 Welcome to day two of New America's Planetary Politics Digital Future Symposium. We're going to open today with a fireside chat titled, The Global Architecture of Digital Cooperation, moderated by New America's CEO, Anne-Marie Slaughter, and featuring the former president and CEO of ICANN, Mr. Fadi Chahadi. The conversation will explore the challenges and possibilities for global governance of the digital domain. In addition to leading New America, Anne-Marie Slaughter is a member of the UN Secretary General's High-Level Advisory Board on effective multilateralism. She was also formerly the head of policy planning in the State Department under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Anne-Marie has been thinking, writing, and speaking about networks and global governance for the better part of two decades, well over two decades. And Fadi was a highly successful Internet entrepreneur before he spent four years from 2012 to 2016 leading ICANN. ICANN is the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which sounds esoteric, but it is the multi-stakeholder body without which a secure and stable global Internet simply could not exist. So, without further ado, I'm going to turn it over to Anne-Marie. Gordon, thank you and good morning, everybody. I heard, at least talking to some of you after your working groups yesterday, that lots of work is getting done and lots of ideas for carrying on the work. So, again, it's terrific to have you all here. And it's really a pleasure to be able to kick this off with Fadi. Fadi and I met about a decade ago, maybe more, maybe 12 to 13 years, but we were instant kindred spirits. We were introduced by a mutual friend, and we are inhabitants of and believers in the networked world. Fadi, from all his work, really, yes, as head of ICANN, but also as a builder of networks, both commercial and also governance networks of different kinds. And that has been what I have pursued as a scholar. I wrote my first article on networks in 1994 on judges talking to one another around the world, and it's been a passion ever since. So, if you look at the etched glass there behind the stairs, it's not accidental that it is networks. It's something that we believe in. And Fadi has been very important, advising the Secretary General of the UN on his concept of networked multilateralism. And Fadi got me involved early on when the Secretary General was new and really thinking about how do we build out from the multilateralism of 1945, what he's unfortunately no longer with us, but the great political scientist, John Rugge, used to call the multilateralism of headquarters and stationery and acronyms, right? The very fixed multilateralism of the postwar system to the far more fluid and complex world that we now inhabit, where you do have those buildings, you do have those organizations. I, for one, would not start over, but that fixed bureaucratic, hierarchical, rigid world is extremely ill-suited for the complexity of the challenges we face, and of course so many other actors. So there, as head of ICANN, you were literally registering the inhabitants of the digital world and thinking about how do we now live in the digital world as well as the physical world to meet those challenges, and above all, put them together in various ways. So it's just a pleasure to be able to do this. And I'm going to start by asking you, if you would, to describe what the panel you were on, the high-level advisory board, there are many, but you were on the one on digital cooperation. And I want to start by asking you to talk about what you meant by digital cooperation, which is not the same as digital governance, right? That was not, and I think it's important. We're all thinking about digital governance, but there's a, there's another dimension here that I'd like you to bring out. So if you just talk about what you meant and talk about that experience, that was co-chaired by Melinda Gates and Jack Ma. It was. Thank you, Marie. I'm delighted to be with you, and I just want to correct the record. Everything I've done was inspired by her writing, by her academic work, one of the books that has the most markings in my library is her book, because networked governance was really a concept that she mastered and she brought to all of us. And I really want to commend her for that, because without that thinking, I don't think we had the framework, all of us, to function to do what we did. So thank you for that. Digital cooperation is not only important, it's urgent. I'm sure you're all reading and seeing what's going on with artificial intelligence now. And last night I had dinner with the program director at ARPA, who ran the AI group in 1963. 63. I was a year old, and I said, Steve, I mean, really there was an AI group in ARPA that was really already thinking. He says, yeah, I was the first head of the AI program office at ARPA. So there is an important moment now to understand that if we don't cooperate as these technologies really are coming to a critical point of being embedded in the physical world. IBM, 15 years ago, Irving came up with the idea of a smart planet where there is now physical infrastructure and digital infrastructure intertwined, but frankly he was way ahead of his time. It is happening now. And we're seeing it, and that's why you're seeing scientists quit jobs and people not knowing what to do because it's a critical moment if we do not cooperate. And that means all people of goodwill in government, in business, especially in business. Especially in business, I put a line under that because I'm from that world. And then of course all of us as citizens, as users, if we don't cooperate to define what is civilization going to look like moving forward when the machines and humans will be a hybrid entity. So digital is no longer something separate. Your vision, when you wrote about the worlds coming together, frankly is now happening. It didn't happen before. We won't know very soon if we're talking about a human or a machine or a combo. Very soon. This is almost there. And I'm not terrified. I actually think there will be lots of good out of that. But we need cooperation and honest commitment because the amount of money that is chasing the intertwining of digital