 Good afternoon, everyone. It is with great pleasure that we are here today with Mr. Carmen Lucero, Mr. Rebecca Fanon, Professor Josephine Wolfe, and Dr. Richard Marshall for our panel titled Transformative Technology, China's Leap into the Future. My name is Aathreya Bhargav, and I'm a member of this year's Epic Colloquium. I'm a senior from India, and I'm graduating with a major in international relations and economics this spring. For our discussion, we are interested in the intersection of Chinese technological growth and its impact on global norms of privacy, cybersecurity, surveillance, and broader technological change. In a world with increasingly few barriers between the private and the public, the outcome of the technological competition race has direct effects on our behavior, connectivity, and freedom. In understanding the relationship of the Chinese tech sector with the Chinese state government, we hope to understand what China and Chinese technology means to us. We also hope to explore what the proliferation of Chinese technology and innovation means for its relationship with the United States and other global partners and competitors. Before I introduce our panelists, I want to explain how the panel will run. For the purposes of encouraging as much discussion as possible, each panelist has been given five to seven minutes of opening remarks. I will send you a personal message at four minutes, just indicating your time. And then we will open the panel to discussion among our speakers, and then we will open it up for question and answers. We have a distinguished group of panelists here today, and I will give a brief introduction about some of the work they have done in context of a panel. In our chat, you will find the link to the symposium program with their full buyers. Our first panelist is Ms. Rebecca Fanon. Ms. Rebecca Fanon is a leading expert on global innovation. She's the author of Tech Titans of China and founder editor of Silicon Dragon Ventures. Rebecca was one of the first American journalists to write about China's entrepreneurial bomb, boom reporting from Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong. Today, Rebecca pans a weekly column for Forbes and is a special correspondent for CNBC. Welcome Ms. Fanon and towards your remarks, thank you. Nice to be here, thank you for the invitation. Okay, first on, right? Hello everyone, I'm here in Silicon Valley, a bright, early, sunny morning, Saturday morning and love to share some of my knowledge over two decades plus covering China and covering technology from a global perspective. And I started talking or actually talking about how China was copying Silicon Valley in the early days and how it was really fed by the sea turtles, Stanford, Harvard, Tuck graduates, and the Ivy League coming back to China and setting up copies of successful startups from Silicon Valley. And that was actually very successful partly because the venture capitalists from Sand Hill Road went to China too and they started investing in many of these startups in the early days. That was a very successful strategy for both the VCs and many of these entrepreneurs who were the copycats and the sea turtles. It was hugely successful. Many tech, Python companies rose from that with public on NASDAQ and stock exchange became globally known companies. They've expanded today into tech titans that we all know like Alibaba and Tencent and TikTok and can do a duo. And it's been very interesting to follow how innovative the Chinese entrepreneurs have become in many technology sectors, not only the original copy patting but many original ideas as well. For instance, WeChat as a super app where you not only do messaging and audio and calls but you also do social commerce and payments. This is something we are behind in the US. So China is leading the way on that. China is leading the way in electric vehicle adoption, in AI adoption, in FinTech payments. In many sectors where China is showing is technological prowess. Now, I think what's partly happened is that because China has become so good at doing this, working harder, innovating faster, going global that has actually become a threat to the US and to other global powers. So we've seen this play out for instance with TikTok and the fight over TikTok, whether it's gonna be allowed to operate in the US. Of course, we know it still is operating here but that was not without a lot of controversy. We've seen a lot of controversy over cybersecurity issues, over privacy issues, over competitors copying. So we have gotten to the point now where there is so much tension between the US and China. These are the two tech superpowers in my opinion that it may never get to a point where there's cooperation and collaboration again. I think one of the things that really fueled China's rise is the collaboration and the cooperation with the US and the venture capitalists that went over from the US, the ties to US companies, the Chinese companies coming and acquiring leading US technology companies. There's been a lot of cross-border collaboration but that now is all at risk and becoming less and less common. China is looking inward, US is looking inward for both. There's a decoupling going on of technology which I think is a risk to the whole global technology scene because if we end up with double standards, this is gonna be troublesome. It's gonna be pricey. We will never get to a point where we're developing things for the future in a collaborative way. So I think we're at a point now, a pivotal point. As we saw on Thursday from Alaska, things are not getting any better and technology is really front and center in this whole battle, this whole tech war. So thank you very much for listening. I appreciate it. Thank you so much for your initial remarks, Ms. Fanon. That was super great to hear that. Our next analyst is Mr. Carmen Lucero. Carmen Lucero is a fellow at Yale University Small-Side China Center which he joined in July 2018 after working for the Data and Society Research Institute and Microsoft's U.S. Government Affairs Office where he focused on issues related to artificial intelligence, law and policy, telecom law and policy and criminal injustice reform. Welcome Mr. Lucero and to what they remarked, thank you. Thank you and thank you for inviting me. I'm very excited to be a part of this great group of panelists and look forward to a very interesting conversation. I wanted to first talk about this idea of tech competition and what it means because the more you look at it, I think the more complicated it gets in large part because the relationship between the U.S. and China is so interconnected and so complex, but also because the nature of China is just very different and very unlike anything that the United States has faced. And so this isn't going to be like the competition that the United States had with the Soviet Union. We're just too close to China. China is too integrated into the global economic, supply chain, technological, whatever system you can think of that spans the world. China is a key player in it. And so when it comes to competition, it's not going to be a straightforward process. And I think another thing to keep in mind is that it's probably not going to be static in the sense that as we discuss issues of competition, there's never going to be an endpoint where someone wins and someone loses, but rather it's going to more likely be an ongoing back and forth or kind of dance, if you will, in terms of who has what advantages and who develops what kinds of technologies going forward. And on that note, in my view, I think this word competition is not then rooted in ideas of nation states per se, but rather in a series of other factors that again oftentimes traverse both the US and China. And so when we talk about competition, for example, I think we're talking about a competition or competition over values, which values can also be a part of that competition, meaning values can be competitive. And so when I think when people, you, whether that be users or consumers or countries, when they look at the US and China, they're not just looking at prowess, but they're looking at values, they're looking at government systems, they're looking at how the different governments do different things. And the key factors in this competition, if you want to call it that are, one, the most important, I think, is people. And it'll be curious to see going forward how the US and China compete at the national level, but also at the institutional level for the best global talent. And historically, the US has had great advantages in this regard, in the sense that we have an open