 Welcome to this conversation, advancing digital cooperation. Something that's very dear to most of us sitting on this stage and I'm sure to all of you in the audience as well. Increasingly, our futures, political, social, personal, individual, are going to be shaped by technology. And how we align, individual states, companies, enterprises, is going to be the single most important decadal initiative, imperative, and indeed a challenge in the times that we live in. The UN, of course, wants to assign an ambitious 2023 digital compact. And of course, the compact lays emphasis on a multi-stakeholder model for governing this domain. And we are going to try to, in this particular discussion, ease out opportunities, challenges, and thoughts of four fantastic leaders in this particular domain who cover between them literally everything digital, from the regulation to platform to service provision to the hardware, and indeed to the ideas that will define the world of tomorrow. So please welcome Madam Josephine Teo, Minister for Communication and Information of Singapore. Mrs. Sunil Bharti-Mithul, Chairman Bharti Enterprises India, Chuck Robbins, Chair and Chief Executive Officer, Cisco, and Brad Smith, one of the most famous faces from Microsoft, the President and Co-Chair, and a cyber diplomat for many, many years. So we are going to quickly move into the conversation and then bring you in in the last 20 minutes to pose your queries to these fantastic people. Minister Teo, Singapore is a unique ecosystem, like most other ecosystems. It has been committed to a multi-stakeholder model of managing the digital domain. It is engaging with different sorts of stakeholders with their own specific interests. What has Singapore's learning been in trying to bring people together to manage? Well, first of all, thank you, Sameer. And also to my fellow panelists, it's great to be here with you. You know, the whole experience of multi-stakeholder collaboration, I think has overall been a very positive one in many respects. So let me start with an example in cybersecurity. We've always thought of it as a team sport of global dimensions, which means that it has to involve, you know, not just the government, but also industry, academia, and indeed international organizations. And doing so has, in fact, strengthened our effectiveness. Then if you think about, you know, even in a crisis situation, at the depths of the pandemic, we engage with industry partners. They included companies like Microsoft, Salesforce, and as well as our own, you know, local unicorns, Grab, C. And what we were trying to do was to prevent employment scarring. And what these companies were able to bring to bear was their enormous hiring capacity, but which was, of course, threatened during the pandemic. But with government resourcing, they created traineeships as well as job placements, and this helped to prevent, you know, long-term effects in the labor force. So that was also a very useful experience. Now, we've also found great value in crowding in the private as well as people sector to engage on important issues to do with digital inclusion as well as digital safety. So in fact, just before I came up to Davos, we launched a initiative in Singapore called Data For All. I mean, we are fortunate that computer access is 89% of households and broadband access is 98%, but we know that even with this kind of internet penetration, access to data is not quite the same, and so the breadth and depth of digital engagements doesn't, you know, isn't homogeneous for everyone. So the telcos decided that they would donate 30,000 mobile data lines to benefit people from the vulnerable segments that will be identified in partnership with social service agencies. Likewise, when it comes to things like online harms, which affect women and girls disproportionately, we have a stakeholder group in Singapore of about 300 people. You know, we call it a sunlight alliance for action. And right now, we are, you know, ready to take this industry cooperation, this multi-stakeholder approach in a very important area of promoting trustworthy and responsible AI. Now, some of you in the audience, I believe Brad might remember that in 2019 at Davos, Singapore had launched a model AI governance framework, and since then, this model has served as a basis to develop sector-specific frameworks for healthcare as well as financial services. Now, since then, we've continued to work with industry as well as our international partners to identify common principles for AI trustworthiness and try to develop a way in which testing can be done. And so today, we are very happy to launch the international pilot of AI Verify. It is a Singapore AI governance testing framework as well as Toolkit. It is intended as a practical resource that businesses can self-assess voluntarily. It gives them a way to assure their stakeholders of what their AI system actually does, promotes transparency and hopefully will help to also build a level of trust in the AI that they use. So with this international launch, although it is a minimum viable product, we've already engaged with about 10 companies. This includes AWS, Google, Microsoft, Meta, as well as our banks, Singapore Airlines, and even a few startups to provide feedback on this tool. And now we will be progressing to interact with our international audiences as well as regulators and policy makers to share experiences to make sure that this initiative on AI Verify is really going to benefit the end users. So that's the kind of experience that we've had, industry cooperation, international collaboration, all of which have been very rewarding. I'm going to come back to you on one of the ideas around safety by design. I'm going to speak to you on that. But let me first turn to Mr. Mittal. Your passion and experience has been different. You have, for the last multiple decades, been determined to give every Indian a mobile phone and a digital connection, 1.3 billion Indians today. That's the scope of the challenge or