and physical is so high. I mean from 20 million couple of years ago in that space to 20 billion this year and probably 200 billion next year the way the money is going. So when money goes after something it becomes even more urgent that we cooperate and we make things transparent. Transparent is one of the key words and concepts we pushed in the UN digital cooperation panel because if things happen behind walls and behind doors they can develop in ways that may not be good for all. So was the vision of that the panel came out with the vision of nations cooperating on digital issues in digital space? I mean because you could imagine a whole new United Nations, right? You had the United Nations of physical space and you have the United Nations in digital space but that's very broad. Was there a kind of anchoring vision? Yes, the anchoring vision is anchored frankly in your concept of a networked model. Meaning the reason it worked to date in the digital space is because we never had a single authority. I think if we continue thinking of the governance of the digital world as a networked environment just like the internet is the internet is there I mean have any of you been able to say where is the internet? Is there one network called the internet? In fact the internet is today about 89,000 networks specifically understood by people who know the digital infrastructure but how does it look like one internet? Because the people who designed it designed it as a highly networked distributed model but that collaborated those 89,000 networks collaborate, they work together they have common norms which are built into protocols. Now imagine if we create a governance model that looks like the internet that doesn't have a center at ICANN I was responsible for something called the root of the internet very few people know how the root works I've never heard of the root of the internet So the root of the internet is 13 systems literally systems 10 in the United States one in Japan one in the Netherlands and one in Sweden and those 13 systems are the root that determines where all the traffic goes it has the the core addresses so in that root for example we put that if you type any address that ends with .org it goes to a machine run by .org or if it's IBM.com or IBM.org it will send it to them that's all in the root it's the most attacked system on the planet because if it's down the root of the internet will be down everything will still be there but you won't find it so I mentioned the root because the root itself is a model of networked governance so who runs these 13 you could find out you go online who runs the 13 root nodes of the internet one of which is run by the University of Maryland for example one of which is run by USC one of which is run by a small company you've never heard of in Holland now when ICANN was responsible for the root could I call these 13 people to remove dot Russia from the root which would stop anybody finding any website in Russia and by the way there were pressure on ICANN in the last few months to do so Russia is an aggressor remove them from the root there was a huge pressure on ICANN to do that and within ICANN there was a multi-stakeholder dialogue between governments and businesses and civil society users saying should we remove Russia given their aggression and the answer was of course not it's not our business to decide just like I decided when I was head of ICANN you know when the Hooties were telling me you know you need to give us dot Yemen I said no we don't do that it's not our business to get involved in this the internet maintained its stability because we have a very networked model and even if ICANN told the root operators remove Russia they have a mechanism to consult amongst themselves and say even though ICANN is the coordinator we think that's they're being influenced we're not going to do it there is networked every level of the digital infrastructure and that's why it's working have you ever typed IBM.com and ended up at HP never it never broke because it's stable it's resilient it's governed just like it looks like physically I'm fascinated I can tell those of you who have technical backgrounds we're all nodding like yeah of course and some of us talk quite a bit about the internet but I never understood I didn't know about the root systems so one of my questions was to ask you to talk about the lessons from ICANN as the governance of the internet for governing the digital spaces more broadly we've been talking about digital governance but I also want to ask you at the same time Candace said yesterday that people in the Planetary Politics Initiative here is also about de-centering traditional power you can talk about that simply in terms of a multi-aligned world as the Indian external secretary the secretary for external affairs talks about it in terms of geopolitical shifts you can talk about it in terms of the shift from nations to commercial and civic actors but you're talking about something even more profound that it's no center one can point to and thus many many stakeholders have a say so I'd love to hear more about and maybe also you can start about how the governance, how ICANN itself evolved from an American entity to a global entity and what lessons do you take from that wow that was many questions rolled into one and you can pick and choose I'll follow up I'll start, if you would excuse me with just a minute to make sure we all understand the layers of governance and fragmentation so I'll give you a very simplistic model of four layers that make the digital world we want to govern there's the physical infrastructure the networks everything that moves the bits there's thousands, as I mentioned tens of thousands of these who governs this is it well governed I'll answer you in a minute then on top of that there's the logical infrastructure of the internet which is essentially what I was responsible for at ICANN that's what makes all the physical network bits look like one internet so that includes IP numbers it includes domain names and the root it includes parameters that are used in every router in the world all of that is called the logical infrastructure of the internet again how well governed is that and who governs it