system that generally has welcomed students, scientists, thinkers from all over the world. I'm hoping that the US government can continue to stress policies that maintain that openness. The second key area of competition, I believe, is getting the law and the governance of these emerging technologies right. There is such a thing, when people talk about technology, they focus a lot on technological innovation, like the development and deployment of new technologies, which is of course very important, but there is also such a thing as institutional innovation and the way that governments and societies respond to technologies, I think definitely plays a very important role in terms of how competitive they are or how prosperous they can be going forward. And then the third point is government policy. And this has everything to do with, say, research investment in terms of R&D, but also infrastructure development. And these are areas where it seems China, at least on paper, is certainly leading the US. China is clearly outspending the US government in key fields of R&D. And that's definitely true in infrastructure. If anything, it seems that the US and China are on opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to infrastructure development, where in the US, it seems so difficult to, say, build a road when we need so much new infrastructure currently for the future economy. And that includes everything from, we normally think of as traditional infrastructure like roads, but increasingly refers to other new technologies, such as 5G and stuff like that. And so that's something that I think the US could maybe use good more government investment, whereas in China, it seems to be the opposite, where if anything, there might be a little bit too much infrastructure development. And then, yeah, I look forward to the future, to the discussion that we're going to have. One thing I'm particularly interested in is how we address, or how the international community in the United States in particular is going to address the unique dynamics of China's political and legal system. So I think in order to maintain the open, vibrant market and ecosystem that we have, it's not enough to just be suspicious of China, even if there are very good reasons to be suspicious. I think we need to go beyond that to understand exactly what is suspicious and what isn't, so that we can develop the tools to encourage behavior that we want to encourage, such as openness, competition, that kind of thing, and simultaneously develop the tools to more, so that we can in a more tailored fashion push back against the sort of behavior that we dislike, whether that be Chinese communist party cells that are embedded within companies that have some kind of influence on business decisions that we don't know about. It's, we need more information in terms of how those dynamics works in order to develop solid policies and response. So again, I really look forward to hearing what the other panelists have to say and engaging in a great conversation. Thank you. Great. Thank you so much for your remarks, Mr. Government. Those were really interesting and definitely some questions will be coming up in the Q&A for them. So thank you for that. Our third panelist is Dr. Richard Marshall. Dr. Richard Marshall has 25 plus years of executive leadership experience as a former member of the senior executive service in the federal government, having served the Department of Defense, National Security Agency, legal architect of the nation's first cyber warfare exercise, the White House and the Department of Commerce. Welcome Dr. Marshall and we're very excited for your remarks. Thank you. Nihao, that's a traditional Chinese greeting. And it's a very friendly greeting and it basically means hello. So I'm offering that to my fellow panelists and also to my friends from China who are listening. But there's another very special greeting that my Chinese colleagues use. And because of my Southern accent, it may not be as clear as if I were a native Chinese Mandarin speaker, but it's ni chi la ma. And that basically translates to have you eaten. Now reflect on that a moment. That suggests a certain amount of, at least to me, aggressiveness as well as group concern. I want to make sure that you have a full stomach so that you don't eat my food. I also want to make sure that you're satisfied for health reasons. And I think that's perhaps a good balance associated with the technology challenges that both countries are confronted with. Now at the onset, I want to make a point very, very clear. And that is when I refer to China, when I refer to the Chinese, I am specifically referring to the government, not to the Chinese people per se, but to the government. So when I offer examples of Chinese espionage, I'm referring to their government, not to their people. Please understand that, that's critical. All right. China, as we have learned from two previous panelists, has traditionally been very aggressive in trying to reach a technological edge. And they really will stop at no means to try to gain that technological advantage. They'll go through peaceful means, as was discussed by the first panelist, and they will use other methodology as well. Coercion is one. So if you are setting up a business in China, they will put pressure on you to share your technology so that you can continue to operate in their sphere of influence. Espionage is one that we hear about quite frequently. And it's unfortunately been in the news lately, associated with a congressman who was allegedly involved in a illicit relationship with the Chinese spy. Also a senator allegedly had a driver for a number of years that was a Chinese spy, allegedly a Chinese spy I should add. But it's not just the traditional espionage that we have to worry about. There are many U.S. citizens, what we would call non-Chinese, who are willing to provide this technological advantage for money normally or maybe for philosophical reasons to Chinese competitors. Blackmail is traditional. They're also very good at purchasing technology that they're interested in. And that's perfectly fine. But then they reverse engineer it and modify it for their own purposes. Again, which is traditionally done in industrial nations. But the cyber exploitation techniques that they frequently use really work to our disadvantage. And a couple of examples I'm going to refer to is a telecommunications company that puts a lot of back doors into their telecommunications equipment that they encourage everyone to buy and use. And that gives the Chinese an opportunity to listen into our communications, to listen into our policy decisions and put them in a more advantaged position when not only in a business relationship, but in a political relationship. Their targets are independent contractors. We've seen that several years ago. Our Secretary of Defense flew into Beijing. At the same time that he was walking down on the tarmac, the Chinese were rolling out their copy of our F-35. What a pleasant greeting. An interesting way of saying, knee-how. We know that they are very active in infiltrating universities, particularly the more prestigious universities located in Silicon Valley. And also in the Northeast and portion of the United States. And I won't name any because they are also very active in the Midwest as well. The area that we refer to as the flyover zone. One of the databases they recently exploited had a list of every one in the United States that had a security clearance. Now, why would they be interested in that? I can tell you personally why they're interested in that. I took a trade delegation to China and on the aircraft, I kept checking to see if I was gonna be able to sit by myself because I wasn't flying first class. And the seat next to me was vacant up until the time they closed the door. And then an individual sat down beside me and explained to me that he was going to Beijing to visit his family. He had been in the United States for a number of years. Now, on that space, that sounds very innocent, but during our conversation coincidentally, he knew that I had lived in Iowa. He knew that I had lived in Nebraska. He knew that I lived in Columbia, Maryland. Interestingly, he had a son and daughter of the same age as mine. And he was a very friendly guy and offered to give me a tour of Beijing when I arrived. Now, I'm sure that was all due to friendship, but I have a suspicious mind due to my background. And while I thanked him for his hospitality, I respectfully declined. Why did they do this? It reduces their R&D costs. It makes them a lot more competitive in the world market. They can undersell