ‘safer’, and it would have the collateral benefit of helping to increase China’s current account surplus, the evaporation of which in recent years owes a lot to rising tourism expenditure and which is almost certainly a source of unhappiness in Beijing, where mercantilism remains popular.

But a world where China could impose such draconian measures would be one where nationalism has reached heights we haven’t yet seen. Let’s hope we don’t go there.

This article was originally published in the Financial Times.

The speaker will discuss development prospects in the Asia-Pacific and their implications for Europe and the UK. He will outline prospects for the region’s growth, the impact of the current US-China trade conflict as well as other challenges faced by the region. He will also discuss the future role of the Asian Development Bank and how it plans to support the further development of the region.

In this article, we examine China's promotion of the renminbi (RMB) in international oil trade and explore its implications for the international currency system in the short and the long term. The article traces the rise of the RMB in international oil trade in recent years and provides an analysis of its impact on the internationalization of the Chinese currency. We argue that despite the increasing use of the yuan in oil trade in recent years, in the short term it is highly unlikely that a petro-RMB system will emerge to rival the petrodollar system. Unlike the petrodollar, which combines the qualities of a master currency, a top currency and a negotiated currency, China lacks the economic leadership and the political and geopolitical leverages to make the RMB a major petrocurrency. Although the emergence of the RMB-denominated Shanghai oil futures is an important development, the absence of highly developed financial markets and a strong legal system in China hinders its potential. In the long run, the RMB may take on a more prominent role in the international oil trade as China's weight as an oil importer rises. More importantly, the overuse of financial sanctions by the US government has begun to undermine the role of the dollar within and beyond the oil trade. In addition, the rise of alternative energy sources will diminish the centrality of oil in the world economy, thus reducing the significance of petrocurrencies—whether the dollar or the RMB—in shaping the international currency system.

In the five months since the last extension of the Brexit deadline, the questions about the UK’s trading relationship with the EU remain as open as before, as do those about what sort of relationship it should seek with other partners.

The world has not stood still, however, and so the UKTPO is convening another panel to consider constructive ways of moving forward. The panel will discuss potential trajectories for UK trade policy, followed by a question and answer session.

The UK Trade Policy Observatory (UKTPO) is a partnership between Chatham House and the University of Sussex which provides independent expert comment on, and analysis of, trade policy proposals for the UK as well as training for British policymakers through tailored training packages.

In the past 12 months, a series of highly-anticipated elections throughout Latin America have demonstrated that deep political shifts are underway.  This has occurred at a time when economic growth across the region is slowing and a number of countries face growing social crises.  How will these political shifts and social challenges affect growth and foreign direct investment (FDI)?

Christopher Sabatini will outline how the shifting political dynamics across the region have, and will, continue to influence trade and investment in the coming months and years across the continent and what regional developments mean for the international community in light of Brexit, global trade tensions and the rise of China and other emerging powers. How can businesses and governments provide a platform to overcome mutual obstacles faced by Latin American investors? What impact have Chinese development projects had in Latin America? And are medium and small economies in Latin America vulnerable to a global trade war?

This event is only open to Major Corporate Member and Partner organizations of Chatham House. If you would like to register your interest, please RSVP to Linda Bedford. We will contact you to confirm your attendance.

To enable as open a debate as possible, this event will be held under the Chatham House Rule.

The Syrian currency depreciated by 11% between mid-August and the first week of September, to reach an unprecedented level of SYP692 to the US dollar. According to the government, the main reasons behind this collapse are the international sanctions imposed on Syria and currency speculation.

Accordingly, the government has forced speculators and local foreign exchange companies to sell the US dollar instead of holding it. Moreover, Syrian security agencies have pressured profiteers with close links to the regime to effectively participate in campaigns that support the local currency. Indeed, the Syrian pound appreciated in value in only a few days to reach an average of SYP615 for $1 in the second week of September.

This high volatility in currency prices results in monetary uncertainty among traders, and thus, increases the possibility of other depreciations in the near future.

Currency speculation could be the reason behind the high fluctuations. However, the fall in the exchange rate has been a continuous and steady trend ever since the beginning of the conflict. The Syrian currency is about 13 times less valuable than before conflict, and fell by 20% between January and September 2019. It is therefore more likely that the devaluation reflects a structural deterioration of the Syrian economy.

There are a number of interlinked reasons behind this trend:          

Economic collapse

The conflict in Syria has led to a drastic decline in economic activity. By 2018, the total accumulated economic loss was estimated at about $428 billion, which equaled 6 times Syria’s GDP in 2010. The country’s GDP lost about 65% of its value compared to its level before the war. The conflict has also caused a reallocation of resources to destructive and war-related activities. This drop in economic productivity weighs on the Syrian pound’s stability.       

Dramatic export decline

The total value of Syrian exports contracted from $12.2 billion in 2010 to less than $700 million in 2018, whereas imports declined from $19.7 billion to $4.4 billion during the same period. Thus, the coverage ratio of exports to imports dropped from 62% to 16% in this period, indicating that the government has become very dependent on external trade partners. Almost all import payments are made in foreign currencies, which increases the devaluation pressure on the Syrian pound.

Iran has provided the Syrian regime with credit lines estimated at about $6 billion to import oil and consumer goods from the Islamic Republic. These credit lines do not include all the Iranian financial support to the regime. Iranian oil exports to Syria are estimated at about 2 million barrels a month (a total of around $16 billion during the eight years of conflict). The increasing external debt to Iran, also due to military support, may contribute in stabilizing the Syrian pound for short period, yet it is bound to sustain the devaluation pressure in the long run.      

