 Hello and welcome to the launch of the Quad Tech Network. This is a major initiative by the National Security College at the Australian National University with some key partners across the region, across the world, partners, of course, from the Quad countries, United States, Japan and India. I wanna begin by welcoming such a wide range of audience members and participants to today's event. I would and will begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land from which we're convening this conversation here in Canberra in Australia, the Nunnable people and to pay respects to their elders past, present and emerging, but of course, this is an international and global event. I'll introduce myself and then turn to a few of our speakers, but I want to particularly invite in a moment the Australia's ambassador for cyber security or cyber affairs and critical technology, Ambassador Toby Feekin to say a few words. But before I do, I would just note that this event is on the public record. It's by invitation, but it is an open and public event. You're welcome to quote anything said here. We strongly encourage you in particular to read the papers, spread the word, contest the ideas that our research partners are presenting here today. I'm going to leave it there for the moment, just to repeat again that as I'm Rory Medcar head of the National Security College here at the Australian National University and I welcome you all to this launch of the QuadTech network. It's my pleasure now to introduce Ambassador Toby Feekin who is Australia's ambassador for cyber security and critical technologies. Toby, thank you. Thanks so much, Rory, and just before I begin, I also wanted to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land that we are virtually meeting on today, the Ngunnawal people, and pay my respects to the elders past, present, and emerging. I also want to acknowledge and welcome any other Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who may be attending the event today. As Rory said, I mean, it's been an absolute privilege and an honour for, and I can't believe I'm saying this, for the last four years, two months to be firstly Australia's ambassador for cyber affairs, but now Australia's ambassador for cyber affairs and critical technology. And I don't think I could have ever envisaged the shift in terms of centrality of the issues that we began dealing with back in 2016-17 around cyber security and broader digital engagement to the order of magnitude that we now find ourselves engaging and the requirement for engagement on these issues. There's no doubting that cyber and critical tech is absolutely central to geostrategic competition and broader foreign policy settings in a way that none of us could have predicted, but we are in that position now. And I'm also really pleased to say that in that time as well, that Australia has become a global part of the global leadership on cyber and critical technology issues. And we're always open-minded to working with a whole range of different partners, wherever they are, be they government, private sector, civil society or academia. And I think it's in that vein that, you know, really pleased to support the establishment of the QuadTec network today to promote Track 2 research and public dialogue on these really important issues. And, you know, through the QTN, we're very much hoping to see and invite challenge, fresh thinking and that contest of ideas that's so important to innovating our approach to these important issues. And, you know, the changes that we've seen since we originally produced a 2017 international cyber engagement strategy are profound. The advancement of technology obviously has long underpinned the big shifts that we see in the geo-strategic environment, but it's the current pace of scientific and technology innovation, especially in the digital environment that are really seeing great disruption in the global settings. And critical technologies now are spreading across multiple different industries simultaneously and reshaping the way in which work is being conducted and the scale at which we are now having to grapple with these issues is something that we could have never predicted. And it's the totality of all of these innovations which is really hard to gauge exactly, but we do know that it's gonna fundamentally shape and shift the power dynamics of the 21st century. That much is certain. We as the Australian government are seeking countries, seeing countries working to advance their tech industries and capabilities and it's an obvious thing to say, but very important to say some are like minded and some are not. And there's growing recognition that the countries that lead in the innovation of new technologies will be able to define what is and what is not acceptable in those technology spaces. So the Australian government, along with its partners in the Quad and in other alliance arenas is grappling with these new topics. And we have to address these new technology issues to understand the benefits and the risks of a bifurcated tech sector and the importance of working collaboratively and transparently to preserve our values and our prosperity. And I think it's the liberal democratic values that underpin our societies that will continue to guide us. And those values are more important now than ever as we seek to oppose the application of technologies that endanger economic prosperity, human rights, threaten global peace and stability and undermine democratic principles and processes across the world. We can't do this in isolation and that's where initiatives like this are so vital to us in government in seeking fresh thinking new ideas. So it's through the QTN series, we really welcome this timely research and recommendations through the institutes involved, even though we might not agree with all of them, it's that contestability of ideas that's vital for the policy space. And we hope that in your work, you'll consider issues of national security and economic prosperity, but also of opportunity cost and the impacts on our own private sector and research communities and on our alliances, both the old alliances, but new and emerging ones too. And that these questions won't just focus on the immediate consequences, but the second, third order effects that continue to ripple across the geopolitical and economic and social canvas. And as I say, we may not agree with all of the analysis and recommendations in the paper, but we really do welcome your ideas and challenge for how together we might best