the U.S. technology companies because they haven't had to suffer the R&D costs that we have. So they get a technological leap and a monetary leap ahead of us so they can offer their technology to all of the world's customers at a much cheaper rate than what we can afford to do. Now, let me give you an example and it's personal to me, quite frankly. I am the chairman of the board of a multi-million dollar company that is doing a fiber optic project in the Middle East. Never been done before. We're putting in the world's fastest, lowest latency, most advanced fiber optic cable network from Europe under the Mediterranean across Israel, across Jordan. Never been done. Over, around and through Saudi Arabia. Never been done. To India, Singapore, and beyond. Now, guess who is also visiting in that area? The Chinese with a project they call PCE, P-E-A-C-E, which is a cute way of saying Pakistan and East African connecting Europe. So they're doing what is referred to as a belt and suspenders by some cynics, but it's their traditional belt concept, going through Pakistan, going into the water around up into Europe. They're very interested in doing that because obviously they wanna have a nice, quick connection with the rest of the world. Part of the issue is price competition. They're going to be able to do it cheaper than we're gonna be able to do it. So it sounds like I'm upset with that. I'm not. I invite the competition because I know our system is so much more advanced than theirs. But the point, the reason I'm telling you this is they're very aggressive, just like any nation would be to try to get a technological advantage because we are in competition for commercial success and we can't ignore that. But I underscore once again, any references to the Chinese from me, and I'm sure the rest of the panelists is to the Chinese government, not to the individuals. I have a lot of Chinese friends. We all are concerned about this anti-Asian thing that's going around the country. We don't need to inflame it. We need to, as my two earlier panelists said, make friends with the Chinese and work together to make the world a better place. Thank you for the opportunity. Thank you so much, Dr. Marshall for those remarks. And we all completely resound with that statement. Anything said is about the Chinese government and of course not the Chinese people that do different entities. It should be thought so as well. Our next panelist is Professor Josephine Wolfe. Dr. Wolfe joined the faculty of the Fletcher School of Tufts University as an assistant professor of cybersecurity policy in 2019. She is the author of You See the Message When It Is Too Late, The Legal and Economic Aftermath of Cybersecurity Breaches. Her writing on cybersecurity has appeared in the state of the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Atlantic and the Wired. Welcome Professor Wolfe and we're very pleased to have you here. Thank you. Thank you so much. I'm gonna talk very briefly about cybersecurity policy, which is what I work on. And I think most of my co-panelists have done a good job talking about sort of the commercial and competition elements of thinking about technology in China. What I wanna emphasize is that just as the Chinese government and Chinese companies are entering into conversations about 5G standards and technical sort of innovations and markets in ways that we haven't seen prior to the past five to 10 years, right? It was not a major part of the conversation when we were developing the standards for 4G mobile broadband. What did the Chinese companies think? What did they want these standards to look like? So there's been a much higher level of engagement around technical issues. There's also I think been a real sort of influence coming from China in terms of what kinds of data protection regulations countries are starting to think about. And I just wanna highlight that a little bit because I think it has really profound implications for sort of what the future of computer networks and cloud computing is going to look like. Perhaps the most important trend where I think you can really point to China and say this was something that they identified and codified pretty much before anybody else is what we would call data localization or the idea that you would keep all of the data related to your country or people in your country within your own borders. And if you think about sort of the quintessential cloud computing model of a company like Amazon or Microsoft or any of the other big cloud providers, part of the idea, part of the point of that model is that my data is in all sorts of different places at once and being moved around depending on where there's extra space or where in the world people have gone to bed and aren't using servers. And that part of the efficiency gains that you get from cloud computing has to do with that flexibility, that ability to sort of move my data around, move it to wherever it's going to be closest to me, wherever there's going to be extra capacity. And China very early on looks at this model and says, this is not what we want. If there's going to be data coming from China, we want it in China. We don't want it sort of being moved all over the place where we won't necessarily have access to it or we won't be able to protect it in the ways we want. And so in 2017, with the Chinese cybersecurity law, China implements one of the earliest and certainly sort of most impactful data localization requirements, saying that cloud companies that collect data from people in China have to keep it in China. And I highlight this because I think it's a really important thing, not just as a law in China, but as a sort of seed that then gets planted in the minds of many other governments that oh, maybe this is the way to protect our data or alternatively the way to make sure we have access to that data. And you see over the following three to four years, the United States really trying to push hard against that model in a lot of cases, trying to say, no, no, no, no, we're gonna pass a law in the US for instance that makes it easier for us to serve warrants on data stored overseas and also perhaps makes it easier for other countries to access data that's stored in the United States, really trying to sort of push back against that narrative that the only way to control data is to keep it within your own borders and largely failing. And I think one of the ways in which you see that failing to take hold comes back to that TikTok WeChat proposed ban that was discussed at the end of the Trump administration. And as Rebecca says, has not come to very much but was certainly an example of the United States trying to say, no, no, no, we don't want data about people in the US being stored in China, right? Which was exactly the Chinese line, still is for a long time. We don't want data about Chinese people being stored in other places. And so I think that data localization trend has been a very powerful one and will probably continue to be a very powerful one and one that the US and other allies are gonna have to think carefully about whether they're going to embrace or continue to try to push back on. And if so, how they do that. And then the other thing that I would flag and won't be a surprise, I suspect to anybody listening but I think is important to bring up in these conversations about Chinese technology is that there's also a really sort of significant risk around surveillance capabilities that comes with the global spread of a lot of these Chinese manufactured technologies. I mean, surveillance in two ways that I think are worth distinguishing between. One is that many of the technologies that the Chinese government is developing and adopting around facial recognition and other things are tools of surveillance for governments, right? And they're then being sold to governments and lots of other places and allow for various kinds of high-tech surveillance that can spread very quickly and be very difficult to rein in once they get out there. So that's one risk that I think we have to be thinking about as we watch China sort of push aggressively into this space with, as Richard says, very, very low cost options for a lot of countries that otherwise would not have been able to afford or develop their own technologies at this scale. And the other kind of surveillance and perhaps I think the most interesting form of surveillance coming back to concerns about espionage is the question of if my country buys Chinese technology, how much of the data being collected by that technology, how much of the information that flows through that is also accessible or available to the