the next layer which we've lived in for the last 20 years is the app layer the email is an app the web is an app all those apps live on top of that once again who governs that and how well governed it is and then now and this is new I didn't have that layer until a year ago this new layer called the machines all the machines all the algorithms all the models living which need to also be governed and who governs that every day there's 10 articles and every paper saying we need a new agency we need something somebody's got to do something because everybody's freaking out about this new set of machines becoming part of our now so quickly the bottom part is well governed ITU lots of good institutions protocols many people contribute to how this is well governed and frankly except for this new thing coming out of Europe they want to go back to you know share fair share all of in general this is pretty stable and well governed the next layer the logical infrastructure which I was involved in is fairly well governed by probably one of the most progressive network governance models frankly to exist and I spent time after I can at both Harvard Kennedy and Oxford Blavatnik talking about this because it's unique and I'll touch on it in a minute and then the next layer which is the apps is highly fragmented highly fragmented much more so than the networks the logical infrastructure highly centralized I mean Tim Berners-Lee says if the internet looks like an hourglass then the logical infrastructure is the neck, is the key middle but then you go to the applications that's why you can't use Google and China or you can't do this I mean it's fragmented. You can't buy Kindle books on your Samsung phone something that drives me crazy so this is the app and then of course you have the new machines layer but let's not talk about this now and I can is I must tell you we were just meeting Alejandro and I with many of the former board members Esther Dyson and all the vent we meet because I can is about to choose a new CEO if any of you are interested it's the open application phase. I can warn you after I'm off the mic but it's there so they gathered us to say what kind of person can I run this organization and I listen to all my colleagues and I will tell you honestly what was my contribution I told them make sure the person who comes to run I can unlike me when I arrived I came as a CEO I know how to run an organization and I came to find out that in a networked governance model that is truly bottom up because many people call themselves bottom up in reality they consult bottom up but the decision is made in closed rooms where only one type of stakeholders is allowed that's not what I can is I can carries the multi stakeholder model from consultation to formulation to implementation to enforcement it's very unusual you will not find this elsewhere because it was required given the transnational nature of what we're managing right and so I can is a unique model it's not perfect but it worked and when I was there when I arrived to be frank I was the first person to run I can who kind of looks a little brown who speaks many languages who was from a different background and they and I found out later they picked me because I can looked very frankly very US centric it was controlled by NTIA ultimately in its final decisions NTIA being the US agency under the commerce department that was entrusted specifically with changes to the route so if we change something in the route it had to be blessed by them they rarely changed our decisions they had a veto power and when Angela Merkel and Dilma Rousseff when I met with them and they figured out this is the case they said no we can't have that we need a more open transparent model where others are participating in that final call so what I did at I can was take it from 95 people mostly in Los Angeles, Washington and Sydney to 500 people in 36 countries I internationalized the organization I made it look like the world and it was a great privilege to do that and then the second thing I did which Alejandro and others helped me make happen was to convince the Obama administration who signed off on our plan literally days before President Obama left office to give up that singular control they had over the changes to the route and this was important symbolic but important that we created a multi-stakeholder approach that put guardrails so that I don't remove Russia because I got a call from somebody saying get Russia out of the route I couldn't do that that I can the only thing I could change was the coffee in the cafeteria pretty much everything else was everybody and you would think this would slow everything down you would but it's okay sometimes it's good to slow decisions down but everyone was at the table and I learned this the hard way as a CEO when I arrived this is what I shared at the meeting to prepare for the new CEO I said please make sure the next person learns that CEO is not is really it's it's a title that's meaningless that I can it's much more of a coalescer and chief of a person who brings people together who learns from the beginning to be a bottom-up cooperator not a top-down decider and it works it really works if you haven't been to an IETF or an ICANN meeting go it's free attend and watch people at the IETF the consensus decisions are made how Alejandro by humming come on yes that's how all the protocols of the internet were agreed to so someone stands up says here's a new protocol to do XYZ and a room of 500 engineers most of them in flip-flops and shorts you ask them guys if you are supportive of this new protocol that could change the internet please hum and if the hum of the people for or against is higher it stops you gotta go see this there I think you can find it also on YouTube you can find some humming decisions being made about critical protocols to secure the internet it works there's no egos there's no bosses everybody's there making it so I have so many questions and I'm also thinking we can hum if you want because I'm thinking you know Bob Putnam wonderful well I was sitting there thinking that Bob Putnam's book on democracy in Italy concluded that the provinces in Italy that had the strongest democracies had traditions that