navigate the risks and seize the opportunities that this enormous technological change brings. As I say, the technologies and the geopolitics that surround them will continue to profoundly shape the power dynamics of the 21st century. So your thinking and creativity will be important in contributing to how government rises to and capitalizes on this challenge. And I just wanna finish with a quote, it's Albert Einstein, perhaps one of the greatest scientific minds we've ever known. And he said that imagination is more important than knowledge for knowledge is limited. Whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. So I'm excited where your combined imaginations will take us and how the QTN evolves. And with that, I really welcome this launch and really look forward to the discussion and thank you to all of the institutes involved for the hard work that they've put into this effort. Thank you, Ory. Look, thank you very much, Ambassador. And again, I'll echo the thanks of colleagues for your and the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs trade sponsorship of this work because as you say, this is very much a second track project. There is a healthy debate, a diversity of ideas in the papers that you're all about to read and the analyses and perspectives that we're about to discuss over the next hour. And that is, of course, a strength not only of the quadrilateral dialogue and the individual countries in the Quad, but really of the rules and the principles that so many of our countries in our societies stand for. I'm just gonna offer a few more framing remarks if I may before I invite the real stars of the show. And that is a range of our leading researchers from the four countries who have produced the real content for this major track two research project. I guess I just wanted to recap why, from my perspective, it makes sense that we're doing a quadrilateral project on cyber and critical technologies, a Quad Tech dialogue, if you like, or a Quad Tech research series. Why these countries and seemingly not others? I wanna situate that in what's happening in the region, in the Indo-Pacific, to look a little bit at the geopolitical context of the conversation that we're about to have. Firstly, I'd note that the Quad Australia, India, Japan, the United States certainly has in recent years surprised many observers with the way it has gone from strength to strength, certainly in security dialogue at the officials level, at the political level, at the leadership level, and even moved in other directions now, for example, with broad agreement on a wider agenda that extends to some of the issues we're gonna talk about today, and of course has extended to the four countries working together in maritime security in the defense exercise space. But many people will scratch their heads and say why the Quad on tech? And we'll come to that question in a moment. I think that just as we've seen the new US administration, the Biden administration in its very forward-leaning foreign policy agenda in the first few weeks, really these opening weeks, we've seen the Biden administration reassert the importance of American engagement in the Indo-Pacific, reassert the importance of the Quad, but also assert the need for a really comprehensive strategy to ensure a stable balance in the region. I think that's part of the context where we have this conversation today. I don't think, certainly speaking personally, but I suspect that for a lot of the organizations and researchers in the room, we're not necessarily seeing the Quad as some kind of exclusive arrangement on tech issues. It's a piece of the puzzle in new forms of international cooperation and collaboration to really set the rules, set the principles, set the understandings where we'll have sustainable development with rapidly emerging critical technologies and a challenging balance of power in the region, a region where I think the diversity and the multi-polarity that the voices you'll hear today is really a strength that will help us manage challenges into the future. If we were to grapple with some of the research questions that I think in the many preparatory conversations we had in this process that our research has grappled with, a few things struck me, one was that question of, are we talking about the Quad exclusively or the Quad as really a core for much more diverse and interesting ranges of partnerships in the multi-polar Indo-Pacific? And I think, for example, the questions about Southeast Asia that our Indian paper on regional connectivity explore are important there. Are we looking to develop harmonized national positions and coordinated national positions? Or are we in fact starting from a point of acknowledging difference and working with difference in our countries? Again, I think the work of our Australian colleagues who you'll meet shortly had a lot to say on that. Are we about analysis or action or both? I think the papers, the research papers are a reference, a real bedrock now, I think of reference on all of the issues you're going to hear about today. But certainly in some cases, they've pushed interesting boundaries and really important boundaries with very firm recommendations, such as shared capability, such as intelligence sharing, such as shared education and training and the like. And finally, what brings us all together in this diversity? I do think the fact that we're having this conversation and one of the governments of the Quad countries was willing to sponsor a project where the opinions are very much those of the authors themselves, points to the trust that is a fundamental feature of our societies and our political systems. The trust, which can certainly be frayed and challenged politically, but nonetheless is there in the identity and values of our societies and systems, that principle of pursuing trust and understanding among the private sector with citizenry and with an inclusive and democratic political process, that I think is what really creates the opportunity for much greater collaboration among our countries in this space. And that of course gels, I think, with a multi-stakeholder approach to diplomacy on these issues. It's the start of a journey and I'm now going to invite the first of our speakers or our researchers to offer their perspective. I might make a few concluding thoughts at the end of this time. I'm going to go in turn and introduce first our, our American speakers, one of our Japanese authors and our Indian author. And what I want to do as I introduce you is just