Chinese government. And that's also an area where we've seen a lot of concern. There have been some very specific cases in countries in Africa where it turned out that infrastructure installed was actually being used for espionage purposes for China. And so I think as we see this sort of global spread of that Chinese built infrastructure and devices and other types of technology, that's another piece. It's certainly at the heart of the US-China-Lawyer conflict around who's going to build 5G technology, not just in the US, but in all of the other countries that the United States shares intelligence with and a very, very hard thing to un-pangle and sort of try to get to the root of how do we trust a global network when we don't trust all of the different companies and countries that are building the components being used to construct it. So I'm going to stop there and turn things back over to you after. Thank you so much for your remarks, Professor Wolf. I thank all of you for making time for the panel today. These remarks were really amazing. And before opening it up to the audience or even asking myself, I was wondering if any one of you had a question for each other that you would want to discuss among all of you. If this is the case, I can give the next five seconds and if any one of you has a question, please go forward. Yes, I have a couple of questions, if that's all right. First of all, for Professor Wolf, I was wondering what your thoughts were in terms of how the United States should think about sort of international infrastructure and selling technology across the world. Because I think the problems you identified when it comes to China and the spread of surveillance technologies are all very well-founded and very important. And so how should the United States respond? And in thinking about this, I would one like to ask like what, or I guess thinking about this from this perspective of different countries. Because I imagine most countries in the world do not necessarily like thinking of themselves as pawns in just some grand competition between China and the United States. So what are policies that the United States should adopt or strategies that it should use that enhance the agency of countries to engage with China, engage with the US, get this technology, get that technology but do so in a way that again enhances their agency, enhances their sense of sovereignty, if you will. And that isn't just surrendering to new kinds of surveillance but can actually be empowering for the people in those countries. I think that's a great question. I think it's a really hard question and perhaps other folks have ideas as well. I'll tell you two very concrete things that I think might help and that we haven't really seen from the United States and that I'm not very confident we're going to see but that I would certainly like to. One is I think that there actually hasn't been a lot of transparency on the part of the US government about what the specific technical concerns they have are around Huawei's technology, around TikTok, right? There's never been sort of any real release of here are the vulnerabilities we found in this hardware, the bugs we found in this code, the examples of espionage, right? When you look at the sort of specific concrete examples where the US has accused the Chinese government of espionage and there certainly are some, none of them are really tied to the larger lobby around trying to pressure other countries not to use 5G equipment in their infrastructure. So I would, one thing I think would be helpful would be for the US to be a little bit more transparent about here are the specific risks that we've identified. Here, it's not just we're saying China's evil and you shouldn't trust their technology. We actually have clear intelligence that says this technology is vulnerable or there's a backdoor here. I think that could potentially make other countries feel both that the US was sort of willing to share something but also understand perhaps what the stakes or the risks were a little better. And the other thing, and I think this one is even more of an ask from the US government but perhaps an even more important one is I think that there are a number of places in a number of countries that do not see a very significant difference between the kinds of surveillance and espionage that the US government conducts in the kinds of surveillance and espionage that the Chinese government conducts. And I think this note in leaps in particular really contributed to this sense in the international community that the US was not coming from a sort of high moral ground in saying, be concerned about the espionage, be concerned about the surveillance risks. And so I think the other thing that could make a real difference maybe would be if the United States was willing to negotiate on global norms around cyber espionage and surveillance a little bit more than they have so far, right? So far we have not seen the United States really willing to give up anything in that domain other than what they categorize as economic espionage, right? And that's the line that they've drawn saying what China does stealing information from private companies for competitive gain is something that the United States does not do. But they haven't really been willing to sort of scale back any other forms of cyber aggression or espionage. And I think that's turned out to be a pretty hard distinction for them to gain a lot of momentum in the international community. It hasn't turned out that to China or even to necessarily other countries that's been a very meaningful distinction. Sort of we only steal secrets for political and national security purposes. We don't steal them for economic competitive purposes. I don't think that has turned out to be sort of a useful norm or a productive norm in the international community. And I think the U.S. could do a lot more to sort of set some restraints on its own use of digital surveillance that might actually help change the conversation with the international community. Thank you. I have to comment. Don't be alarmed, Dr. Wolf. I agree with most of what you said, but being a lawyer, I have to look for caveats and exceptions. We, I have to be careful with we, let's say the U.S. government is aware of certain implants in the supply chain on technological equipment. What do we do about it? If we let the adversary, and I'm just speaking broadly, I'm not singling out any particular country or group of people. If we know about that and share that information openly, then we are disclosing sources and methods and then that shuts the door for us to do further discovery. So it's a very careful balancing act. Let me give you an example of where we did share quite a bit of information and this was between the United States and the United Kingdom. And it was specifically associated with Huawei and their technological advantage in espionage using Huawei equipment. As you know, there's a very close relationship between the group called the Five Eyes, the English-speaking nations post World War II, the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United States. So we openly shared a good bit of that information with our counterparts, particularly in the UK. And the UK said, well, we understand what you're saying, but we're going to, and you're gonna love this phrase, we're gonna trust but verify. So they set aside a separate group that evaluated every piece of Huawei equipment, took it apart, trying to find out was there a backdoor or not. And guess what their conclusion was? We can't definitively say, but we still don't trust it. And that took a number of years for the UK to make that decision and back all. Now, you also made a point which I applaud, and having been on the inside, I can assure you that it's accurate. You made a comment that the US intelligence agencies do not gather information for commercial purposes or for commercial advantage. That is unique among the world. Even many of our allies are very aggressive about obtaining information to help their colleagues own commercial entities. There are certain countries in the far east that is the subject of this discussion today that are very aggressive about doing that and very successful. Another point I would make has to do with social media. In the United States, and there are two companies in particular that are very, very proficient at obtaining personal data innocently while we use their system. And I won't mention any names for fear of a lawsuit, but I'm sure you can think of who I'm referring to. That technology is also available to other countries to use for their advantage, whether