extended back to the number of coral groups in the middle ages which is an evidence of civil society and connection and now I'm thinking maybe it was just due to the humming all along I mean but so finding there that's just it's so interesting I want to draw out some of the lessons of what you just described and ask you to see to talk about how well they might be extended I mean all you're you're looking at people who are in working groups thinking about governance of different areas but I hear a number of things I hear one you had to expand it you had to make it representative of the world so you had to decolonize it effectively you had to ensure that it was truly bottom I mean or preserve that as you expanded it that it genuinely was bottom up and critically a great power had to agree right because and I remember this and Trump of course never would have agreed Trump I mean I'm not sure I'm not sure they would have ever even really fully understood that they weren't focused on those issues but that's a key moment right go great power I mean just as a veteran of the wars to try to reform the Security Council no matter how progressive the U.S. the French the British are you start talking about veto and the door slams in your face immediately so so could those things work if you looked at I'm looking at A.I. and algorithms and we were just if you just said there was an A.I. group back in the 60s if you're thinking about as this group is government global governance or even regional for A.I. and algorithms can you imagine a similar kind of structure I can we you and I if you as you recall we wrote a piece four years ago now on co-governance and we chose the term co-governance partly because multi stakeholder versus multilateral has become a bit of a religious war unnecessarily frankly because you know so even the secretary general in his wisdom you know if he used multi stakeholder he'd be booted off his 17th floor so he used network multilateral everybody's trying to dance around the idea that we have to work together it's essentially we we tried a different term we used co-governance as a more mild term that did not enter into these religious wars but yes there is a model we need the thousand icons that's what we need and by the way one of what I thought was my biggest failures at ICANN was I tried to expand ICANN to do more than its remit and I was shut down I almost was fired by the board and I worked with Dilma Rousseff we did the Net Mundial I gave her the impetus to do that she agreed we did it and then the board felt wait a second we're now making ICANN bigger than it is and the natural reaction of the board was brilliant I didn't understand it then because I felt rejected but they said no our remit is this it's the root it's this and that and even by the way the numbers ICANN says I coordinate the distribution of all the IP numbers in the world not true actually within you know around ICANN there are five institutions called the regional internet registries one for Africa etc there's five of them in the world and I cannot tell them what to do even though it coordinates them but it has no power over them I cannot force the European agency that distributes IP numbers to do A or B I can't even though I was the head of ICANN that nominally was responsible for IP number that distributed model of sharing power that is so effective it is painful for CEO because you realize honestly that you could only decide on the coffee that's about it at new America you can't actually decide on the coffee I'm trying to change the coffee nope not even the coffee my point is it's really powerful when you think about it and it's very hard I had the privilege recently of visiting with Pope Francis who invited me to his actually to his home to his little apartment to chat with him a little bit about some of these things and I was thinking of how he the Pope who is trying in his own mind to bring some morality to this digital space trying to think the week he met me there were few girls that young Italian girls in Rome who killed themselves on some meme on the internet and he was distressed and asking me how do we govern that who do I call how do I call and it was difficult to explain the concept of distributed governance I'm sorry your holiness I don't think there's anyone you can call so that's the difficulty of the network governance model I had it as a CEO my holiness has it as who can I call to say stop this kids getting killed and our world as you said so well and Marie is designed around a governance model that is top down run by governments and the transnational life we live in now and the machines that will be built before we blink moving forward is a world where most institutions are frankly totally ill-equipped to govern but do you think so let's accept a distributed network networked in code for multi stakeholder a very inclusive horizontal bottom up model could we so let's say we're trying to create AI cans my question immediately when I think about creating it say for algorithms and AI and AI for right now with all that money all over the place I immediately think well it works for engineers but would it work for venture capitalists just as one example or for simply corporate power or for politicians right I mean I as somebody who's I ran a public policy school and I was very struck just by the difference between the personality types of the people who went into engineering versus the people who went into politics it's an excellent question and I remind you a little bit of the structure of how the logical infrastructure is managed there are multiple networks just like and Marie describes them in her book their networks one network is responsible for IP numbers in Africa one network is responsible for protocols in particular areas all those networks are coordinated by ICANN they're not run by ICANN which by the way took me two years to understand it's not simple because I thought I'm the CEO I go tell them why don't you do this and they say thank you for your input but we'll gather the network then you needed a coordination layer on top of that and that coordination layer includes all the stakeholders so a bunch of experts may come together and decide you know how do we declare what