pose this question for the group. Cyber and critical technologies, as we've noted are increasingly headline issues for national leaders and foreign ministers in forums and bilateral meetings and so on. And we're seeing in the Indo-Pacific, whether it's the Quad or other arrangements, a whole lot of new groups, mini-lateral forums getting together, including among our countries to identify how do we meet the challenges to regional stability and to a prosperous, secure, sustainable future. That then raises the question of the Quad. What do you, as our research partners, see as the Quad's role being in cyber and critical technologies? Is it actually a bridge too far for us to be pushing, if you like, this idea of QuadTech cooperation? Or can you see, in fact, some kinds of natural evolutions at work here? And I'm going to begin, if I may, with Martin Rasser, who's from the Center for a New American Security. Martin is a senior fellow in technology and national security at CNAS and is principal author of our American paper for the project. Martin, over to you. Well, thank you, Aurora. Let me begin by thanking you and the team at the National Security College for hosting this event. It's great to be here with Ambassador Fekin and my fellow panelists. Now, specifically to your questions, I see tremendous opportunity for the Quad to drive meaningful change in the areas of cybersecurity and critical technologies. This grouping has a lot going for it. First and foremost, you have four tech leading democracies that seek a free and open into Pacific. They're increasingly aligned on the challenges posed by rising China. And the four countries also complement each other very well when it comes to technological capabilities, science and tech infrastructure, human capital. And I think that despite some different approaches to tech policy within each Quad member country, there's now a view coalescing in each capital that greater collaboration is not only desirable but also necessary. And using the Quad as a starting point for such collaboration makes a lot of sense, right? You have a large portion of the world's GDP and population, shared interests and values and a common understanding of what it will take to be economically competitive in coming decades. Now, to get to your other question, I very much see this as a natural evolution of the Quad relationship, particularly when you consider how central technology is to the geostrategic competition that's taking place. Because of this, I see the right mix of a desire to act and numerous areas where the Quad countries can do so. So in the near term, there's good opportunity to make important strides in areas, including setting norms that promote a free and open cyberspace addressing supply chain vulnerabilities such as for rare earths and boosting technological innovation for 5G wireless infrastructure. So in short, I'm quite bullish on the Quad's ability to operationalize this part of the broader relationship. And this initiative is the first step in a long journey where the four countries as well as a broader set of allies and partners can make a tremendous difference in this 21st century competition. So thank you for the chance to be here tonight. Thanks very much for that, Martin. And I might later on come back to you on some of the specifics of your recommendations for this operationalizing the Quad in critical technologies. But first, I might go in fact to one of our Japanese colleagues and it's a real pleasure to introduce Professor Narushige Michishita from the Graduate Research, the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo and Japan. Professor Michishita is Vice President and Professor there of course grips his organization as a very valued counterpart of the National Security College. So Michishita, it would be very interesting to hear your thoughts at this stage on whether in fact there is a Quad agenda in this space or are we trying to push things too far? Right, thank you very much, Rory. First of all, congratulations on the successful launch of the QuadTech network today on behalf of the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies or GRIPS, we call it GRIPS. I would like to express our gratitude to the Australian government and the National Security College for inviting us to this extremely important project. So the question that Professor Medecaf gave me is the Quad's role in the cyber and the critical technologies agenda. And another question is, is this a bridge too far for a partnership that has traditionally been security focused or a natural evolution? So to this question or to these questions, I would say the bridge is not too far but the Quad partnership is not a natural evolution. What I mean is we will be able to make it if we work hard, but we will not be able to get there unless we work very hard together. So we will definitely be able to work much more closely together because fortunately, unfortunately, cyberspace and technology are borderless, right? And even when we do different things, we could still be working together. For example, in the physical world, when we talk about maritime security in the Pacific, India can take care of the Indian Ocean, while Japan and Australia take care of the Pacific. The US is in both oceans. You don't have to be doing the same thing. Neither do you have to be in the same place, right? So we can work together. However, both cyberspace and technology are affected by politics. Unfortunately, some countries do not abide by rules and undermines the most efficient division of labor and supply chain. So we were in a way forced to bring geopolitics back in to the picture. So we are working hard to create not necessary an ideal world, this is unfortunate, but a alternative, secure, cooperative and sustainable free and open in the Pacific for us, Australia, India, Japan and the United States. Thank you. Thank you, Michi. And again, I think that quick opening will help us bring to a later part of the conversation where we can go to some of the specifics and the practicalities and we'll speak to your colleague, Dr. Takahashi in a moment. And first, I'd like to introduce our Indian speaker from the Observer Research Foundation, our lead Indian researcher, and that is Trisha Ray. Trisha Ray is Associate Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, ORF, Looking at Technology and Media. And Trisha, it'd be great to hear your thoughts on our question and perhaps also as we move along, we might start to eliminate the question we all grappled with which was how do we