the journey that you undertake. What have your learnings been in terms of bringing people together, governments, international partners, communities? And what is the next generation Indian challenge? Once you have connected everyone, now how do we make them create value around this particular connection? So what is your journey, Sunil? Well, you know, I operate, as you know, in countries which are woefully inadequate on infrastructure, and it'll take a long time to build physical infrastructure, be that in India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka is having other difficulties, and sub-Saharan Africa. The only way we could have done this in an accelerated way to bring people together was by way of a digital highway. And that, thanks to our friends like Chuck here, the kit that they provide has become more and more efficient and powerful over the years. And we have then put in billions and billions of dollars as an industry put together, maybe over a trillion dollars by now across the globe, to build digital highways. And what that has done is remarkable connectivity and bringing people from the margins into the mainstream of society, into the mainstream of economy. And more needs to be done. Advanced world, of course, now enjoys the benefits of connected world on the internet. Countries like Singapore or the US or the advanced world. But there is so much still to be done in our world. 27% of the less developed countries, LDCs, are on broadband highway today, just 27%. And the developed world was there 23 years back. So it's taken us so long, and still we have not been able to do enough. Even developing countries are only 57% connected. So it's a long way to go. Telecom industries estimates are about $430 billion to be spent by 2030 to create more highways. And now, intervention is coming from space, is coming from 5G, is coming from all sides. Yet it looks like even by 2030, there will still be a large part of the world which will remain disconnected from the advantages of being on the internet and the world economy. People who are on it are reaping the rewards and accelerating their growth and their careers. And people who are out there not connected are suffering immensely. And that's why you're seeing the disparities are all going up. So the mission for all of us, and that's the Addison Alliance discussions, that's the discussions on the UNGA charter on SDGC and all that, we need to accelerate this process. And we need participation beyond just the telecom companies. Now, what is it doing? Look at what happened in pandemic. My god, if we would have not been able to manage the networks, shifting from urban to rural centers, from offices to homes, I'm afraid the world could have been in flames. We seamlessly moved the traffic. We seamlessly provided people connectivity. Their lives kept on going on. They could buy stuff which was required at the homes and emergencies, medicines, care, all sorts of things, financial transactions. Nothing stopped for a day. And that power, if can be recognized by a political leadership all across the world, can help in accelerating and bringing almost everybody onto the internet in the next 10 years. So I would say the world lords, what we have done, they do appreciate what is being provided by these digital highways. But there is still too much load on this industry in terms of spectrum auctions, taxes. And somehow, you hear all the right things, but in the end, you don't see the action from the governments going in the direction of taking a multiplier impact on societies or economies by way of more digital highways. So celebrated, but not necessarily collaborative. I think that's the point you're making. Let me ask you a quick follow-up, though. Being now from an Indian enterprise, largely, which has a global footprint, how do you navigate this political moment for the access mission that you just described, moving from 57% to 100% in the next decade? How do you manage a world which has very sharp political positions? You have a bipolarity in terms of US-China. You have multi-polarity with many others joining the political conversations. How does a business like yours navigate this political moment? Well, I think the world has become much more difficult. We didn't imagine that suddenly the supply chains of the world will be disturbed to a level that we are seeing today. And it's just not my industry almost everything from food to technology. Everything is in some kind of disruption in supply chain. Chinese equipment was being supplied at a very great pace and fantastic prices in decent technology as out of the equation now. The space industry, which was very largely dependent on Russia, is out of equation now. You're not going to see Roscosmos launching anything for the Western world or the rest of the world for long years to come. So there has been dislocation of supply chain to a very high degree. Smart business people, companies which are agile, have tried to shift and move, but at very heavy cost. Today, the silicon is 30%, 40% more expensive than where we are. Devices, which we thought will start to get cheaper so we can put more smartphones in the hands of poorer people, is getting out of reach now. Devices are 30%, 40% higher now. It's gone into another side. So I really hope that we can bring back the supply chains of the world back to calm and sanity where we can service our customers and our constituents. But we are into a serious conflict at the moment. And that's a good question for Brad. Then I'll come to you, Brad. But before that, let me just go to Chuck Robbins. We heard about the access challenge and the access benchmark, but that is not the only ambition we must have. We are also seving to create inclusion and bring people into the digital economy, digital society. And for that, various digital divides need to be overcome, not only the device and the infrastructure, but also, in many ways, the frameworks that are available to others to participate in. So from your experience, and you've