algorithms are doing that's a network of experts who come together come up with that and they propose something and it's made available to all the the potential implementers and in general in the ICANN world they implement voluntarily now if people go out of the norms that we all agreed on which are not policies or laws, they're norms then there is a coordinating group that can actually get in and really say you're out of line you can't do that that coordinating group includes when I arrived at ICANN there were maybe 25 governments involved when I left I had convinced over 150 governments to be involved businesses got involved everybody was involved and yes it's hard when you take a minister from Singapore who's coming with a very clear understanding of what's right and what's wrong and frankly super well informed and you put him next to an engineer who's saying we can't decide this way we have to go this way it was difficult but we need to grow a new crop of policy experts who know how to coalesce these different people and to be frank I learned this the very hard way on the job but we need a lot of young, smart knowledgeable people to permeate these environments with the understanding that we can bring and coalesce people with this problem you put your finger on it and Marie and I said it earlier when I said underline businesses have become very powerful and they're the hardest to bring to the table governments are eager to be at the table because they know that it's too fast for them and they really want to be at the table some with goodwill some not if you invite them they're at the table civil society at the table getting the businesses to the table was and that's why I came from a business background so that helped me to get the businesses to the table we need more business people and instead of attending Davos which is fine we should also attend the milken conference because these are the people who are feeding the business people I've learned this the hard way after leaving ICANN the real power is on the boards of companies because CEOs will pretty much do what their board tells them to do so I'm going to ask everybody to start thinking of your questions and that goes also for our online audience because I have a this wonderful tablet if you submit questions via Slido I think I will see it I'm going to ask you one last question before we turn this over so the high level advisory board that I've just been on the high level advisory board on effective multilateralism just issues its report and it talks about six big shifts in the world that will be needed for effective multilateralism and one the fourth one is a shift that will support a just digital transition that unlocks the value of data and protects against digital harms so a just digital transition that unlocks the value of data and protects against digital harm so positive the value of data but also the harms and specifically talks about the digital divide and this is what I want to ask you this question so we should be thinking about a just digital transition the way we think about a green energy transition that we will not survive at least not as we have lived on this planet unless we have a successful green energy transition and a just digital transition and so that means we have to address digital poverty inequality and harms and so my final question there for you and the flip of that is to build a enabling just digital architecture how would you tackle that question again with this model of governance when you put even governments at the table not all governments not remotely are there equally how do you enable again we were talking about the African unions digital strategy how do you enable the African voices the Asian voices the Latin American voices the voices of the vast global majority to be to have enough weight to get us to a far more equal digital world excellent question and I fear that with AI so remember I drew that our glass where I said there are networks and the networks are ubiquitous Africa has great networks I mean most continents now have great networks then you have the logical infrastructure which is most of us don't know about but it's critical it makes it all like one then we have this app player that allowed everybody to participate fragmented yes but open open fine they don't want to do this in China they don't want to do that up to them we don't like it we will say it but everyone could do what they want I think we're getting into a new phase in that fourth layer where we're back a little bit to a highly concentrated thing why because running big LLMs language models will require massive computing power massive computing power and and that's why you see how the administration is moving in controlling some elements of that because those who will control the computing power will control that last layer more so than the people who do LLMs and of course sadly and Marie the people who can afford to and may have the power to control that layer are kind of a couple of countries the US and China I mean there's just nobody else that will have the wherewithal to build a massive computer today it costs Google about almost 29 cents for every query on BART when you go and put a query it costs them about 29 cents electricity, machines, people 29 cents per query a Google search costs them 2.8 cents so about a tenth so that's a big issue that's why these things we still don't fully all understand what it takes to run these queries and we're just at the beginning we're asking it to write a speech wait till wait till we ask it to do very complex things the computing power will be what will concentrate this so back to your question how do we do this how do we make sure people around the world who will not have the resources to control the computing powers how do they stay at the table how do they feel they're still at the table so that's in my opinion if therefore if the governance of those things moves to pure old school multilateral fora then we kind of know that the US and China will be controlling those fora not necessarily for everybody's benefit but if we and there is a war I mean this is the new frontier there's no question about it I think that the governance models we've been talking about the