try to define critical technologies for our purposes? But over to you, Trisha. Administrations in Australia, Japan and many in the ASEAN member states are gradually embracing a more expansive conceptualization of the concept of the Indo-Pacific, which encapsulates issues beyond the traditional focus of maritime security and now includes development, connectivity, infrastructure, and more recently cooperation on critical and emerging technologies with the quad as the pillar or the enabler for the region. In the paper, we've made 10 specific recommendations which I'll be touching on later during the course of this session. These realities are captured in a core idea in the paper which is the Digital Indo-Pacific. The expanding ambit of the Indo-Pacific reflects the fact that the region is home to the most dynamic and rapidly growing digital economies in the world. And that the region is simultaneously more focused on how best to build domestic capacity in tech to be competitive on a global stage but also maintaining relative autonomy in the midst of shifting geopolitical wins, especially when it comes to China or the US. These realities are unlikely to change. Right now, the big worry especially amongst Indian analysts is regarding the incoming Biden administration's rather mixed signals, which have not provided a lot of reassurance on what the US's Indo-Pacific strategy is going to be, whether it will fall back on the traditional maritime security focus or not. Additionally, over the past week, the administration and its officials' hesitation to use the term Indo-Pacific, opting instead for Asia-Pacific, is also a worrying sign. And in the first call to action to the quad, the National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, primarily cited phonops and maritime security aspects of the arrangement. That said, we are still in the first month of this new administration. So it might be premature to make these assumptions. And as Rory mentioned in the beginning, we are more likely than not to see a more nuanced engagement by the US and the region and the current administration. The focus on, say, building capacity rather than relying solely on bans and trade wars is not a bad sign. Again, the National Security Advisor did underscore the importance of emerging technologies, working closely with allies and partners, and making ambitious public investments to stay on the cutting edge. And there are several such areas that are ripe for investment. Some cited in the paper are rare odds, which go into all our devices, computers, electric vehicles, and so on, alternatives to untrusted 5G vendors, even basic infrastructure investment in fiberization of networks. All of these are ripe for investment. And so the Indo-Pacific construct has evolved. And now it's imperative that all the actors involved commit much-needed focus on these long-term tech and connectivity projects for the region and work in tandem with its regional partners. Thank you. Thank you for that, Trisha. And what we'll do before we go to, I've got some very specific questions for each of you on your research. Before we do, I'm going to seek a somewhat different perspective from one of our Australian authors. And that's Professor Jo Young Ford. Jo Ford from the Australian National University. Professor Ford is Associate Dean International and Professor at the Australian National University College of Law. And, Jo, I'd be very interested in your thoughts not so much on the opportunities for co-operation, but what you see as some of the challenges going forward. We've already had a hint of the fact that there can be differences in perspective. Please. Thank you, Professor Metcalf Rory. And thank you to Ambassador Fieken and your team and regards to all our partners in the Quad-Tec network. So I'm happy to play a bit of a devil's advocate, as we've tried to do in our paper in terms of some of the challenges to co-operation in the area. And I suppose I'll outline three that run through the paper. The first, and Rory, you have said this is only one piece, the Quad-Tec network of a range of different activities. But the first deals with the idea of like-mindedness and shared value that we've already heard today. And the danger that the rhetoric around that might obscure what we in the paper, and I'll keep plugging the paper, Rory, you'll be happy with that, what we in the paper talk about as difference and the huge diversity that exists even within countries that we might label liberal democracies like-minded sharing values. The huge difference in terms of legal systems that underpin the governance of responsible innovation, the governance of some of these technologies, critical technologies. And in the social, cultural context that underpins some of the values and precepts and principles that we talk about that underpin that value. So I think that's one challenge for the Quad-Tec network is the huge diversity in terms of some of these, the ways in which different cultural imaginations for one of anything else feed into fears of technology, ideas about technology, the parameters of technology and governance in society. The second challenge, I suppose, I would see is not diversity so much and difference, but plurality. And that's a challenge to really, it's about the limits as we talk about in the paper of state-based or at least state-led strategies around the Quad-Tec network in a field, and our paper deals with database critical technologies, especially AI, in a field in which the private sector and big tech phones in particular play such an outsize or disproportionate role in shaping the whole narrative around these technologies and their good or otherwise, and shaping the possibilities of governance models around these technologies. So that's the second challenge is the plurality of actors and the limits to what state-led or state-based diplomacy can do in the context of that private sector relationship. And the third challenge, I suppose, is around inclusivity. I don't think this challenge, we don't think this challenge is unique to the Quad, but it's a challenge around inclusivity of policymaking. So we've talked a lot already today about the concept of trust, but one of the challenges in relation to ideas of cooperation on shared ideas of how to govern responsible innovation, responsible critical technologies, is how do you bring along your societies with you and include them in the conversations about the possibilities and the problems of governance and include them in that process, so as to build trust, not