it is for commercial purposes, whether it is for academic research, or whether it is for human control. I mean, we are very much aware that the Chinese government has this thing called a social index, where they rate everyone on their social worthiness in that particular country, somewhat similar to a credit score that we use here in the United States. And with that, I'll stop. I don't want to talk forever, although I would love to. Great, thank you so much, both the panelists. I'm going to open the floor to questions from the audience, so please send those in. And in the meanwhile, sorry, did you have something to say? Mr. Lissera? May I just ask one more question, please, before we jump to audience? I'm so sorry, but there's just another issue that I really wanted to ask. In this case, Dr. Marshall. You mentioned sort of distinguishing between the Chinese government and the Chinese people. This is, of course, very, very important. And you talked about how the Chinese government has interest in infiltrating various institutions across the United States, whether those be universities, companies, et cetera, et cetera. And that's definitely something the United States should defend against. So my question is, how do you do that? How do you do that? How should the United States go about, say, maintaining the liberal democratic open system that we have while trying to hunt down these particular instances? Because I think current efforts to have done to do so, I'm thinking specifically of, for example, the Department of Justice's China initiative. It seems, regardless of intent, are portraying or giving the perception that being affiliated with China or having Chinese ethnicity makes you more suspicious. And obviously that is anathema to our system of government. And so what is a better way that the United States, or that the government or institutions in the United States can go about parsing the difference between students from abroad, which the United States definitely wants, versus people who have nefarious intentions when it comes to their engagements in particular institutions? My first response is, wow, you have really identified a very critical issue. My intellectual response to you is going to be somewhat shocking, I think. We need to have an FBI that is not politicized. Now, don't get all alarmed when I say that. But I'm looking back at earlier days in U.S. history, in the 50s in particular, the McCarthy era, where someone would make a statement against an individual, and that individual was shunned and pushed away. We're starting to see that in some circles here in the United States now. Not necessarily done by the government, but done by private sector groups. There was a recent example. Is the young lady who was going to be the editor of a women's magazine, and she had made some comments when she was 17 years old, that has come to light again, and she's lost her job. That's an overreaction. We need to balance that. We need to be very careful. So we need to have a non politicized investigative body that's talented, that is very sensitive to protecting human rights, very concerned about protecting the law, the practice of the law, so that it doesn't appear tainted or politicized. That is one heck of a challenge. I'm willing to work with you to help find a way to do that. And I know there are others in the community that would welcome the opportunity to do that as well. Several years ago, I was at Yale Law School discussing a program very similar to this, but it was associated with cybersecurity issues, which is part of my field. But I, again, I'm willing to work with you. This is an issue of seriousness that really needs to be addressed in an intelligent, non-political manner. Thank you, Dr. Marshall. Thank you for that question. And I definitely would be happy to work with you as well. And thank you to the rest of the panelists for indulging that extra question. Well, that's why you're on the panel. Of course. Thank you, everyone. A conversation on the panel is definitely something to look forward to. And as much as much of that happens, it's only a bit. Moving on to the questions. The first question is from me. And that question is trying to understand, like through a lot of the reading that I was doing leading up to this panel, one of the focuses of the way in which the United States looked at the security issue within technology in China was to focus on Chinese state ownership of certain private companies to what extent is this true? To what extent, like, like, like, can we better understand the relationship between Chinese private companies and the Chinese state or like the ownership structures within these states or the financing within these institutions, which kind of connects these two together in a way that perhaps makes sense. And is this focus kind of warranted in the first place? Because, like, some of these things might not change. And if this focus is not warranted, what are the other opportunities for cooperation within this sphere? And this can be private capital. This can be startups. This can be the innovative sphere which Ms. Bannon was earlier talking about, and there's so much more going on. So, like, where else can we look forward here? And this is addressed to anyone, so please. I believe you're muted. From Silicon Valley's perspective, now today in the venture capital world, there are firms and partners and groups that really don't want to be associated with China anymore. It's become that negative. And people would rather pivot to another market in Asia, such as India or Indonesia, rather than be identified with China. It's a real negative. People will turn down opportunities to be on panels, opportunities to be interviewed because of this negativity. And I think it's, this has actually only come to light in maybe the past year and a half. And it's here, I think. Unfortunately, I think it's here to stay. So, I was just speaking from a journalist and a book author. This is rather alarming to me that people wouldn't even own up to their own background or associations. Well, that underscores the point that Carmen and I were discussing. Does it not? Guilty by association. Virtue signaling aside, that's reprehensible conduct. My personal opinion, I'm not trying to be the world court here. So, and when my book Tech Titans of China came out in the midst of all of this criticism of China in 2019 in the fall of 2019 in particular, all the TV anchors wanted to know one question. Are they spying on us? Are they stealing from us? That was the one question. They don't care about anything else. The mainstream media does not care about anything else but that one question. But I think we have a lot of experts here today who actually, you know, can address that question very well. Well, I'll give you a, again, a personal example. When I was very aggressively trying to raise millions of dollars to fund my project in the Middle East, I was approached by a Chinese group. And they made a very attractive offer. It was very appealing. And the deal breaker was that I had to agree to install Huawei equipment on the whole system. And my response was while your offer is very attractive, the customers that we're dealing with would not permit that. So I was able to save face on both sides of the negotiating table by explaining a way that our customers wouldn't support that. Even though my board would have had my head, had I said agreed to that as they should have. But, you know, knowing the sensitivity and being politely discussing it, I think goes a long way to building. I'm going to use the T word trust. Oh, yeah. Isn't that what we're talking about? Building trust. Sure. Yes. Yes. Historically, that's, that's what law is supposed to help you do, right? You know, you can engage in relationships that you maybe necessarily wouldn't have otherwise engaged in because you have confidence that, you know, the law will protect you will protect your rights. And we don't have that currently. And I think we don't have that just with, with big tech platforms generally. I think the every jurisdiction in the world, including the United States and China are struggling to come up with rules to not just regulate, but even just better understand big tech companies and, and what to do about them. And I think those, those dynamics are especially challenging when it comes to China, because on the one hand there are very real fears and very real problems with what the Chinese government is doing. They take a lot of X of extra legal actions to try and influence companies, whether they be Chinese companies or international companies operating in China. Some of these tools include