ones frankly you inspired me to focus on and ICANN has implemented you know in so many successful ways but also with some issues but very successful ways those are the only models bottom up that stand a chance to include everybody in how those algorithms are going to affect the world of our life how will the new hybrid world work what is our place in it what are not just the guardrails but what are the ways everyone could benefit because frankly I'm a technologist at heart so I'm not a utopian technologist some are I understand the power of technology and it's good and I think it stands to bring a lot us to take this thing and put it in a box because all the voices right now is control it stop it I understand the fear but you know this happened before for the last century every time a new technology came fear we should calm the fears and I'm frankly one of the things I'm about to write about is the need urgently and Marie maybe you could help with that for a pagwash moment we need for those of you who don't remember in 1957 you know Einstein Oppenheimer all these guys came together in pagwash Nova Scotia in Canada and they spent a few weeks quietly calmly in a private home there's only two dozen of them or something and frankly they came up with a very beautiful framework that ended up years later becoming the non-proliferation treaties framework right and they started with some wisdom and some humility and some stepping back they had ethicists they had philosophers they have scientists they have people of good will I think we need a pagwash moment now Candace Rondo is nodding so hard her head is going to come off she's been arguing for a pagwash exactly equivalent of the pagwash so we have a question from online which I'll start with is that actually really follows on what you just said how do we address the fact that the internet is not open i.e. the flip is e.g. it's censored in many countries should they be allowed to work on developing governance principles so you know everybody comes to the table what if your vision of the internet in your country is very closed do you get to participate in developing for everyone you do that's the power of the bottom-up network model at ICANN as I said we've never ever excluded Russia, Yemen South Yemen whatever we said you have a seat at the table but you don't get to decide top down we have to build consensus once consensus is built it bubbles up and if it crosses some guardrails it gets designed so it gets stopped along the way but the decision is never made top down if this goes to with all respect to the Security Council to environments where it's a top down decision where the consultation is multi-stakeholder but the decision is top down and that's where the danger becomes so yes I think if people come from those places and they have agendas or they have misunderstandings that's the place for them to be at an expert table and by the way expert networks naturally weed out the non-experts so if people come with political views at an expert network it takes about an hour for everybody to tell them thank you Jose very helpful but you know we just need to get the work done they're about the work about the code, about the work about the protocol and that's wonderful because it comes down the edges and it brings things together and it's worked it's worked ICANN is not just engineers it's engineers and politicians and you know France was one of the most difficult countries to bring on board with the transition of ICANN but at the end the rest of the countries talked to France and said look we need to do this so and one thing I think it's very important to recognize that we looked at in this high level panel consensus is not the same as unanimity and that is actually written into UN documents that we often think consensus and we think oh my god if you've ever tried that you sit there till three in the morning but it doesn't mean everybody agrees it means enough people agree it's not majority it's super majority and unanimity is consensus so here there in the center and please just introduce yourself so that Fadi knew the microphone is coming here it is thank you very much I'm Anna Beduska I'm a law professor at the University of Exeter in the UK thank you for this inspirational talk it's very important and interesting to hear your thoughts about that and your lessons how would you think about the implementation of this vision of a distributed model of sharing power bottom up together in a world in which we see a lot of backlash against traditional institutions and also where we see more and more of calls in the industry, in the tech industry but also everywhere else calls to have more traditional ways of regulation so we see in the European Union for example the traditional ways of regulating the field that has been going on for a while with laws with laws that would have teeth let's say this way so how do you see the these two models squaring how do you square that together thank you you ask a very important question because we talked about consulting, formulating designing and then okay, it's there what compels people to do it what is the process to do that and again it depends on each network part of what networks do is to recommend an implementation approach some of it is voluntary pressure that comes from industry, we're all doing this you gotta do that, if you don't do that you're out of the market so there could be mechanisms I am a contender that we should try everything before something is regulated because A, it moves much faster if all of industry says that's the right thing to do, let's move this way it happens regulation of protocols that change version 1, version 1.1 version 1.1 and so on and so forth the regulation can't keep up and that's why when Europe issued the GDPR they issued a directive it was ambiguous and a lot of people didn't know but it's because if they did anything else, it would have been dead on arrival because the technology is moving at 100 MHz and regulation moves at 2 MHz and so that disconnect of synchronicity is an issue, having said this there are places where, and if we believe in the concept of subsidiarity where in some locales people are not voluntarily doing the right thing then they can issue