been working on this particular front, Cisco has been working on the inclusion agenda. What has your learning been? And what have your success stories been or some models that you think should be replicated at scale? I wish I had a lot of examples for you of successful models, but I think just to reiterate what Sunil was saying, I think as we look at part of the narrative here was about public-private partnerships and how we solve this problem together. And it's incredibly ironic, and I've had so many discussions, particularly in Washington DC, that governments are yelling at the telecom industry to be first with 5G, get everybody connected, all these things that they want them to do, and then they say, and by the way, we want you to spend billions of dollars on a spectrum. We want to regulate you like crazy, and we want to limit what you can charge for your service at the end of the day, and we understand that everything that you're buying is now in an inflationary environment. But hurry up. It's just illogical. And so that's just a fundamental problem that I think is going to have to be dealt with. Even the US now, we have 20 million or so households that were highlighted during the pandemic as these children who couldn't learn because they didn't have broadband. So even in advanced developed worlds, we still have communities that are suffering in the same way. And so we're issuing funding now for broadband, and then we come out with a policy that says all the equipment that is connecting those devices has to be, X percent has to be sourced from the United States when 60% of the cost is in semiconductors that we know are all built outside of the United States. I mean, these are the kind of things we have to figure out. Now, onto your question around it. Our purpose statement as a company is to power an inclusive future for all. And we believe that's through our technology and our beliefs and what we believe in in our community actions. And the thing that the pandemic showed us was what Sunil was talking about, was the power of what's possible when you have the appropriate technology and the appropriate connectivity and the appropriate device at the end. And then you have to have the appropriate services on top of it. But what I hope we will come out of this with is, A, we need governments to be more rational and be realistic if they wanna really solve this problem. And then we need to remember from the pandemic that we actually proved, it may not be the optimum way for you to receive services, but we proved that when you have broadband connectivity, you can be educated. You might prefer to be in a classroom, but you can be educated. You can receive certain aspects of healthcare. You can actually interact in the financial systems and do financial transactions. And the other thing we learned is, you don't have to move to a metro area to get a job. So now we can educate these people, we can connect them, and we, as an industry, can now hire them. So if you're trying to really figure out how you give people opportunity, all of those things together, I just hope you don't lose the learnings because I believe that's what we need to do, but we're gonna need the government first to come in and help and get some of these challenges out of the way. And how does Cisco, being a U.S. company, see its role in some of the emerging geographies that Sunil serves, for example, and how do you bring price points to compete with what the Chinese used to offer Sunil earlier? Oh, we're super cost-effective, right, Sunil? We actually, I mean, our pricing is fundamentally just is reflective of the market. We're never gonna be the cheapest. But if you think about why are the Chinese products more cost-effective is because it's a public-private partnership, whether you like it or not. Correct. And the Chinese have been supporting their companies very effectively, and when they say we have a mission to be the first to deploy 5G, they're gonna come together and deploy 5G. May not like how they do it, but they're gonna do it, right? And that's just, I think we need more of that mental approach within, obviously, Western norms and standards, but I think that's what we need to do. So I think both of you made a strong pitch for a renewed public-private endeavor to sustain the sector in the days ahead. Brad, let me turn to you on cyber diplomacy. Microsoft has been the champion of the multi-stakeholder model of bringing different voices into global discussions. Why is multi-stakeholder important for us today? The multi-stakeholder approach important for us today? Well, I think it starts with building what I truly believe is one of the greatest advances of the 20th century, multilateralism, and then recognizing that for it to be effective in the 21st century, it has to involve multi-stakeholderism. It's got to do it, still grounded in the recognition that we quite rightly live in a world where governments have the sole authority to enact laws within their territories, but especially digital technology spreads around the world. So starting with the Paris call in 2018, we really were very supportive of President Macron, the notion of having a multi-stakeholder declaration to establish principles around trust and security in cyberspace and then make it concrete, make it real with practical projects that would bring people together. And when you just think about what it takes for the world to move as fast as say the pace of technology, it takes, I think, bringing people together from different sectors and it takes working together in new ways. And I think it's just worth pausing and just reflecting for a moment on just what I would regard as almost the historic significance of what we heard a minute ago from Singapore. Just think about this. Instead of a government saying we have decided here is a law, here is a regulation, everyone must obey, they've said we're bringing people together, they had a process for dialogue, here is a standard and people go start to implement it but let's have a