extra legal actors such as party committees that influence the, the decision making in companies that is not transparent to anyone outside of those decisions. Extra legal enforcement mechanisms such as scolding, scolding people within private companies in a way that's not public and in a way that doesn't conform to any established law or principle. And there's laws on the books that require companies to say give data to the China, to the Chinese government, such as the national intelligence law on the cybersecurity law. At the same time, though, the reality is a lot more complex. And I don't think that the interests of anyone are served by assuming that because the Chinese government has certain agendas or goals that it is therefore omnipotent. And if we want to develop the, the legal mechanisms and the capacity to have a better understanding of what's going on and to respond to them in a way that conforms to our values and conforms to rule of law where there's predictability beforehand. And you can try and vindicate your rights and corridors elsewhere. Then we need to understand the specific mechanisms of how, of how, of how all this works. And that's a, that's a big challenge and it requires engagement. You have to under, you have to work with, with the Chinese government, say Chinese companies and others to, to get a better understanding for how these mechanisms work. And the last point I'll make is, I think this is a problem that goes beyond just Chinese companies. I think the current focus right now is particularly in the United States is fear of Chinese companies. But when it comes to, again, these dynamics, the capacity to develop, to develop better laws and rules to address when it comes to big tech companies, that, that's a bigger issue than China. That's a bigger issue than Chinese companies. That's, that's, that's about the future of effectively a rule of law society in which, you know, we can have innovative companies that do exciting things, but without sort of relying purely on trust and perception, we need better tools. Great. We can now start with questions from the audience. The first question is from Julia Launch. She's from Brazil. She's an international student from Brazil. To what extent do Chinese advances in the 5G technology market rival US global power? And how does it manifest for other competitions from this? Well, one aspect of this is that China is rolling out 5G much more rapidly than the US is. And we also have no 5G provider in the US. And we're at a real disadvantage because of that. And, and it's a very big deal, not just because of 5G in and of itself, but because 5G is an infrastructure technology. So having 5G technology empowers the capacity to have, say more sophisticated AI, more sophisticated autonomous vehicles. Yeah. And anything that relies on an internet connection, basically, you can have next generation technologies. With 5G that you couldn't necessarily have with its predecessors. And so that I think that's one of the big, bigger reasons why the US is so concerned about 5G and Huawei is it's not just one piece of technology. It's an infrastructure on which many of the kinds of technologies that you hear about in the news are built on top of. Right. Let me offer an additional perspective. I agree with with both of you, of course. The issue is not so much that the US doesn't want 5G. The US consumer, if they knew about it in a positive way, would want it. The hold up are the current telecommunications giants. They're very happy with G4. If they move from G4 to G5, they have a lot of sunk costs in G4 they can't recover. And it causes them to spend a lot of money to produce, to link up to G5. They're not willing to make that investment. And then they also are aware that the next generation of technology in this arena called oddly enough, G6 is really where the action is. Once we get into the G6 realm, who cares about G5? So, you know, let's put the dead rat on the doorstep of the individual that deserves it. And that's the American telecommunications industry that is being resistive to technological advances. I am taking advantage of the fact that I have been around the sun many, many times. I remember the transition from landline to cell phones and the resistance certain telcos had to making that upgrade. It was astounding. But it was an economic issue. It was an economic issue more than a social issue. That's a little bit like the gas powered engine to the electric powered engine. Yeah. Well, you're introducing an additional topic that you and I are not going to agree on. But I want to keep this always be friendly. Okay. But I like high powered fast gas cars. And I'm going to stick with it. Okay. But I don't care about the torque, you know, the torque, the high speed, you know, the acceleration. Oh, I love it. But I can also experience that in Tesla. And I've test driven the Tesla several times into various evolutions. I love the car. The concern I have is where do they get the electricity? You know, you can only get solar when the sun is shining. You can only get wind when the wind is blowing. And even then the storage costs are astronomical. You know, you can't drive a car with a propeller on the top of your head and solar panels that are going to provide energy for you. Although that might work in some people's world, but not mine. Yeah. I think just came up with a new invention. Yes. I just like fast Jaguars. Good. I'm an F type dude. No, this is great. And this is very much the conversation that was happening in the earlier panel on China and climate. And this is very much in line with that. Our next question is from an Epic student Alexander Schner. He is wondering if the panelists can comment on China's made in China 2025 plan, as well as the recent shift dips like we've seen from China from being a mass producer of low tech goods to an increased focus on the production of high tech products and services. All right. Well, this is China's blueprint state led blueprint, to close the technology gap and in many, many globally competitive areas sectors. That are important for tomorrow. AI and robotics and new energy and biotech and aerospace and all of these areas. And the US really doesn't have an equivalent to that. It's been talked a lot about in Washington DC. That we need some technology blueprint for tomorrow, but it's not there. So China made in China 2025. 2025 it's coming up real soon and China wants to lead in all these sectors by 2025. So we'll see. I think there's a lot of progress to be made. Well, and let's not ignore the contribution Silicon Valley has traditionally made. Just look at the technical advantages that have come out of that part of California and elsewhere as well, but we're focusing right now because we've got a Silicon Valley dragon sign behind you. This was done without government support. Actually, some would say it was done with government suppression. But you look at Steve Jobs, you look at that group of interesting individuals and look at what they accomplished. It's phenomenal. And I think that leading the world in that, and I still think there's a rebirth of technology here in the United States that once we get out of our economic shutdown, we can advance. I have faith in the American spirit. I do too. And I think it raised a good point that this was really private enterprise. This is entrepreneurial culture that feeds upon itself. We have this tech cluster and ideas just come up and, you know, and people get together and exchange ideas. And we have Stanford and Berkeley and all of the great ecosystem here that feeds that. And so, yeah, we have Elon Musk. Well, and let me use a traditional example of the cryptology wars. For the longest time, the government said, we're going to control all cryptography and had a lot of interesting reasons for doing that. But then a friend of mine, I adore her, very smart lady, developed wicker. And I don't know how many people use wicker, but that was a predecessor to what many people use now, various encryption schemes. But she made a very successful company called wicker, so that you can use text messaging encrypted that the government admittedly can't break, they claim. And the text message disappears after a certain period of time. And it is not stored. It is not tracked. There's no linkage between who you are communicating with. So that would frustrate certain groups in the federal government. But again, it's American ingenuity that I think is going to ultimately win. Let's don't roll over. Let's stand up. I agree. And I think the made in China 2025 document and plan has been the source of a great deal. Or at least the focal point of a