a rule or a regulation but there shouldn't be global activity around that there should be highly as local as possible should be closest to where the decision has to be made and then of course there are some things that are vital that are fundamental I'm sure for those of you in the AI working group you saw the piece in The Economist two days ago by the Israeli philosopher phenomenal piece in which he's really questioning what our civilization will look like once machined this is existential and may require some global compact around it so some things rise to that but we can't regulate everything we have to be thoughtful and if we rise to bottom up if the momentum is bottom up then the momentum should also say that the implementation should be largely bottom up too and people should be given the opportunity to comply and we should have peer pressure and the networks on them and if they don't implement then some businesses sometimes require somebody to hand hold them into getting something done but it should not be the first place to go and today we see a lot of people calling for governments to step in frankly because of fear because of fear and when I talk to my colleagues in the valley or business people who run companies frankly also because of our lack of leadership we look like all we're doing is grabbing as much money as we can so can make the race for our company great we should do that but there needs to be some voices that control these algorithms speaking with wisdom not just to their shareholders but to all of us who will be affected I mean when Satya decided he's going to put chat GPT in being ok he made the decision I'm sure he consulted with a few people around him good for him I respect Satya immensely but he made that call that's essentially a CEO making a decision that instantly affected the planet in a significant way we need to hold these people responsible how do we do that by elevating those who do good things let's start with that why do we have Nobel prizes for science we don't have Nobel prizes for CEOs who do the right thing let's elevate them let's put them on a pedestal because CEOs all want to compete with each other and look better than the next guy elevate the good guys so we've got many questions in 10 minutes and this conversation could continue for a long time but I've got another one online two from online I do just want to make I want to highlight something that I think is very important as you talk about these sort of more horizontal bottom up forms of governance there are technologies can make this easier right there's been a lot of work of the radical exchange foundation of what is now called the plurality research network looking at plural technologies things like quadratic voting that allow people you take a vote it doesn't necessarily govern but you can find out what people really think so quadratic voting allows you to express your preference I can put my 10 votes on one thing and that's very important because we have to be able to find out what people think quickly and more effectively and those plural technologies should go along with experimentation in governance forms I'm so glad someone brought this up I gave a TED talk a few years ago where I described the three legs of the stability the stool that would give us a stable governance model governments of course businesses and the third one being us and then people were questioning me how do we put our voice in and because frankly to date a lot of the with all respect some of you may belong to these groups a lot of civil society groups also got controlled by businesses or by governments in some cases not all of them but many have very few people go to the IGF now because it's been seized almost a few people so what you just described may be the solution to have our voices at the table and our voices need to be an equal partner three legs we are the people we need to speak up with our preferences and there are now technologies that enable that there are even some people arguing that there are technologies to enable the coordination that we could have a thousand networks and they're coordinated by AI I won't go there but that could be possible too so a couple of questions online one from I think my old friend Bill Drake from Columbia says there have been lots of digital cooperation initiatives that look good on paper but didn't get anywhere and similarly following up on the pug wash point it says you know pug wash was disconnected from the decision making layer how could you get a digital pug wash or a pug wash 2.0 how can it get decision making capacity they're asking the same question we can design all these beautiful things but how do we actually and we can convene important people how does that then translate into the non phone number decision making capacity I'm always reminded that from 1957 when pug wash happened to when did the first non proliferation treaty get signed maybe 12 years later it took 12 years for that to work to get there we're planting seeds we shouldn't expect these things overnight to having a pug wash of thoughtful people in a transparent place dialoguing raises our common understanding allows us to understand the other bring people together we need more of this not less of this even if it doesn't immediately show a solution having said this we have models of network governance we need to quickly start replicating them now I cannot because I can is a network in a way doing its job but I can't could inform how do we help a new network be built around an urgent subject we have an anti-fishing network that was built super effective working very well so some coordination between them so people are not doing the same thing in 20 places at the same time that's okay but we need to enable this model where is the platform to enable this model that's a good question because if I want to start a network where do I start it so we had designed a model where there may be many platforms so maybe the the Ford Foundation could say look we're going to be a platform if people come to us and say they want to do a network around that we'll just provide you kind of a temporary secretariat to get it going or New America or a university or others we shouldn't concentrate it can't be