feedback loop. The notion of having a minimally viable product can transform the way we all work together. And then of course as we get more experience I think we're all gonna find it that we're effective, consensus is easier to achieve, it is easier to move ideas around the world and across borders. So I think it's all about bringing more people together and working together in new ways. Brad, some would argue that today technology is no longer apolitical. You've seen the mobilization of American companies to align with the western position on Ukraine, for example, a country has been canceled on certain platforms and I'm not going to the merits of it, I'm just saying that it has happened, which tells you that companies eventually respond to their sovereigns. Now how do you further the cause of being transnational corporations, global platforms, when at the heart of it, we still respond to sovereign positions? How do you manage this contradiction? I think it is always to be principled, to ask yourself and then define for yourself and be clear with the public the principles for which you stand and on which you will run your business. For a company like Microsoft, we didn't start defending Ukraine in 2022. We started in 2017 in the wake of the not-petia attack and we did it on a principled basis, both with our endorsement of what we called a digital Geneva convention and then the formation of another coalition, in this case, a tech industry coalition around what's called the tech accord and it has four principles but the two most fundamental are we will defend any nation against a cyber attack from another or fundamentally in the business of defense. When we build the data center in a country, we basically take on the proposition of helping to defend that country from attack. Even if it means as it has in Ukraine, moving data outside the country as we did for 16 of the 17 Ukrainian ministries so they can continue to operate even while the Russians are directing cruise missiles against the government's own data center. But we also said we won't help any government attack, say, innocent civilians in another. That is not a principle that is confined to one country or the West. And I would say we think about this principle even when at times it may put us a little bit at odds, not with the law because obviously we follow sanctions laws and the like. But we take so seriously this principle of supporting innocent civilians that in Russia today we'll still provide security updates for the 600,000 computers that are in Russian hospitals and in medical clinics. We could turn off the ability to keep people alive. That itself I think would violate one of the most important fundamental principles to emerge from the 20th century. So fundamentally, yes, it's all about aligning support for governments with a conviction around principle. And how likely or how robust can we expect a digital compact in the future to be in this highly polarized world? Is your job tougher today? Well, everybody's job is tougher today. I mean, look, we've got a pandemic, we've got a war, we've got climate. I mean, it's like living in the most challenging time that one could almost imagine and yet knowing that it can still always get worse. But I still think that when you look at something like the global digital compact, you look at where the UN Secretary General is trying to take things. I look at that in part as the only private sector representative among the 16 SDG advocates. Nothing is ever perfect. Things are always under stress. But you just have to ask yourself, is the future gonna be better if we pull together or whether we pull apart? The world is more divided. But ultimately, if the people who believe in the great principles that I think are the principles that offer the most help, look, we've got to keep pushing forward. So I'm gonna bring all of you into this conversation at this stage, and while you can raise your hands and you get the mic to you if you wanna pose the question, but Minister Teo, maybe I can ask you one more follow-up question. Sure. How does a country so rich with ideas like Singapore? Make sure that you have the corporate buy-in from the West Coast, from companies in different parts of Asia. How do you bring the businesses to respond to the safety concerns you outlined? You talk about women's safety. We also have cultural contexts that can create situations which are incidentally, which can catalyze grievances in certain societies. How do you get different corporations around the world, Singapore, to respond to some of your concerns around your society, your digital society? Thank you, Samir. It's a really great question. And I was also reflecting on Chuck's comments as well as Sunil's comments about governments and the kind of difficult pressures that governments may end up putting on you. I can't profess to speak on behalf of all governments, but I can certainly say that in every country they have their own political pressures and the leaders have imperatives of their own to attend to. The approach that we have taken in Singapore is to chuck points about carriers and telcos being relied upon to do the heavy lifting and yet not being able to do things like charging with a free hand. We do all the nagging too, but in Singapore I think we adopt the approach that prices are best set by the market. And the way in which we would deal with it is that recognizing that you would set prices on the basis of what is necessary to make a return and also then that would also have to attend to affordability. It's the government's role to step in, to look after people who find whatever prices are charged is not affordable. So that's the philosophy that we take. So when it comes to, for example, digital connectivity, most people will be able to afford the mobile data plans, but we accept that a certain group that will find it very difficult and the way to deal with it is not to ask you to set prices, to cater to them, but for the state to step in, to close that gap. So that's the