Commission highlights geopolitics of tech issues

Report focuses on 7 areas of policy

Imagine an airline mechanic who wants to switch to truck maintenance.

Right now, the funding for the training needed to make that transition, also known as “reskilling” or “upskilling,” would probably be a barrier.

But people are working on ideas around how to make that transition easier, said Ramayya Krishnan, dean of Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy.

One idea is to create a fund for individuals to set money aside to reinvest in their skills later on — similar to how retirement funds work now, he said. Another is to offer tax breaks to companies that choose to invest in their employees.

These types of programs — and the conversations and brainstorming that led to their consideration — are just one example of how to achieve some of the policy recommendations laid out in a new report from the Atlantic Council, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.

The Atlantic Council launched a commission in March 2020 to study the trajectory of new technologies and determine policies needed to ensure tech advancements lead to beneficial outcomes. It wanted to guard against things like falling behind global competition, cybersecurity breaches and widening economic disparities.

In other words, it looked broadly at how to make sure tech is used for good.

“Technology has been part and parcel of our lives,” said Mr. Krishnan, who is part of the commission. “There’s so much opportunity that technology brings but along with it there has to be appropriate governance.”

Known formally as the Commission on the Geopolitical Impacts of New Technologies and Data, the group released a report Wednesday that outlined recommendations for how to move forward.

It focused on several areas and several different types of technologies but stopped short of offering any specific examples. Policy reports aren’t supposed to offer the definitive solution, Mr. Krishnan said. Rather they start the conversations with stakeholders.

The idea of creating a fund similar to retirement savings for retraining workers was not a part of the report but an idea that could fulfill one of the recommendations, he said.

“It’s really to present these ideas and recommendations to policymakers,” Mr. Krishnan said. “It’s about how do you get leadership policymakers thinking both about policy for technology and technology for policy.”

Accenture Federal Services and Amazon Web Services supported the commission and the recent report.

In the report, a group of

industry leaders, politicians, former government officials and academics highlighted seven areas of focus for the United States and its allies. In their simplest form, they are:

• Global science and technology leadership.

• Secure data and communications.

• Trust in data and confidence in the digital economy.

• Resilient and strengthened supply chains.

• Health technologies. • Commercialization of space.

• The future of work. To put the buzzwords in action, conversations about secure data and communication would look at how to avoid ransomware attacks, especially those that cripple nearly half the East Coast’s fuel supply.

Trust in data means answering questions about how artificial intelligence really works. Health technologies looks at how new advancements are changing personalized medicine.

The importance of resilient and strengthened supply chains became even more apparent during the COVID-19 pandemic, Mr. Krishnan said.

He traced the life cycle of a face mask and other personal protective equipment before it reaches the consumer: Raw materials are produced in one country, manufacturing takes place in another and distribution goes through different service providers. Once in the U.S., there’s more manufacturing and more logistics.

“Even if you take something as familiar as a mask and PPE, you’re talking about a supply chain that traverses multiple geographies and jurisdictions,” Mr. Krishnan said. “When you have something like that and you have a shock [like a factory shutting down], these things can have ripple effects and shocks transmitted through the supply chain.”

Another commissioner, Michael Chertoff, who is a former secretary of homeland security, also pointed to the need for security standards in the supply chain, particularly when using hardware and software from other countries.

Along the same lines, there needs to be a discussion around moral standards, he said. Should the United States continue to pay and sustain a company that also allows its technology to be used in oppressive ways?

Overall, with more than 35 policy recommendations, the commissioners were ready to take action.

“The cost of doing nothing is not nothing here,” said Anthony Scriffignano, senior vice president and chief data scientist for data and analytics company Dun & Bradstreet. “It’s the cost of sliding backwards. It will never be easier than it is today to lean into these problems.”

Zia Khan, vice president for innovation for The Rockefeller Foundation in New York, brought up the phrase “the best time to plant a tree is 25 years ago.” The commission is planning for the tree to come, he said. “We are at a point where we can steer what kind of tree that is.”