in one place we should just have a model by which different organizations own a subject issue something that is understandable by everybody share it and make sure there is coordination amongst it'll take some leadership and Mary this is not spontaneously happen all right I saw many hands there was one very bear in the back and one here so I'm going to ask those two to ask your questions and you can put them together and we're going to have to close out and I'm very sorry for those of you who did not get to speak up go ahead my name is Alberto Rodriguez I work at the public technology team here in New America my question is you've alluded to this barrier of entry which is technical knowledge and I can works on that and is deeply enrouted in that technical ability but we are seeing new technologies and emerging technologies that are lowering that barrier of entry making a lot of voices at the same time pretty chaotic we are seeing also that as I can has to see what is going to happen with Web 3.0 and how that new influx of new players are going in a system that might not be able to manage them so this is two angles for just one question how do you think we could manage that chaotic energy of a lot of a lot of people that have entered this arena okay thank you and I'm going to ask Leandro thank you I don't think the mic is working very briefly Alejandro Pissanti National University of Mexico former ICANN board member former boss I would just say you are a funny boss not actually but so very briefly first one clarification point that's very important and I'm sure it was a pain for you Fadi every day which is that the route is only the directory it doesn't carry the traffic the route is only what the directory only tells your computer what other computer you're going to connect with that's critically important of course but the traffic doesn't go through the route the traffic goes through fibers through switches routers doesn't go through the route and this is a very important misconception because people in governments and everywhere else believe that ICANN actually controls the whole traffic of the internet and that creates a huge pain for ICANN by the way because it's believed to have a function that it does not have so it's only and this is the question how is it that the internet is touted and it is really a decentralized network of networks and it still has one central coordination point it's a one point that makes sure that everything else can work in a decentralized way that's you know this is an important misconception that has to be dispelled it's only a very narrower function it's a route of the domain name system the GAC the government that participation here is very important very interesting I just learned that Peter was in the GAC for a while in the government advisory committee at some point in 2002 or three we offered the government representatives in a reform process that we were making whether they would want to consider a design and change institutional design where they would have seats at the board we were even thinking of five seats for government representatives so that they would be one per region and the reply after some consideration was two fold no one was we will never find a way for 150 governments to agree on five to representatives and number two was we if we were on the board we would carry the liabilities of any litigation and governments cannot carry liabilities in this the interesting thing about ICANN is that it's all built on private law on contract law the fact that if I register slaughter.com and you have a trademark that I'm infringing on I have signed on the contract that I will relinquish it to you if you win an arbitration process you don't have to go to litigation so it's all built on private law and this is a very very important thing so the governments are very powerful they have an asymmetric power in ICANN they have almost a veto power on decisions but they are not governing the organization and that's I guess it was a long wait what I think for the future complimenting Fadi's view is that you need these organizations to coalesce about a real problem that someone has to solve you can have a thousand of them if you have a thousand problems and you have corporations that feel threatened why was ICANN formed because very sign it was network solutions fear that the government would actually regulate their pricing so they accepted this very different process that brought in competition yet allowed them to take part in the policy making and we call this policy in this very strict sense is the diminution of the space for arbitrary or discretionary decisions it's a process that doesn't let you just decide dot lebanon goes in or off the route and they have to be concentric, solving problems and find the resources from the threatened parties thank you thank you, so Fadi just to make sure again you get that the route doesn't have the traffic by design again to make everything distributed so you need the route to find things but it's not responsible it doesn't control the traffic that's the power of the internet this is why it's so stable and resilient and you understand it's governance but also its architecture is highly distributed to your excellent question yes it is more and more people of different backgrounds get together around these networks and it's all not always evident that we are at the same level of understanding whether it's policy law or technology sometimes so it's all of this there's a variety but that's the power of smaller networks because people then really invest in each other they want everyone to build some consensus so you find the technical person taking the time with the government person explaining the limitations of their laws and I've seen that at ICANN it's really quite remarkable how this happens in these networks business people who come in with this is not to my benefit how do I sell my boss on this and we get into those debates it takes longer but chaotic that's democracy it is chaotic it is loud people will argue but remarkably for 30 plus years at IETF ICANN all these institutions consensus is reached eventually it's reached thank you so thank you this has been a fabulous conversation and thanks to all of you