approach that we've taken. But it goes back to the broader issue of how to get corporates involved in this process. And especially the international corporations. Yes, and I think it starts by having the philosophy of not villainizing any particular stakeholder and to try and bring people in, work towards a common purpose. Now this sounds really quite, you know, cliched. It's been said many times before. And the real hard work is in establishing a common purpose and in identifying in which specific areas people can make a contribution. We've done this for digital inclusion. We created a movement. We call it the digital for life movement. Most of the companies are involved in it one way or the other. So for example, Google contributes by helping little children become more savvy in terms of protecting themselves from online harms. Then we've got other companies that are, you know, looking at the issue from different perspectives. For example, getting women more involved in the tech workforce or also having the opportunities to get back into the landscape of work when they have had to step aside, you know, because of caregiving responsibilities. So not villainizing anyone, but also then finding the opportunities to work together. So that's the way in which we approach it. The other very important thing is that, you know, Abrad has talked about it in his book before and which is that the role of government ultimately also involves regulations. The question is that in digital domain, regulations are still so new. There is no playbook that you can easily copy from any other country and say, you know, we adapted to our own purposes. And I think in this domain, the approach that we have taken is also then that to work with the companies themselves. And you have to let us know whether a particular set of regulations, you know, is going to be viable. You can actually implement it. And as a result, the government can enforce upon it. And we like to keep this dialogue going simply because the purpose of regulation has to be to achieve some level of effectiveness. And to do so without understanding how the technology actually works, I think we are putting ourselves in a very difficult position. So minimum viable product applies to testing frameworks, toolkits. Minimum viable products probably applies to regulations, too. Yeah. Great. Bullgang, you want to come in? Yeah, thank you very much. My name is Wolfgang Klein. Next time, we will try out Professor from the University of Aarhus. It was a member of the ICANN Board. You know, I take this regulation as the starting point for my question because Brett, you argued with principles as the starting point. So principles are not legally binding. So it's at our voluntary norms. And what we have seen over the last 20 years is that there was always, you know, a mix of, you know, calls for stronger, legally binding regulation or general frameworks. And we have moved now in a moment where the European Commission comes with more and more strong, legally binding regulation. You have argued, you know, government want to do us something and then they kill us via regulation. So what is the way forward with regulation? So we have called this smart regulation a combination of legally binding and voluntary norms because with voluntary norms, as we have seen, you know, this works partly. But then at the end of the day, you'll have monopolies or some things, you know, which has to be, you know, channeled in a way that it, you know, works for all stakeholders and not only for one stakeholder. So mighty stakeholder means you have to take into account the interests of all. Wolfgang, I had the question. And not only of one. Thank you. Oh, that's okay. So do you want to come in, Brett? Sure, I mean, I look to me, the answer here is to have a toolbox with more tools in it. And I think that's what we're all trying to build together in part with the multi-stakeholder initiatives, in part with the creation of new norms, new initiatives that help us learn from each other. But at the end of the day, I would absolutely sort of salute the flag that says we do need laws and we do need regulations because the public needs to have confidence that everyone's accountable. And especially in democratic societies, that I think is what gives the public trust and confidence. I absolutely think that there's a lot to be said for minimal viable regulation. That's actually a concept that we wrote about a little bit and endorsed in our book. And I was very interested just to see the reaction from people around the world. Some people like it, some people don't. The people who have been critical of it have said they don't like to have a minimally viable regulation because they fear that once a government acts once, it will never act again. And the fundamental key, I think to having minimally viable regulation is frankly to have something that is more narrowly scoped to something that people actually understand. So one of the examples to put it in concrete terms that I think is among the most interesting is there is so much in the world of AI, but at least starting with some laws around facial recognition. And there have been some state legislative activity, some other national legislative activity where I think things have advanced enough to say, you know what, we can have a law and a regulation in this space and then we're all gonna learn from it. But I think that's one way to learn. I think what Singapore is doing is another way to learn. I think there's a lot of importance in what the European Commission and Union are moving forward with. And yet I do think there's probably a little bit more risk that if one goes broad and fast at the same time, the likelihood of mistakes begins to increase. So I wanna pose a follow up question to all the panelists and I'll invite you to join in if any one of you have a question. But let us go down to the, Sunil, maybe I can start with you and then ask Chuck to comment as well. When you are discussing regulation and regulatory design