just in the technologies, but in the frameworks for governing those technologies. So I think those are three challenges that we tried to put forward in order to, as Ambassador Fekin said, promote a bit more contestation of ideas around the possibilities and the limits of the QuadTech network. Thank you. Thanks indeed to that, Professor Ford. We are, I think within this network, we are being our own critics. It's kind of the, we have a full conversation. It's the Quad Clubhouse, I guess. With the Quad values, yes. Look, I'm going to go to some specifics now in the short time that we've got left and I want to really get back to our Japanese colleagues to begin with because we divided the four big research papers and they're all available now on the National Security College website, so please take a look at them. We divided the research papers into themes and our Japanese colleagues were asked to focus on really the hard and the other forms of national security, the national security policy settings for cyber and critical tech. So I'm going to invite Dr. Takahashi, Dr. Kohei Takahashi, who's a colleague of Michishi Tassano, researcher at GRIPS. Dr. Takahashi, can you please give us a few thoughts on what your research uncovered regarding opportunities for Japan and others to bolster cooperation in the national security dimension of cyber and critical tech. Thank you. Sure. Thank you so much. We have five specific recommendations on cyber security. First, sharing cyber threat intelligence. Sharing cyber threat intelligence is important because it enables us to identify common threats that we face and it makes it possible for Quad countries to work more closely together. Actually, Australia and the United States are already working on the cyber threat intelligence in the Five Eyes framework. So it is important for the Quad countries to establish a new framework for sharing information on cyber threat effectively. Second, establishing a fact-checking monitoring system. Influence operation in cyber space using fake news, for example, have become a big issue. It is important for the Quad countries to establish a fact-checking system. Third, promoting collaborating research on using AI. AI will be used in cyber space in the future. It will be necessary for us to promote research and study in this field to enhance our interoperability capabilities. Fourth, promoting joint exercise. Each country has its own strengths and weaknesses. It is important to conduct joint exercise in order to learn the strengths of the other potential allies and partners and to improve their resilience. Joint exercise will also offer great opportunity to learn from each other. Last, promoting human research education. We should promote personal exchange among Quad countries. We will have to depend on online education programs as long as the COVID environment continues. We believe that the Quad Tech Network has a huge potential to achieve these recommendations in the field of the cybersecurity. We will look forward to working with all of you guys, all of you again. Thank you. Thank you very much for that, Takahashi-san. That's a very crisp, clear set of five recommendations. They all have in common that theme of the complementarity of our four countries and how we can help one another. I'm going to go now back to Trisha Ray. So, Trisha, you and your co-authors presented an overview of connectivity and resilience across the Indo-Pacific, a digital Indo-Pacific. And it went, of course, more broadly than the four Quad countries. But you also do move from analysis to action. Can you please share your top insights? Let's say your top three insights from your report, please. Sure. So our paper makes recommendations under three broad themes. The first is the need for trusted and resilient supply chains. And in our conceptualization, this includes not just the components that go into our devices, but also, say, diversifying through capacity building within countries for manufacture and seeking new partners to help ease choke points in technology trade flows. It also encapsulates the underexplored aspects of data flows and the security of data flows. The second major theme is modifying existing partnerships, of which the Quad is one to adapt to changing geopolitical context. And so the resurgence of the Quad, the emergence of the digital Indo-Pacific, is one such repurposing of existing partnerships. The third major theme is the need for new coalitions with like-minded actors. These can be more area or issue specific. An example is the proposed D10 Club of Democracies on 5G. It's just like issue specific, goal-oriented coalitions. The paper contains 10 specific recommendations that serve as actionable starting points, but I'll just highlight like three or four. The first I'd like to highlight is that the implications of the numerous data governance frameworks that are emerging in the region on the digital economies of the region have not fully been explored. And so we recommend the establishment of data governance track 1.5. The Quad can be the starting point and then we gradually integrate more economies and countries in the region. We also focus a lot on first order connectivity issues, including just basic electricity, access to reliable high-speed internet, digital literacy, all of these are important elements. And then another major recommendation is in technology manufacturing. Most of the regions, Southeast Asia, India especially, are major assembly hugs in global technology trade, but there needs to be more focus on core competencies and capacity building. We give the example of semiconductors in the paper where there are a lot of pure play foundries in the region which assemble but don't design, but most of the value for semiconductors lies in the design, which is why Intel accounts for a quarter of global semiconductor value. And then the last recommendation I'll go into relates to the digital economy, which is that we need common standards for digital services. A starting point that we've mentioned is digital payments, harmonizing national and then regional standards for digital payments. Thank you. Thanks for those recommendations. It's the tip of the iceberg. So thank you. I'm gonna go back to our American colleague, to Martin Rasser. And Martin, your paper introduces a concept, I think you term it techno democratic statecraft as a way for like-minded countries to manage the international peace and security implications of critical technologies. Love to hear a bit more about techno democratic statecraft and