great deal of the suspicion that we've all been sort of talking about. Of China and I think that suspicion is very mutual. I think you look at Chinese tech policy over the last several years, there's been going pushes to be self sufficient. And in particular, to move away from reliance on the United States, because there's a great deal of suspicion within the Chinese government of the United States. And you also see that in specific policies as professor Wolf was describing in her remarks, China has been a first mover, if you will, and a lot of these sort of protectionist or self reliant policies like data localization. That being said, I think it remains to be seen how successful they will be, both in the case of China, you know, there's there's so many moving parts in made in China 2025. And there's a growing number of people in the US who are trying to track the progress of those different things. I'm thinking in particular of Georgetown law school security or center for security and emerging technologies. But but it remains to be seen how successful it will be both both for China but also globally. I don't I'm not necessarily convinced that just because there's a trend for for data localization that that's necessarily the best idea for, you know, for countries to adopt going forward. So I think it I think there's still there's still too much going on to really know for sure at this stage but I would definitely echo. You know that I think I don't think we should count out. Great. Thank you for your comments. Our next question is from an ex epic student Layla Lee. She's asking us what are the current multilateral institutions where the US and China may have an opportunity to engage in productive conversation about cyber norms and standards. Will the UN be a good platform to facilitate such conversations. Thank you. The UN has not had a great deal of success right there was both a global group of experts convened to discuss cyber norms. And then when there was a lot of outrage about the number of countries that were not included in that there was the larger open ended working group convened to continue similar conversations with a larger group of countries. Neither of them has, you know, come to anything close to consensus on anything productive or helpful I would say. I'm not I'm not sure anybody in either of those groups would disagree with me on that assessment. I think if China and the US are going to have any productive conversations are going to need to have them in a bilateral contest before they move into a multilateral context. And I think that sort of one of the things we've seen around norm setting in this space is that it's hard enough when you're just dealing with the small group of countries who have the most toys and are the most aggressive in this domain that before you sort of take it to these larger multilateral institutions, there needs to be some starting ground where those countries are willing to come to the table and compromise on some things. Because if there's not that but it doesn't really matter what everybody else in the room is saying right if the US and China can't reach any common ground than bringing more more participants and more countries into the conversation just makes things sort of slower and more complicated and less productive. I would say you know I think there was some hope certainly among people in the tech world that the new administration in the United States would allow for more of that bilateral sort of cooperation or norm setting so far that does not seem to be the case right just looking at this week it's not clear that that's going to change the direction of the relationship between the two countries in any significant way. I do think coming back to a question about made in China 2025 right it's still an open question whether a new administration is going to be able to make China less suspicious of their reliance on United States technology right I think we should not discount the importance of the Trump administration making various threats to block China's access to semiconductors and sort of all of the ways in which I think China would probably have come out with you know in many ways a similar plan and have similar goals about the industries they wanted to work in but I do think that we saw that accelerated in a lot of ways by the Trump administration threatening to sort of restrict their access to a lot of the tech that they use from western companies and that that probably is something where you could see a little bit of softening with a new administration but perhaps still a little too early to know for sure. I'd like to follow up your comments with some general observations couple of points that need to be considered we're dealing with a technology that's advancing almost on a day-to-day basis number one number two we're not just dealing with nation states we're dealing with nefarious nation non-nation state actors now let's go back to the fact that the technology is constantly changing it was much easier during the 50s and 60s 60s primarily to negotiate a nuclear arms control agreement because there was as you pointed out just a very few state actors that had control of this technology number two the technology was pretty static at that time we were not expecting any radical changes so the individuals that actually had control of nuclear weapons were able to agree on certain controls we've done the same thing historically with the law of sea associated with activities involving territorial waters freedom of transit that type of thing those are laudable formats to follow and I know Carmen is going to agree with me if you set up a legal regime and you follow it you're expecting a positive outcome that's wonderful but we can't do that today yet we tried with the Estonia negotiations you remember those of course and you pointed out that they didn't reach the desired effect are we going to get all of those who are nefarious actors non-state actors to agree on not breaking into computers not being disruptive not likely they're making too much money so it's a very daunting challenge I agree with you it could be done I just don't agree with you that it can be done thank you the next question is from an anonymous attendee the question is what can the US and its allies do to curb China cyber threats especially when it comes to protecting other nations infrastructure like Taiwan especially this is true with the increasing number of infrastructure projects that China is doing all across the world and especially in the other countries please comment on that thank you I mean my prejudice would be that we could do a much better job of securing our own infrastructure developing policies that encourage strong security standards but I don't think that would be a positive or worthwhile outcome I think that the question of sort of why the United States has no rules and no oversight in the US I don't think that would be a positive or worthwhile outcome I think that the question of sort of why the United States has no rules and no oversight in place to catch something like the solar winds compromise earlier is really on our sort of defensive security posture and speaks to what a low priority that has been as compared to the more offensive cyber capabilities there's a temptation to use the national security or national defense model to address this issue and that is not feasible and let me explain what I mean by the national security model we are fairly confident as the United States military strength that if there is a nation state that attacks us with missiles we can detect and respond as appropriate alright we can't do that with cyber because we don't always know who's fighting it you know you can be fairly certain that a missile is launched from a specific geographical area but it's very troublesome when you're dealing with a cyber attack so often a cyber attack that originated in somewhere else in the world is initially traced to some IP address here in the United States or in South America Argentina for example that's a hot bed in the middle of the United States and the United States for example is a military security or somewhere in middle Europe so the attribution is a real challenge so it's just very difficult to say who, what, when, where, how and why and the United States should establish a way to protect everybody as for years was possible for everyone it's just not feasible today with our technological understanding and shortfalls to do this for cyber I definitely agree that the traditional national security paradigm is not appropriate for all the reasons that Dr. Marshall just said in addition to the fact