Damaging monetary policies

Since the beginning of the conflict, the Central Bank of Syria has issued a series of decisions that have contributed to the weakening of the Syrian pound. For instance, until 2015, the bank adopted a policy of selling hard currencies to local foreign exchange companies. This policy depleted their foreign currency reserves by about $1.2 billion, without halting the deterioration of the pound. The bank has also increased the money supply; there is three times the amount of currency in the local market as today compared to before the conflict, causing a surge in inflation and currency devaluation.

The absence of foreign direct investment

Between 2005 and 2010, Syria received an annual average of $1.5 billion as foreign direct investment (FDI); this amount has dropped almost to zero during the years of conflict. Russia and Iran have continued to invest in Syria, mainly in the mining sector, but the conditions of these investments have limited the inflows of foreign currency to Syria. FDI inflows were a major source of hard currency; their absence is an additional driver of currency depreciation.

International sanctions

Many countries have imposed sanctions on various sectors in Syria, including energy and financial transactions. During the last two years, the US has tightened its sanctions by introducing the Caesar law, which aims to isolate the Syrian regime. These sanctions have increased the cost of the Syrian imports and therefore raised demand for foreign currencies. Remittances, estimated at $4.5 million per day as well as foreign investments and exports were also negatively affected, and this has reduced the supply side of hard currencies inside Syria.

Currency speculation

The Syrian regime usually intervenes to manage currency speculation through government agencies and friendly business entities. But such speculations are very difficult to control in Syria given the poor economic conditions, the high level of business uncertainty and the lack of trust in institutions. This has driven the Syrian households, those who did not already lose their savings, to buy gold or hard currencies as safe investments.

The Syrian pound’s depreciation and its high fluctuations reflect the fragile political and economic situation in the country. The government’s improvised decisions have failed to stabilize it, causing a rise in the prices of basic goods. This has left more than 90% of Syria’s population under the poverty line. Long-term stability in exchange rates requires an inclusive and sustainable development strategy, one that would need to be based on an accountable and transparent political landscape. That seems a long way off.

At this event, which forms the second annual UK Trade Policy Observatory conference, there will be six presentations over the course of the day before concluding with a panel discussion and Q&A. This year’s conference will focus on the following legal areas of trade policy:

• Blockchain: Creating and Eliminating Trade in Services
• China's Role in the International Trading System
• Official Export Support: Compliance and Competition Concerns
• Strategic Litigation and Health Regulation: Implications for International Economic Law
• Development, Labour Standards and Sustainability in Trade Agreements
• Retaining Versus Reforming EU Food Safety Legislation: Selected Issues for a US-UK Trade Negotiation

To register for this event, please click here. 

As the chair of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, I recently hosted an offsite event with some of the organization’s strongest supporters, research staff, and other leaders. I left with a clearer view of three of the biggest issues of our time: slowing productivity growth, anti-establishment politics, and the rise of China.

Summary

• Multilateralism may, in theory, put countries on an equal economic footing. But in practice the concept has often relied on an anchor government to create and preserve global norms. Under the presidency of Donald Trump, the US has accelerated its move away from leadership in global economic governance. This shift threatens the monetary and trading systems that have long underpinned globalization. Does the global economy need – and can it find – another leader to take America’s place?
• In the monetary sphere, the US role in providing an internationalized currency has endured relatively well, even though the US’s formal anchoring of the global exchange rate system collapsed nearly half a century ago. Governance of the US dollar and of the dollar-based financial system has largely been left to competent technocrats.
• Recent US political uncertainty has encouraged other governments, particularly in the eurozone and China, in their long-standing quest to supplant the dollar. But these economies’ internal weaknesses have prevented their respective currencies from playing a wider role. Arguments for a multipolar system exist, yet network effects plus the dollar’s superior institutions mean it has retained its dominance.
• In trade, the US role as anchor of the global legal order was already looking unreliable before Trump’s election. Washington has faced growing resistance at home to its global responsibilities. This, together with the idiosyncratic rise of countries such as China, has made the US an increasingly unreliable and narrowly transactional leader.
• More recently, hard-to-regulate issues such as foreign direct investment, technology transfer and data flows, often with national security implications, are increasingly undermining the ideal of multilateral global governance. Institutions such as the World Trade Organization, focused on cross-border trade in goods and services, are becoming less relevant.
• Recent US actions against the Chinese technology firm Huawei show the Trump administration’s willingness to decouple the US market from China and try to drag other economies with it. As far as possible, other governments should resist taking sides. A complete separation of the global economy into rival spheres is probably unfeasible, and certainly highly undesirable.
• Although future US administrations may be less wantonly destructive, it is not realistic to expect them to resume America’s former role. Nor can the US simply be replaced with another power. Instead, coalitions of governments with interests in international rules-based orders will need to form. These coalitions will need to show due deference to issues like investment and national security, especially where attempts to bind governments by multilateral rules are likely to provoke a severe backlash from domestic constituencies.

John Maynard Keynes' The Economic Consequences of the Peace has long been a key reference point in discussions about the Treaty of Versailles and its impact on Germany and Europe’s rehabilitation. A century after its publication, the relevance of Keynes’ thinking – not least the influence it had on public perception of the treaty itself – offers an insight into the impact of expert analysis on how political decisions are received in public and academic spheres.

This panel discusses the author, the book and the controversy they have generated up to the present day. How relevant is Keynes’ polemic and how applicable is his European economic recovery plan to our current period of global dislocation? What is the role of experts in the formation and scrutiny of international politics? And how can contemporary politicians use Keynes’ comprehensive assessment of the intersection between political, social and economic realities and national idealism to inform their approaches to international relations?