what it actually means operationalized what are some of the recommendations. If you also get a moment just to touch on whether you think the Biden administration is going to really lean forward into the region on these issues, that would be useful to hear. Noting of course that several of your distinguished colleagues from CNS have just gone into the administration. So I'm hoping things are in good hands there. But over to you please, Martin. Yeah, absolutely. So what I wanted to lay out with this concept of techno democratic statecraft is really an affirmative framework for how to think about approaching tech policy. The overarching goal is to take concrete action to shape your technological futures such that it is a positive and beneficial one. So I see this agenda as having seven distinct but connected qualities. So first, the approach is proactive. So this means that a country's leaders should determine what technology areas are of priority based on their national needs and goals rather than trying to stay ahead of or chase the efforts of competitors. The second is being all inclusive. This means maximizing the range of key input such as R&D investments, human capital, education, tax policy to name just a few. So policymakers really need to treat technology areas as part of a large interrelated web rather than stove piped in independent disciplines. Third is that this is a whole of society effort. Government has a role to play in supporting and guiding technological developments. The hands-off approach toward industry of the past few decades isn't going to work to address the biggest problems that we face when it comes to technology. Fourth, flexibility. So there has to be an adjustable balance between affirmative measures to boost competitiveness and protective actions such as export controls to safeguard certain advantages. Fifth is being values driven. Tech policy decisions ultimately need to be in line with liberal democratic values. I think this is a theme that keeps coming up for the Quad, it's particularly important that that be the cornerstone of our actions. Sixth, multilateralism. The underlying premise here is that no one country can tackle most tech policy challenges on its own and expect to be successful. And that's why I'm personally so enthusiastic about this QuadTech network concept and the broader tech alliance type of work that I've been doing the past few years. I see this as being really the best way forward. And finally, in order to do all this, you do need a healthy dose of pragmatism, right? So we should be open and welcome to cooperation with non-democracies where our values and interests sufficiently align. And I think working with China on climate change would be a prime example of this. Now, to operationalize this, I would recommend that each Quad country craft a true national strategy for technology. And by this, I mean how a country plans, executes and updates its technology policies. And this requires a vision. So where do you want to be 20, 30, 40 years down the road? What tech areas do you want your country to be the world leader? Where should you be globally competitive? And where are the areas where you can afford to be a fast follower? Because you're not going to be number one in everything. It's just not affordable. It's not achievable ultimately. The ultimate goal of this strategy should be for a country to empower its citizens, compete economically and secure your national interests without having to compromise your values or your sovereignty. So what I ultimately wanted to do with laying out this framework was to help guide decision makers and how to turn strategy into action in an effective manner. Now, to your question on what I see the Biden administration doing, some very encouraging signs in terms of the people that they're bringing on board and how the Biden administration is starting to structure itself when it comes to tech policy matters. The National Security Council now has a tech directorate. The director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy is now cabinet level official. So just those two moves right there are very encouraging. Then you have the fact that the Secretary of State, Tony Blinken, National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan are very much talking about the concept of techno democracies and techno authoritarian regimes, the need for greater multilateral collaboration. Our European allies, they proposed a trade and technology council. Obviously we have the QuadTech Network Initiative and then there's numerous other bilateral and plural lateral ideas that are percolating in all the relevant capitals in the world where I really think in 2021, 2022 we're going to see significant movement toward greater collaborative efforts on very critical issues. We've already talked about a lot of them, right? Supply chains, 5G, there's issues with artificial intelligence, cybersecurity. The list goes on and on, but there's a lot of common ground and I think a lot of interest to act. So I'm personally very optimistic that we'll see some meaningful change in the very near future. Thanks for all of that, Martin will all be watching very closely with a very keen interest. And I note for those listening as you go to read the papers, I certainly recommend that you take a close look at the recommendations in the various papers, some of which do push the boundaries of ambition. I note that Martin, you explore the idea of what a multilateral cyber early warning system would look like for Quad countries or for more, but many of which also really are about building the complementarities that we already have in place. We're gonna wrap up in about 10 or 12 minutes, but before we do, I want to put one last question to all of our research partners. And that really goes a little bit to the what next. It explores this question of what value there is in not only attract to initiative like this, but this kind of informal initiative that engages different stakeholders, it engages independent voices in advising, suggesting and even shaping policy, because on the critical tech agenda as we've explored, society and the citizenry are absolutely vital. Certainly in democratic contexts, their views will count and certainly what they're willing to tolerate and what their culture and values will shape is crucial. The private sector, whether for good or not always so good is absolutely key and the right motivations and incentive structure to engage the interests of the private sector on these issues is vital. And of