in India, in Africa, in other parts that you work in, are the impulses completely different? Is the conversation that is happening around regulation in many of those societies of a very different nature and texture? Is multi-stakeholderism that Brad is espousing and most of us vote for, does it capture voices from the global South and are they given space in the design of the future? Or are we still seeing a largely developed country conversation designing the digital future? Well, I would say it's a mixed bag. If you really look at it, even very advanced countries have not had the perfect regulatory regime from day one. It's evolved over a period of time, things have got better, but not because of superior outcomes of deliberations and discussions, but hard outcomes of businesses out there. So almost every government felt that if you give a new license for a mobile phone, you can make a lot of money, sell more spectrum, create more competition. Now this gap went on for a very long period of time and lots of countries including India as you know, give 12, 13 new licenses. Now for every business or every sector, there is a point of inflection after which more competition hurts. And especially where you have very large amounts of capital expenditure, I mean, our industry spends over 25% of its revenues on new capital expenditure every year. That's a very large, it's a very, very capital intensive industry. And second is you replicate a lot of assets. People are building fiber lanes next to each other, people are building towers next to each other. So you just keep on replicating, wastefully deploying a lot of infrastructure because everybody wants to have stranglehold and make defenses of their power of balance sheets so they will not share infrastructure. But over a period of time, where are we? India is down to two and a half operators. Africa mostly where our operators down to two operators. They're barely one or two countries where they are three. Yet, we saw in Singapore, small country, three operators, a fourth license has been given. Inexplicable, why would you give a fourth license when for a small nation's island state that you have in Singapore, three would have been enough? So it's back and forth always the government wanting more competition for the customers or wanting to cash in more money for spectrum or licenses. Yet, we end up in the same place that one or two people will consolidate and die. Look at Europe today, they've been fighting a battle for the last seven years, eight years now, that they want to consolidate. And regulator after regulator have been rejecting it. Ofcom rejected a merger, EU rejected many mergers, but now finally I think it's being allowed because they've realized if you want 5G, if you want solid, robust highways around the globe, you need to have two, three very strong operators rather than fragmented, weak, half-baked operators which are many. So I would say there is no one conversation anywhere. Outcomes are defining regulation and I really feel we need to start to define outcomes from the regulation, the other way around. Build regulations that you get the outcomes you want, big investments, big highways, serve the communities, connect the world. That should be the principal way of dealing with it. Look at Indian digital policy. Every year, whenever the policy has been made every five, seven, eight years, revenue maximization is not the objective. That is a highlight of every policy. Yet that's exactly what happens. So that's, there's a conundrum there. Chuck, you wanna come in on the... Well, when I talk to the regulators, I think the first thing we have to acknowledge is that the technology world is moving so rapidly. I mean, I don't know how these guys feel, but I live in it and I've been in it since I got out of college. And I have to work hard to keep up with everything that's going on. So first of all, I'm very empathetic to government regulators who don't live it every day, trying to figure out how do I regulate this at the pace it's moving in an effective way. So I have great respect for your comment that you're trying to engage with the private sector and test it because I think that's what I've always believed needed to happen is we need to have proactive conversations up front where the governments may ultimately make a decision that is counter to what we may believe they should, but at least having the conversations so that we can describe unintended consequences because there are a lot of them. I was talking to some of the European commissioners yesterday about this current state of countries in Europe where each individual country wants their own data sovereignty. They want you to build data centers in each country. And the unintended consequence of that is it's gonna cost all the companies so much more money to get there, which means your services are gonna cost more than you really are thinking about which is going to make you less competitive on the global stage. So I mean, it's a simple example, but I mean, those are the kinds of things that we try to talk through with the regulators and where you have governments that really wanna have that interaction on partner. I think you get comments into regulation and where you don't, you know, where the government is saying we don't trust business in the first place so we're not gonna have the conversation. I think you get regulation that is generally not constructive. Okay, so I'm gonna now begin the last round of questions. Okay, the lady, hand back. Please go ahead. There are a couple of questions there. Hi, Samir. I'm Julian McGrant. I'm Australia's E-Safety Commissioner, a regulator for online harms. I spent 17 years working for Brad and at Twitter and Adobe as well. So I guess I'm a poacher turned gamekeeper. I think Samir was alluding to safety by design. Very excited to hear about your AI tools because we built interactive tools working with 180 companies over a four-year period so that they can assess their risks. But when we think about these