that the protectors if you will of the infrastructure are overwhelming majority are not government they're private actors and so in the NSA even if it wanted to just does not have the capacity to go around and be responsible for the protection of every single network that's out there different companies universities etc need to develop at least in certain at least in certain ways some of those capacities themselves and I don't think there's any silver bullet idea or policy in terms of how to do that there are some things that are floating around so for example there's Microsoft's technology accord that is you know that has the goals of developing a series of norms amongst private sector companies that have to do with better cyber hygiene better cyber protection as well as better information sharing both with other private companies and to a certain extent with the government some ideas some broader policy ideas that have been floated around when it comes to how to address cyber policy include hackback so where if you can to the extent that you can identify an actor in a different country that the government that the US government or the private company that was hacked should hack back this is a very controversial policy for a number of reasons and people think it would just lead to more chaos and wouldn't really deter bad actors but it is one of the ideas that's out there another one is the idea of due diligence whereby companies would hold other sorry governments countries would hold other countries accountable for the for the cyber malfeasance of actors within that country so right now there's a lot of plausible deniability even to the extent that we can identify actors so for example if there's if you can trace an IP address to somewhere in China the Chinese government will say well that you know that wasn't us that was a private actor so this idea of due diligence would say I don't would basically imply that it doesn't matter if it was a private actor or not the notion is that if cyber crime is being conducted in your jurisdiction you have a responsibility to stop it that's also a very controversial idea for a number of reasons but again there's no there's no silver bullet sort of solution but there are a lot of interesting ideas that are floating around in terms of I think it's very telling though that the ideas that you're talking about are ideas that are really all offensive in nature not defensive right you can call back a defensive strategy but it's really just an excuse to let everybody attack other people more it's not at all about how do we prevent espionage and intrusions from happening in the first place it's just how do we respond to them and sort of conduct more espionage and intrusions of our own you can tell it's not something that I think is a good idea but that aside I think coming back to the question of how do we respond to espionage the the issue is that most of these proposals you're talking about are proposals about sort of what do we do afterwards what do we do assuming that there's no way for us to do a better job of protecting our own networks and infrastructure I want to come back to the point you made about your well of course the NSA can't protect everybody which is fair but also nobody's proposing that right there's an enormous civilian cybersecurity infrastructure within the US government mostly housed in the Department of Homeland Security but in lots of other departments as well it's certainly not the case that anybody thinks that the US military should be responsible for sort of oversight of all of the civilian and certainly the case as you said that many of those companies and non-government entities have some responsibility to work on security themselves but I think it's a real mistake to absolve the US government's civilian cybersecurity infrastructure of making clearer and being a little bit sort of stricter about what they expect from all of those private sector entities about what kinds of measures not just sort of what you get to do after somebody intrudes into your system would make sense would actually help prevent infrastructure and these are very much sort of not cleanly separable as we see with solar winds that a private company's compromise can very quickly lead to the government's compromise and vice versa I definitely agree and I think the emphasis is right that not only the government but every actor involved in sort of the cyber infrastructure of the US should place much greater emphasis on protection, prevention because I think as you rightly pointed out a lot of the more offensive measures are controversial in part because they're clumsy and might not really work on that, do you mind if I ask what do you think of the tech accord or attempts by private sector companies to establish their own norms of information sharing and collaboration to what extent do you think that those kinds of endeavors are beneficial and to what extent do you think those kinds of endeavors are insufficient do you think the government should have more of a role in framing those or what do you think is an ideal future for developing those norms and the sorts of better habits and practices that you're talking about I'm sure you're asking that question of Dr. Wolfe and I'm anxious to hear her answer but I can't wait to pile on I'm sorry no no no no she has to go first because she's going to set the threshold this is fascinating I'm conscious that we're supposed to wrap up soon so I'll be very brief I'll say my heart breaks a little that Microsoft feels there's such a whole that they have to come in and try to write those global agreements it breaks because I don't think that's the role of private industry I don't think it should be the role of private industry and I don't think it's going to work I don't think that there's sort of any way to make a global agreement without getting the leaders of the governments of China and Russia and several other places to I think it might work in the United States because the United States has been so hands-off about so much of this stuff that they might be willing to let their own tech companies step in but that's also because the United States feels probably pretty confident in its ability to regulate Microsoft and its ability to sort of agree with what Microsoft's going to do I don't see how that translates into agreements that are going to have any power or weight in other parts of the world and I think it's a real mark of shame for the international community that there has been such an absence of anything productive that we're looking to the tech companies to perform the role of governments I'm going to be very brief as well. I'm drawing on my experience as a top lawyer at NSA for the infosec mission which unfortunately is not as aggressive today as it used to be where we would provide technological opportunities to all of the software developers gratis and then later I was the director of cybersecurity policy at the Department of Homeland Security and there I learned that this is not a real government function it's much better done in the private sector you would make technology available to the private sector and they would say well it's too expensive to implement these defensive measures so I'm not going to do it to protect five cents but now looking at recent example SolarWind for example who was the one who detected it, who was the one who took the technological lead the government or the private sector I think the private sector is so far ahead of trying to protect our assets in the cyber realm much more than the government at least that we know of rant over Unfortunately we do have a lot more questions and this is super insightful but we do have to stop I would like to thank all of the panelists and everyone who participated today this has been a great discussion post this panel we have expert led small group discussions from 1.30pm Boston time the discussions on scene of black relations on China and corruption and my personal favorite the one I'm leading on China and cinema culture given that we're also nearing the end of the last time we'll all be together as a large group I would like to thank the IGL and specially Professor Williams Heather Barry, Sada Abdullah Stacey Kazakova and Keisha Canada the IGL external advisory board the Epic class of 2021 and other admin staff and student workers that have made all of this possible there's a long list of people so apologies if I missed anyone but all of you have made this possible even though it's in zoom and everything else so much appreciated thank you again and I hope to see you guys at some point in the future have a great day thank you