course, there is government. And I think in this case, government playing such a key facilitation role. We talk about track two diplomacy a lot in universities and think tanks and a lot of our engagement. And of course, we often mean that that in a sense is a license for academics and analysts and those who perhaps don't have policy responsibility to very candidly share our views either with one another or with the public forum. But track two diplomacy may be a different thing when it comes to the critical tech agenda. And so I'm wondering if each of our participants can just offer us a minute or two of thoughts on what you see really as the role for track two here going forward, whether it's in the QTN or whether it's in another format. And I'm actually going to introduce at this point, Catherine Manstead, one of my colleagues from the National Security College because Catherine as our senior advisor for public policy was and is the editor of the QTN research series. And I think much of the QDOS that we've heard today really goes to her. Catherine, what are your views on the potential for track two, please? Thanks, Rory. Look, I've got two observations I'd like to make. The first is particularly in the space of the Quad and technology cooperation. I think it's no secret that the Quad has faced at times of perception management problems and can be perceived as an organ of geopolitical jostling. I think by taking and adding to what the Quad is doing in tech is track two layer. That proves some of those perceptions to be misperceptions because the track two space is ultimately about a level of inclusivity. It's ultimately about contestability. And it's also recognizing some of the realities that my colleague Professor Ford was talking about, that tech is inherently multi-use. It's inherently pluralistic and you can't have power. You can't exercise deterrence. Even you can't build resilience, which is the theme of the Indian paper, unless you have diverse stakeholders on board. And so I think track two both has a, I guess it's a showcase of principles, but also is the reality that we need to maneuver in this space in a much more dynamic way. The second point I wanted to make is that in this space track two debate is essential because it is so fast-moving and it is so uncertain and all of us. And I think you get this impression when you read the four papers, are building the plane as we're flying it. And two ways in which we can really learn from each other I think is you get the sense, again from reading the four papers, that all countries are grappling with how to translate foreign policy and diplomatic action into domestic policy as well. How do we set up our bureaucratic structures? How do we strategize instead of objectives? All of us are doing that as we go and we can absolutely learn from each other. Not to mention obviously learning from the ways in which the technologies are deployed throughout society and some of the pilots that we see each country having different strengths in. And just on that, and this is the last point, I think track two is also about showing what's possible. And the quad can really be a beacon for other mini-lateral, bilateral and regional groupings to look to in as much as this is about being a little bit creative. It is about pushing the boundaries of what's possible and sometimes contesting commercial interests and government policy in our own countries or elsewhere. And just looking across the papers, I think one of the main areas we'll see that playing out is how each of the countries are resolving some of the really tricky trade-offs in this space. So trade-offs between security and privacy, between security and prosperity, trade-offs between commercial interests and the collective good and trade-offs between public uses as in government uses of technology and private uses of technology for social benefit services and the public good. Again, we're all flying that plane, building it simultaneously and by looking to each other, being a bit creative, being edgy as I think all of these papers are to some extent edgy in what they propose. That's the real value out of track two and QTN obviously is just one part of a trend we're seeing in this space, particularly across the region of embracing that power. Thanks very much for that, Catherine. I'm now gonna go to our Japanese colleagues again back to Professor Michi Shita and Dr. Takahashi if you've got a minute or two of remarks on the potential for track two, maybe including the role of industry. Okay, so we ask ourselves, what are the low-hanging fruits? I think the report that we did and the meeting that we are having today are the fruits that we have already produced. So we are eating those fruits today, which are tasty. That said, let me identify one immediate action that we can take and one long-term goal that we must pursue. The immediate action that we can take is to identify common challenges that we face. So actually, I think our report help us, reports help us do that. The Australian team identified the importance of ethics in approaching questions of the responsible development and the use of critical technologies. The Indian team discussed supply chains and adoption of digital economy and digital transformation. It also discussed establishing necessary regimes. The Japanese team talked about legal issues related to cybersecurity and critical technology. And finally, the US team suggested that the, suggested the importance to bolster cybersecurity and supply chain, secure supply chains. So we have some common themes and already know some of the areas in which we can start working together. In terms of a long-term goal, which is more challenging, I think our long-term goal is to create a secure, cooperative and sustainable free and open Indo-Pacific. And this is not only for the quad partners but also for other countries in the region. So when the quad countries work together, we should make sure that this partnership will eventually be expanded to the entire region, which is challenging but worth trying. Thank you. Thank you, Michi. Ambassador Fikin, I might just go a few minutes over time if it's okay with you. We'll go a few minutes past the official conclusion of this because I wanna harvest a few more thoughts if you can stick around. So I was gonna ask Takahashi-san, did you have any additional observation on the value of track two? Not very, thank you. Look, thank you again for your recommendations earlier. We look forward to suggesting the full report. So I'll just go then briefly to