major technology shifts but also paradigm shifts to the metaverse and to the decentralized Web 3.0 world, I'm seeing shades of the open source movement in the late 1990s. There's a lot of techno utopianism about what this might look like. So how do we anticipate, harness the benefits but anticipate the risks and build the safety, privacy, and security into these platforms and technologies instead of just retrofitting them after the damage has been done and once we arrive? Thanks, Julian. There's another question that we can take that as well and then we'll come to the... Sure, yeah. Hi, Chuck. My question is for all of you but it's based on what you just talked about. I'm with Boeing. I'm the Chief Information Officer. So my question is around data sovereignty and just kind of what you all think about that, the regulations and kind of back to your point is a little bit about how does that make us better as a united nation? So we have the question on how do you anticipate harms going ahead? Like you do three rounds of testing before you allow the vaccine into your body. Can we do that? Something like that for technology as well. That's the first question. The second is around data sovereignty. And the third. And the third. And then we'll go around the final round. The third is around civil society. We keep using this term civil society in everything we write but I basically heard a conversation of government and enterprise today. Right? What does civil society mean? How are you investing in actually engaging with voices that are different who are not looking at the outcomes that you mentioned, Mr. Mittal, but maybe seeking a certain other self-actualization outcomes which are very different to businesses. So Brad, let's start with you and we'll end with the minister. In three minutes and 34 seconds we see the timer on the back. Let me just say we live in a world where data does need to reside within a country and needs to be governed by its laws but data also needs to move in order for business and the world to move forward. And we're trying to work through that balance. It's a very complicated thing. I think one of the keys to making this work is to invest in informing each other, listening to each other, learning from each other, Julie's point, trying to anticipate earlier the problems that we're gonna need to solve so that we're not arriving too late. But the last thing that I would note and it goes back to your point about the global south. Yeah, two months ago I was in Ghana, Nigeria, Egypt and Kenya and in every country met with the head of state or the prime minister and the ICT minister. These people are amazing because what you see are two things in the global south. One is they're leapfrogging in some instances, governments in the North because they're not bound by administrative or bureaucratic structures that were put in place in some cases in the 1980s or 50s or 20s. So you see ICT ministries with broad authority. The second thing you're seeing is frankly a lot of people that are very similar to Julian McGrant in Australia. You're seeing people leading ICT ministries who started their careers in tech. And they are not advancing the tech sector's agenda, that's not their job. They are advancing their country's agenda. But they are doing it with a level of practical understanding that frankly I think benefits their country and benefits everyone. Thanks, Matt. Chuck. Well, I think on the day to sovereignty front, I agree with Brad, I think what we need is it's almost like the regulatory discussion. We just need to come together and really talk about what you're trying to achieve and how do we do it together. And we need more consistency across countries, I think. And I think we're getting closer to a political world where we could at least have that conversation versus where we were say four years ago. And I think on the final thing on the civil society thing, I think it's just important for us in today's world we all have the obligation to actually work deeply with communities and people and everything like that. And I think we're all doing it. I mean, I know all these folks so it's just, we do that too, we just didn't talk about it today. 30 seconds to you, Sunil. Well, I think data localization is led by data sovereignty every country, however small it is, we are now dealing with them. Small tiny countries in Africa want data localization. Data sovereignty has become a huge issue. This is going to increase exponentially the cost of operations, but there is no choice out of this now. This is a hard fact. It's impossible for us to host servers in India for Africa, they were not accepted. Same will happen for other places. And the last is data privacy. That's the civil society part. Customers want their data to be secure and kept private. And these are the three features of data which are very important. And finally, customer wants great value, great pricing and want to be connected on the network. And that is what we are discussing today. Minister Teo, you have the final word. Well, I fully agree with my fellow panelists that when it comes to data, it's a really important area for us to get right for the future. But if we dig a little bit deeper and ask ourselves, what exactly are we trying to achieve with data management? It's actually to have a good system of governance that can assure individuals of their privacy and that when businesses are able to use the data for innovative purposes, it should be promoted in a helpful way. So how to get to a system where data governance is assured and where data flows, especially across borders, can also be held up in a secure manner. I think those are the practical things that we should work on. We must make a serious effort to really not try to politicize this whole process. That would be my take. So, less politicization, more optimism. We are closing this session because many of you have to run to the next. Thank you so much for joining us and please join me in applauding the wonderful panel. Thank you.