Ms. Ray, to Trisha Ray. Any thoughts from you? I know you talked earlier about track two but where would you like things to go next? So the role of track two forums like this, many of the important factors we've already kind of demonstrated in the course of this webinar, which is, for example, floating new ideas. The approaches adopted by all the papers are fairly distinct and it's always interesting to read how domestic political, social and economic priorities are reflected in the Quad policy-making framework. It's also useful in helping define new trends, especially in a space as fast moving and rapidly changing as emerging technologies. And so it also helps us understand both shared challenges amongst the Quad partners and the region broadly, but also in flagging key areas of difference, of which there are many. And while we are united by shared democratic principles, our democracies are very different as many of the speakers have highlighted. And so, yes, it's interesting to see how these differing framing, differing ideas come across in our papers and certainly track two forums like this are a useful way in progressing dialogue in the Quad. Thank you. Thank you very much, Trisha. And I'm going to ask Martin Rassad to have the last word from the panel. And Martin, again, it'll be useful to know if you see track two as a way of engaging industry or if there are other avenues for that. Yeah, absolutely. I would say just in general that track two initiatives really have the most impact in working through the nuts and bolts issues of how you put, in this case, effective multilateral tech policy into action. So obviously understanding geopolitical trends and context is important and necessary, but ultimately you need a roadmap for action. And I think in particular for the Quatech network, that would include answering questions like what the appropriate organizational bureaucratic approaches should be toward decision-making, meeting structure and frequency to your point, how government officials should engage with stakeholders from industry and civil society. And you need to identify areas for cooperation, highlighting opportunities and making recommendations on how to overcome hurdles. So the closer a track two effort can come to crafting a real blueprint that policymakers can fine tune and begin to execute the better the odds for success. But then at the same time, the long-term challenge then is, of course, you need policymaker buy-in, right? You need a champion to push the agenda forward. And that's hard enough to do in a single government. In this case, we're looking at four, you know, pretty different governments where you need that momentum going. And I think that's ultimately going to be one of the biggest challenges is to sustain that enthusiasm to push what is a very ambitious and complex concept to move that forward in a way that it becomes meaningful and impactful. So thank you very much for the last word there. Thank you indeed, Martin. I'm actually going to hand the real last word to, I think when we heard about policymakers and champions, I'm going to hand the last word to Ambassador Feakin. Thank you. Thank you, Rory. And thank you to all of the speakers today and all of the institutes that have been involved. I mean, maybe I can just add a few words on that last question you were asking everyone. Let me start from the basis of saying, I'm the big believer in always listen. You never know if you listen hard, you might actually learn something and be prepared to have your mind changed. And I think it's from that kind of sense of openness that we have to take on these kinds of joint shared cyber and technology challenges and opportunities. So the power of effective track to diplomacy of conversations of research is that, you can have your mind changed or influenced wherever you may be in government. And certainly something I take already from today is listening to the practical nature of what you've been suggesting. Everyone should go and read all these papers. There's a lot of good intellectual rigor in them, lots of good information to digest and that it's hard. It's taking that, extracting it and giving some practical suggestions to government. Some of those have sparked me in the sense of I think we're doing a few things around some of those recommendations, but already I'm thinking, yeah, there's some really interesting concepts and ideas there to talk to friends and colleagues about in terms of how we expand our policy horizons. I think for we inside policymaking, and if I may, my background for the last 20 plus years now and it's frightening to say that, there's been in tech policy. And if there's one kind of word of advice I give myself and anyone dealing with tech, it's go into this with the idea of trying to enable flexibility in your policy settings. And with that, then you will be able to approach new innovative technologies in the right way. So, that's certainly something that I've taken from today. Normalizing conversations like this are vitally important and continuing to show that technology and cyber issues and alliance discussions around those are of core fodder for public discourse and for projects like this. You know, I've had, it's been incredibly invigorating the discussion today and any conversations that we've had in the lead up to this. And as I say, I think from my perspective from the Australian government's perspective, very exciting to not only digest what you've written now, but to see where you take this initiative and the kinds of recommendations it gives us because this context that we're in right now, it's vital that we have as much useful intellectual fodder out there as possible. So, thank you very much everyone for everything that you've put into this. Know that they will all be, all the papers will be digested in detail inside various governments. So, thank you very much. And that brings our proceedings to a close. Thank you indeed, Ambassador. Thank you to all participants. The National Security College here at the Australian National University really is an institution that's all about building national capability, in this case, working with partners to help build our capability together as well. And so it's a real honour and privilege for us to say that the QTN is officially launched. Go read the papers, challenge our ideas. We look forward to the continuing public and policy debate and stay well friends from across the region, from all the time zones from which you've joined this discussion today. Thank you again and goodbye.